Star of David

The six-pointed star is far older than its Jewish meaning. Gershom Scholem’s entry in the Encyclopaedia Judaica finds it on Jewish lamps and seals in antiquity, used by Jews and non-Jews alike and “without having any special and recognizable significance”. In the Middle Ages it was a common ornament in Muslim and Christian countries, and Arab writers called it the “seal of Solomon”, a name many Jewish groups took over. Jews drew it on amulets, and the name magen David is first recorded in the early 14th century, in a kabbalistic book by a grandson of Nahmanides. Its life as a communal emblem began in Prague. In 1354 Charles IV granted the Jewish community there its own flag, later called “King David’s flag”, with the hexagram on it, and from Prague the emblem spread through Moravia and Austria in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1656 a stone carved with it marked the boundary of the Jewish quarter of Vienna. In the 19th century, Scholem writes, Jews wanted a simple sign that would stand for Judaism as the cross stands for Christianity, and the star became that sign: almost every synagogue came to bear it. The Zionist movement adopted it at its 1897 Congress. Under the Nazis it became a badge of shame that Jews were made to wear, marking them for persecution and accompanying millions to their deaths; Scholem writes that this gave the star “a new dimension of depth, uniting suffering and hope”. The State of Israel kept it on its flag but chose the Menorah, a much older Jewish symbol, as its emblem. Claims that it was a Jewish emblem in medieval communities “are neither fully substantiated nor widely accepted”, My Jewish Learning notes.