A pair of Canadian philatelists have received two distinguished honours from the Society of Israel Philatelists (SIP), a more than 1,700-member group focusing on Israeli philately with several worldwide chapters, including in Canada.
Vancouver’s Ed Kroft – current president of the Royal Philatelic Society of Canada (RPSC) and immediate past president of the SIP – won the Dr. Leopold Dickstein Memorial Award. Recognizing “excellence” in the SIP’s print and digital publications, the award acknowledges contributions to The Israel Philatelist, the group’s quarterly journal, or the society’s website.
An SIP member since the mid-’70s and a collector for about a decade longer, Kroft is a prolific writer and exhibitor of Holy Land philately with success exhibiting at the regional, national and international levels. His latest book – released in 2020 – is The Doar Ivri Issue of Israel: Postal and Commercial Usages of the Three High Value Stamps, which earned him a gold medal at the Chicagopex philatelic literature exhibition held remotely this November.
“It’s a great honour,” said Kroft, who’s also an accomplished tax lawyer. “Dickstein was a great philatelist – highly knowledgeable – and I’m very much honoured to receive this award because I enjoy writing about the Holy Land area, and to be acknowledged is fantastic. I encourage others to write in that area because that’s how we all learn more.”
Another Canadian philatelist, Irving Osterer, of Ottawa, won the SIP’s Leslie Reggel Memorial Award for outstanding service to Holy Land and Israeli philately.