The Jewish Hammer

I just saw (and liked) Jonathan Kesselman's film, "The Hebrew Hammer," on my Cable TV. It's a slapstick about a Jewish private detective who saves Hanukah from an evil Santa Claus who wants to make everyone celebrate only Christmas.
The film parodies many common stereotypes about Jews but what attracted my attention was the extensive use of the Star of David to instantly characterize Judaism:
· On the Hammer's blue-and-white Cadillac hood.
· On the Cadillac's rear window.
· On the Cadillac's front door.
· On the Hammer's Belt.
· On the Hammer's spears.
· On the eye-patch of the chief of the Jewish Justice League.
· On the wall of the chief's office
· On the Israeli flag in the chief's office.
· On the entrance door to the Jewish Justice League building.
· On top of the device of the Jewish Atomic Clock.
· On the wall In the Hammer's mother's house.
· On the necklace of the Hammer's girlfriend.
…And I'm sure I missed a few others. It looks like a promotion film for Stars of David!
Another Jewish Hammer, a real one, is Jewish boxer Dmitriy Salita who goes by the name of “The Star of David” and wears a Magen David on his trucks.

Rastafarians

The Magen David is used to symbolize not only the Jewish religion but also the Rastafarian religion. It is used on a lot of reggae CD covers. The Rastafarians use the Magen David because they believe that their leader, the late King of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I was descendant from King Solomon and King David. (In Amharic Haile Selassie means "Power of Trinity". His former name was Ras Tafari Markonnen (1892-1975).

Mizrach decoration

 

Star of David on a Mizrach decoration Image is copied from Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906)

 

The Mizrach  (Hebrew for east) is a decorative sign that Jews who lived in exile in the west hang on an eastern wall within their homes or their synagogues in order to remind them to face Jerusalem and the Temple Mount while praying (see: Talmud Berachot 30). This decoration includes usually the Hebrew word "Mizrach".

Basically this idea appears in the Israeli national anthem Hatikvah:

 

As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart,

With eyes turned toward the East, looking toward Zion,

Then our hope - the two-thousand-year-old hope - will not be lost:

To be a free people in our land,

The land of Zion and Jerusalem

 

Sometimes the Mizrach decoration includes a Star of David. IMHO this shows how strong is the connection between the concepts of "East" and "Zion" since the Star of David Symbolizes Zion.  

Yellow Badge

Photo courtesy of Daniel Ullrich, Threedots, who took it at the exhibition in the Jewish Museum Westphalia, Dorsten, Germany and put it on the Wikimedia Commons.

The following paragraph is from Dr. Asher Eder’s book The Star of David, which was published in 1987 in English in Jerusalem by Rubin Mass Ltd. The publication here is courtesy of Oren Mass

As part of its ferocious anti-Semitism, Nazi Germany tried to disparage the star, forcing its Jewish citizens to wear it as a yellow badge - the Judenstern (Jewish Star) as it was called.
It seems appropriate to mention here a poem written in 1942 in occupied Paris, after the Germans ordered the Jews to wear the yellow badge. The poem was written by a Russian Gentile, Elizabeth Skovzovah, who had emigrated to Paris after World War I. Working for the anti-Nazi underground, she was known as "Mother Mary". Her poem (translated from the Russian) follows:
SHIELD OF DAVID
Two triangles forming a star
Magen David—Shield of David
Shield of the Fathers—not a disgrace
A great gift—not a disaster.

Again they persecute you, Israel,
but what will the plots of Belial achieve
when in the lightning of the Sinai
God answers you again from above?

Therefore, awaken, you who have upon you the sign,
the Magen David, shield and symbol,
Learn to stand up in the battle of the generation
Against the sign of bondage, slavery and suffering.

However, not only Nazi-Germany denigrated the six-pointed star. In the Communist countries it was repressed, too, or it got disfigured where it could not be removed, as e.g. in the "Jewish House" at the Rumanian town of Czernovitz. There, all the two hundred hexagrams of its banister were disfigured during the Stalin era:

Daughter of Zion

One of the terms that demonstrate that there's an identity between the Star of David and Zion is the "Daughter of Zion". Originally it refers to the Temple Mount which is the "daughter" of Mount Zion.

During World War I a poster for the recruitment to the Jewish Legion was published in American Jewish magazines. On it there was a big Star of David encircilng a woman (Daughter of Zion) and the words in Yiddish: "Daughter of Zion I want your Old New Land! Join the Jewish regiment. On the head of this Daughter of Zion there's a stripe with a small Star of David on its center. In this case Daughter of Zion represented the Jewish people.

Zion Mule Corps

When World War I broke out Jewish leaders Joseph Trumpeldor and Ze’ev Jabotinsky met in Egypt and developed the idea of a Jewish legion that would fight with the British. In 1915 the Zion Mule Corps was formed. It had 650 Jewish soldiers. Trumpeldor took part in the fight in Gallipoli, Turkey, where he was wounded in the shoulder. The emblem, the flag and their badge consisted of the Star of David… 

 

Jewish Wedding Contracts

Recently I wrote about the wedding stones and estimated that the Star of David which appears on some of them Symbolizes Jerusalem (Zion). I found this connection between the climax of joy [wedding] and remembering the destroyed Temple [Jerusalem Zion Star of David] also on Jewish Wedding Contracts (Ketubot).

Searching Google images for "Star of David" and ketubah brought me 38 aesthetic results; on a regular Google search for the above search terms I got thousands of results, most of them offering to buy a ketubah.