Belated Merry Christmas to one and all...

During this holiday season, I asked Cliff, my colleague and Jerusalem bureau manager, to do a little more digging for me on the "Typical Israeli" and how the new image was chosen for Israel's 60th anniversary stamp.

Here's the deal:

Soon after Israel was established in 1948, an illustrator known as Dosh drew a cartoon character known as Srulik (see image at right) who came to typify the "Typical Israeli."

Srulik was meant to counter anti-Semitic images around the world.

He was pictured in sandals, shorts and kind of bucket hat to symbolize the optimistic new Israeli farmer. Srulik was chosen as Israel's symbol for its tenth anniversary as a nation.

Some consider him Israel's version of Uncle Sam.

Dosh debated whether or not to update Srulik, Cliff said. In the end, Dosh decided against it, saying: "Our people have also not aged. With all our accomplishments and troubles we stay, in our own way, teenagers."

Still, as time passed, there was a growing feeling that the image was increasingly obsolete. So the Israeli postal service and Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper decided to hold a contest to update the image.

"The post-Sabra Srulik is very different from the Sabra Srulik," Yedioth wrote in its contest guidelines. "Not just because his living conditions and cultural codes have greatly changed, but also because Israeli society today is less homogeneous in terms of status - a society where different sectors exist, each of which demands, and rightly so, part of the dominant culture. Therefore Srulik is not only less "Sabra" and more global, but also less chauvinistic, less Ashkenazi, less non-religious and more multicultural. He is an interesting synthesis of sectors, communities, statuses, religious views and lifestyles.

However, despite the deep-rooted changes Israeli society has undergone it seems that the Sabra "gene" has not completely disappeared and it does not appear that it will disappear in the foreseeable future. Therefore in designing the new Srulik it is preferable to consider the fundamental characteristics of Israeliness, which are still an important part of popular culture in Israel and part of the Israeli mentality many of which are intimately connected to the 'Old Srulik.'"

Thus, Israel has ended up with the new image.

Cliff also tracked down the two runner-ups, which weren't much better than the winner: