Star of David

 Star of David

"Magen David" redirects here. For the halakhic commentator, see David HaLevi Segal.

Tekhelet colored Star of David, as depicted on the flag of Israel.

The Star of David (Hebrew: מָגֵן דָּוִד, romanized: Magen David, lit. 'Shield of David')^[a] is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles.

A derivation of the seal of Solomon was used for decorative and mystical purposes by Muslims and Kabbalistic Jews. The hexagram appears occasionally in Jewish contexts since antiquity as a decorative motif, such as a stone bearing a hexagram from the arch of the 3rd–4th century Khirbet Shura synagogue. A hexagram found in a religious context can be seen in a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible from 11th-century Cairo.

Its association as a distinctive symbol for the Jewish people and their religion dates to 17th-century Prague. In the 19th century, the symbol began to be widely used by the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, ultimately coming to represent Jewish identity or religious beliefs.^[2][3] It became representative of Zionism after it was chosen as the central symbol for a Jewish national flag at the First Zionist Congress in 1897.

By the end of World War I, it was an internationally accepted symbol for the Jewish people, used on the gravestones of fallen Jewish soldiers.

Today, the star is the central symbol on the national flag of the State of Israel.

Roots

Star of David at the Oshki Monastery, dated AD 973. The monastery is located in Tao, modern-day Turkey.

Unlike the menorah, the Lion of Judah, the shofar and the lulav, the hexagram was not originally a uniquely Jewish symbol. The hexagram, being an inherently simple geometric construction, has been used in various motifs throughout human history, which were not exclusively religious. It appeared as a decorative motif in both 4th-century synagogues and Christian churches in the Galilee region.

Gershom Scholem writes that the term "seal of Solomon" was adopted by Jews from Islamic magic literature, while he could not assert with certainty whether the term "shield of David" originated in Islamic or Jewish mysticism.^[2] Leonora Leet argues though that not just the terminology, but the esoteric philosophy behind it had pre-Islamic Jewish roots and provides among other arguments the Talmud's mention of the hexagram as being engraved on Solomon's seal ring.^[9] She also shows that Jewish alchemists were the teachers of their Muslim and Christian counterparts, and that a way-opener such as Maria Hebraea of Alexandria (2nd or 3rd century CE; others date her earlier) already used concepts which were later adopted by Muslim and Christian alchemists and could be graphically associated with the symbolism of the upper and lower triangles constituting the hexagram, which came into explicit use after her time. The hexagram however only becomes widespread in Jewish magical texts and amulets (segulot) in the early Middle Ages, which is why most modern authors have seen Islamic mysticism as the source of the medieval Spanish Kabbalists' use of the hexagram. The name "Star of David" originates from King David of ancient Israel.

Use As Jewish Emblem

Only around one millennium later, however, the star began to be used as a symbol to identify Jewish communities, a tradition that seems to have started in Prague before the 17th century, and from there spread to much of Eastern Europe.

In the 19th century, it came to be adopted by European Jews as a symbol to represent Jewish religion or identity in the same manner the Christian cross identified that religion's believers. The symbol became representative of the worldwide Zionist community after it was chosen as the central symbol on a flag at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, due to its usage in some Jewish communities and its lack of specifically religious connotations. It was not considered an exclusively Jewish symbol until after it began to be used on the gravestones of fallen Jewish soldiers in World War I.

History of Jewish usage

Early use as an ornament

The Star of David in the oldest surviving complete copy of the Masoretic text, the Leningrad Codex, dated 1008.

The hexagram does appear occasionally in Jewish contexts since antiquity, apparently as a decorative motif. For example, in Israel, there is a stone bearing a hexagram from the arch of the 3rd–4th century Khirbet Shura synagogue in the Galilee. Originally, the hexagram may have been employed as an architectural ornament on synagogues, as it is, for example, on the cathedrals of Brandenburg and Stendal, and on the Marktkirche at Hanover. A hexagram in this form is found on the ancient synagogue at Capernaum.

