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The National Stamp Exhibition, "Beer Sheva 90", is being held in the Yad Lebanim House in Beer Sheva from 5 - 12 October 1990, during the Festival of Sukkut.
The Exhibition is being organised by the Beer Sheva Philatelic Association, under the auspices of the Israel Philatelic Federation and is being funded and supported by the Israel Postal Authority and its Philatelic Service.
The Exhibition comprises some 450 frames: 150 of them are designed for young people, 150 are part of the countrywide exhibition, and 150 are part of the national Exhibition.
Computers, offering philatelic information, will be at the disposal of the young visitors, and in addition to this there will be a wireless station at the Exhibition for radio hams.
As at every stamp exhibition the Israel Postal Authority and the Philatelic Service will run their activities and beside the displays there will also be stalls of Israel stamp dealers.
The last National Stamp Exhibition to be held in Beer Sheva was in 1982. The present Exhibition continues to promote philately throughout the Negev.
Beer Sheva is one of the oldest cities in Israel. It had a special importance in Biblical times, and it is from the Bible that we learn how the town was given its name which means "the Well of the Oath". After a quarrel over wells between the shepherds of Abraham and Avimelech, they made a pact "wherefore he called that place Beer Sheva: because there they swore both of them" (Genesis 21, 31).
Beer Sheva has had its ups and downs. When John Hyrcanus conquered Edom, the city fell under the hegemony of the Hasmonean kingdom. After the destruction of the Second Temple the town became one of the central strongholds of the Roman border, defending the Empire from incursions of the Nabateans. The city was abandoned during the Arab period and remained uninhabited until the nineteenth century when the present-day city first came into being.
At that time the Turkish Sultan, Abed EI-Hammid II, decided to increase his activities in the outlying areas on the southern extremities of the Ottoman Empire. In the year 1900, he began to set up government buildings, a Mosque and a school. Already at that time a number of Jewish families had settled in the town and established a flour mill and were involved in trading. During the period of the British Mandate, the development of the town was halted and it became a small provincial town on the fringe of the settled area of Palestine.
In 1948, the city was taken by the Negev Brigade, and since that time it has enjoyed continual development and serves as the capital of the southern part of the State of Israel.
On the souvenir sheet that the Philatelic Service has put out for the Exhibition, appear various institutions of present-day Beer Sheva, and on the stamp itself - a sketch of Abraham's Well that was drawn according to a copper engraving from the 17th Century. In the centre of the sheet is a sketch of "Yad Lebanim" House and around it, anti-clockwise, starting with the Beer Sheva City Hall building (right, above the stamp) are: the Negev Brigade Monument (top right); the Soroka Hospital (top left); the City Conservatory (left); a Synagogue; and a sketch of Beer Sheva Museum (bottom left).
