Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies has received an extraordinary stamp collection that includes every stamp issued by the state of Israel, as well as supporting materials and stamps issued all over the world featuring Jewish themes. The Sol Singer Collection of Philatelic Judaica was collected over a 40-year period and was donated to the University by retired Atlanta businessman Sol Singer and his wife, Ruth.

David Blumenthal, Cohen Professor of Judaic Studies, said the collection provides a wonderful resource for scholarly research and for teaching such topics as the representation of women, holidays, the Holocaust, the military, minorities, peace, agriculture and art.

“Stamps are one of the ways that countries express national culture, so this collection is an excellent tool to use to study how Israel and other nations treat issues of Judaism,” Blumenthal said.

The donation of the Sol Singer Collection was announced during the annual David R. Blumenthal Awards dinner April 22, where the Singers were honored for their donation and some of the material was on display.

The collection includes a complete set of stamps issued by Israel from the period just before independence up to this year, some of them extremely rare and valuable. More than just individual stamps, the collection includes corners, first-day covers and whole sheets of each stamp issued.

The collection also features stamps with Jewish content issued around the world. No one knows how many such stamps exist, but the Singer collection contains entire volumes of stamps on the themes of the Holocaust, Einstein, Herzl, Judaica and more. Also included are whole sets of various philatelic journals dealing with Israeli and Judaica stamps.

The Sol Singer Collection of Philatelic Judaica will be housed in Special Collections at Woodruff Library. The collection will be available for research and teaching purposes and may be exhibited in the future.