The use of the hexagram in a Jewish context as a possibly meaningful symbol may occur as early as the 11th century, in the decoration of the carpet page of the famous Tanakh manuscript, the Leningrad Codex dated 1008. Similarly, the symbol illuminates a medieval Tanakh manuscript dated 1307 belonging to Rabbi Yosef bar Yehuda ben Marvas from Toledo, Spain.

Kabbalistic use

Page of segulot in a medieval Kabbalistic grimoire (Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, 13th century)

A hexagram has been noted on a Jewish tombstone in Taranto, Apulia in Southern Italy, which may date as early as the third century CE. The Jews of Apulia were noted for their scholarship in Kabbalah, which has been connected to the use of the Star of David.^[18]

Medieval Kabbalistic grimoires show hexagrams among the tables of segulot, but without identifying them as "Shield of David".

In the Renaissance, in the 16th-century Land of Israel, the book Ets Khayim conveys the Kabbalah of Ha-Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) who arranges the traditional items on the seder plate for Passover into two triangles, where they explicitly correspond to Jewish mystical concepts. The six sfirot of the masculine Zer Anpin correspond to the six items on the seder plate, while the seventh sfira being the feminine Malkhut corresponds to the plate itself.

However, these seder-plate triangles are parallel, one above the other, and do not actually form a hexagram.

Official usage in Central European communities

Historical flag of the Jewish community in Prague

In 1354, King of Bohemia Charles IV approved for the Jews of Prague a red flag with a hexagram.^[26] In 1460, the Jews of Ofen (Buda, now part of Budapest, Hungary) received King Matthias Corvinus with a red flag on which were two Shields of David and two stars.^[27] In the first Hebrew prayer book, printed in Prague in 1512, a large hexagram appears on the cover. In the colophon is written: "Each man beneath his flag according to the house of their fathers...and he will merit to bestow a bountiful gift on anyone who grasps the Shield of David." In 1592, Mordechai Maizel was allowed to affix "a flag of King David, similar to that located on the Main Synagogue" on his synagogue in Prague. Following the Battle of Prague (1648), the Jews of Prague were again granted a flag, in recognition of their contribution to the city's defense. That flag showed a yellow hexagram on a red background, with a "Swedish star" placed in the center of the hexagram.

As a symbol of Judaism and the Jewish community

Herzl's proposed flag, as sketched in his diaries. Although he drew a Star of David, he did not describe it as suchMax Bodenheimer's (top left) and Herzl's (top right) 1897 drafts of the Zionist flag, compared to the final version used at the 1897 First Zionist Congress (bottom)

The symbol became representative of the worldwide Zionist community, and later the broader Jewish community, after it was chosen to represent the First Zionist Congress in 1897.

A year before the congress, Herzl had written in his 1896 Der Judenstaat:

David Wolffsohn (1856–1914), a businessman prominent in the early Zionist movement, was aware that the nascent Zionist movement had no official flag, and that the design proposed by Theodor Herzl was gaining no significant support, wrote:

At the behest of our leader Herzl, I came to Basle to make preparations for the Zionist Congress. Among many other problems that occupied me then was one that contained something of the essence of the Jewish problem. What flag would we hang in the Congress Hall? Then an idea struck me. We have a flag—and it is blue and white. The talith (prayer shawl) with which we wrap ourselves when we pray: that is our symbol. Let us take this Talith from its bag and unroll it before the eyes of Israel and the eyes of all nations. So I ordered a blue and white flag with the Shield of David painted upon it. That is how the national flag, that flew over Congress Hall, came into being.

In the early 20th century, the symbol began to be used to express Jewish affiliations in sports. Hakoah Vienna was a Jewish sports club founded in Vienna, Austria, in 1909 whose teams competed with the Star of David on the chest of their uniforms, and won the 1925 Austrian League soccer championship.^[29] Similarly, The Philadelphia Sphas basketball team in Philadelphia (whose name was an acronym of its founding South Philadelphia Hebrew Association) wore a large Star of David on their jerseys to proudly proclaim their Jewish identity, as they competed in 

Star of David

"Magen David" redirects here. For the halakhic commentator, see David HaLevi Segal.

Tekhelet colored Star of David, as depicted on the flag of Israel.

