Star of David Letters

Photo is courtesy of Nathaniel Yakov Daniel.

All rights reserved to Nathaniel Yakov Daniel 2007.

Nathaniel Yakov Daniel has nowadays a restaurant in Tel Aviv, Israel, but for many years he was a goldsmith. 27 years ago he came to Israel from Tajikistan and had to learn the Hebrew language. In order to memorize the letters he found them all in the Star of David, except for the first letter, Aleph, which was discovered by Joseph Cohen whom he taught how to be a goldsmith.
The first character Nathaniel found was Lamed and all the remainder he found within a few minutes. He didn’t publish his discovery because he thought that everybody knew it already.

Nathaniel Yakov Daniel told me why in his opinion king David chose the Magen David. King David was a poet and also a man of war. When he fought he had to be rapt in the war and not in prayers. The Magen David contains all the characters from which prayers are composed. In order to understand this there’s a story about a Jew in a remote village in Russia who wanted to go to the synagogue in a nearby city but missed the train. Since he didn’t have a prayer book he made a deal with GOD that he will sit on the floor and mourn and pray what he knows and the Lord will complete the missing parts. He said all day long the alphabet. Later it was revealed to the Baal Shem Tov, the famous Rabbi, that this prayer reached the highest heavens.
Anther explanation is that in ancient times each king had a drawing on his shield to make it possible for his soldiers to identify him. On king David’s shield was the Magen David also in order to remind the soldiers to pray while they fought.
Why did Jews choose the Magen David to be their emblem? - Because it contains all the characters in the most condensed manner.