The Star of David (Hebrew: מָגֵן דָּוִד, romanized: Magen David, lit. 'Shield of David')^[a] is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles.

A derivation of the seal of Solomon was used for decorative and mystical purposes by Muslims and Kabbalistic Jews. The hexagram appears occasionally in Jewish contexts since antiquity as a decorative motif, such as a stone bearing a hexagram from the arch of the 3rd–4th century Khirbet Shura synagogue. A hexagram found in a religious context can be seen in a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible from 11th-century Cairo.

Its association as a distinctive symbol for the Jewish people and their religion dates to 17th-century Prague. In the 19th century, the symbol began to be widely used by the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, ultimately coming to represent Jewish identity or religious beliefs.^[2][3] It became representative of Zionism after it was chosen as the central symbol for a Jewish national flag at the First Zionist Congress in 1897.

By the end of World War I, it was an internationally accepted symbol for the Jewish people, used on the gravestones of fallen Jewish soldiers.

Today, the star is the central symbol on the national flag of the State of Israel.

Roots

Star of David at the Oshki Monastery, dated AD 973. The monastery is located in Tao, modern-day Turkey.

Unlike the menorah, the Lion of Judah, the shofar and the lulav, the hexagram was not originally a uniquely Jewish symbol. The hexagram, being an inherently simple geometric construction, has been used in various motifs throughout human history, which were not exclusively religious. It appeared as a decorative motif in both 4th-century synagogues and Christian churches in the Galilee region.

Gershom Scholem writes that the term "seal of Solomon" was adopted by Jews from Islamic magic literature, while he could not assert with certainty whether the term "shield of David" originated in Islamic or Jewish mysticism.^[2] Leonora Leet argues though that not just the terminology, but the esoteric philosophy behind it had pre-Islamic Jewish roots and provides among other arguments the Talmud's mention of the hexagram as being engraved on Solomon's seal ring.^[9] She also shows that Jewish alchemists were the teachers of their Muslim and Christian counterparts, and that a way-opener such as Maria Hebraea of Alexandria (2nd or 3rd century CE; others date her earlier) already used concepts which were later adopted by Muslim and Christian alchemists and could be graphically associated with the symbolism of the upper and lower triangles constituting the hexagram, which came into explicit use after her time. The hexagram however only becomes widespread in Jewish magical texts and amulets (segulot) in the early Middle Ages, which is why most modern authors have seen Islamic mysticism as the source of the medieval Spanish Kabbalists' use of the hexagram. The name "Star of David" originates from King David of ancient Israel.

Use As Jewish Emblem

Only around one millennium later, however, the star began to be used as a symbol to identify Jewish communities, a tradition that seems to have started in Prague before the 17th century, and from there spread to much of Eastern Europe.

In the 19th century, it came to be adopted by European Jews as a symbol to represent Jewish religion or identity in the same manner the Christian cross identified that religion's believers. The symbol became representative of the worldwide Zionist community after it was chosen as the central symbol on a flag at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, due to its usage in some Jewish communities and its lack of specifically religious connotations. It was not considered an exclusively Jewish symbol until after it began to be used on the gravestones of fallen Jewish soldiers in World War I.

History of Jewish usage

Early use as an ornament

The Star of David in the oldest surviving complete copy of the Masoretic text, the Leningrad Codex, dated 1008.

The hexagram does appear occasionally in Jewish contexts since antiquity, apparently as a decorative motif. For example, in Israel, there is a stone bearing a hexagram from the arch of the 3rd–4th century Khirbet Shura synagogue in the Galilee. Originally, the hexagram may have been employed as an architectural ornament on synagogues, as it is, for example, on the cathedrals of Brandenburg and Stendal, and on the Marktkirche at Hanover. A hexagram in this form is found on the ancient synagogue at Capernaum.

The use of the hexagram in a Jewish context as a possibly meaningful symbol may occur as early as the 11th century, in the decoration of the carpet page of the famous Tanakh manuscript, the Leningrad Codex dated 1008. Similarly, the symbol illuminates a medieval Tanakh manuscript dated 1307 belonging to Rabbi Yosef bar Yehuda ben Marvas from Toledo, Spain.

Kabbalistic use

Page of segulot in a medieval Kabbalistic grimoire (Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, 13th century)

A hexagram has been noted on a Jewish tombstone in Taranto, Apulia in Southern Italy, which may date as early as the third century CE. The Jews of Apulia were noted for their scholarship in Kabbalah, which has been connected to the use of the Star of David.^[18]

Medieval Kabbalistic grimoires show hexagrams among the tables of segulot, but without identifying them as "Shield of David".

In the Renaissance, in the 16th-century Land of Israel, the book Ets Khayim conveys the Kabbalah of Ha-Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) who arranges the traditional items on the seder plate for Passover into two triangles, where they explicitly correspond to Jewish mystical concepts. The six sfirot of the masculine Zer Anpin correspond to the six items on the seder plate, while the seventh sfira being the feminine Malkhut corresponds to the plate itself.

However, these seder-plate triangles are parallel, one above the other, and do not actually form a hexagram.

Official usage in Central European communities

Historical flag of the Jewish community in Prague

In 1354, King of Bohemia Charles IV approved for the Jews of Prague a red flag with a hexagram.^[26] In 1460, the Jews of Ofen (Buda, now part of Budapest, Hungary) received King Matthias Corvinus with a red flag on which were two Shields of David and two stars.^[27] In the first Hebrew prayer book, printed in Prague in 1512, a large hexagram appears on the cover. In the colophon is written: "Each man beneath his flag according to the house of their fathers...and he will merit to bestow a bountiful gift on anyone who grasps the Shield of David." In 1592, Mordechai Maizel was allowed to affix "a flag of King David, similar to that located on the Main Synagogue" on his synagogue in Prague. Following the Battle of Prague (1648), the Jews of Prague were again granted a flag, in recognition of their contribution to the city's defense. That flag showed a yellow hexagram on a red background, with a "Swedish star" placed in the center of the hexagram.

As a symbol of Judaism and the Jewish community

Herzl's proposed flag, as sketched in his diaries. Although he drew a Star of David, he did not describe it as suchMax Bodenheimer's (top left) and Herzl's (top right) 1897 drafts of the Zionist flag, compared to the final version used at the 1897 First Zionist Congress (bottom)

The symbol became representative of the worldwide Zionist community, and later the broader Jewish community, after it was chosen to represent the First Zionist Congress in 1897.

A year before the congress, Herzl had written in his 1896 Der Judenstaat:

David Wolffsohn (1856–1914), a businessman prominent in the early Zionist movement, was aware that the nascent Zionist movement had no official flag, and that the design proposed by Theodor Herzl was gaining no significant support, wrote:

At the behest of our leader Herzl, I came to Basle to make preparations for the Zionist Congress. Among many other problems that occupied me then was one that contained something of the essence of the Jewish problem. What flag would we hang in the Congress Hall? Then an idea struck me. We have a flag—and it is blue and white. The talith (prayer shawl) with which we wrap ourselves when we pray: that is our symbol. Let us take this Talith from its bag and unroll it before the eyes of Israel and the eyes of all nations. So I ordered a blue and white flag with the Shield of David painted upon it. That is how the national flag, that flew over Congress Hall, came into being.

In the early 20th century, the symbol began to be used to express Jewish affiliations in sports. Hakoah Vienna was a Jewish sports club founded in Vienna, Austria, in 1909 whose teams competed with the Star of David on the chest of their uniforms, and won the 1925 Austrian League soccer championship.^[29] Similarly, The Philadelphia Sphas basketball team in Philadelphia (whose name was an acronym of its founding South Philadelphia Hebrew Association) wore a large Star of David on their jerseys to proudly proclaim their Jewish identity, as they competed in the first half of the 20th century.

In boxing, Benny "the Ghetto Wizard" Leonard(who said he felt as though he was fighting for all Jews) fought with a Star of David embroidered on his trunks in the 1910s.World heavyweight boxing champion Max Baer fought with a Star of David on his trunks as well, notably, for the first time as he knocked out Nazi Germany hero Max Schmeling in 1933;^[ Hitler never permitted Schmeling to fight a Jew again