Brewer

Picture is courtesy of Matthias Trum who wrote for Technical University Munich a thesis titled

Historical depictions, guild signs and symbols of the brewing and malting handcraft

Matthias' caption for this picture is

oldest depiction of a brewer is Pyprew (old german word for brewer) Herttel from 1425. The text on the picture states: "The 46th brother, who died here, was named Herttel Pyrprew" …One can see the brewing kettle with two rings attached to the sides plus two wooden vats. Above the brewer on a stick the hexagram...

Destroying Stars of David in Baghdad

I already wrote about the phenomenon of Arabs mutilating Stars of David, but here is an eye witness, Raed Jarrar, who wrote on his blog:

Speaking about Israel and David stars, Egypt was full of ornaments taking a six-sided-star shape. That reminded me of one of the funny memories about my university days in Baghdad. The municipality asked the Architectural department to send out all the students, and I was one of them, to check the streets of Baghdad for "David Stars". It was so stupid and ridiculous because the six-sided-star is more a middle Eastern symbol than a Jewish one, and neither myself nor the professors in the department thought it's a good idea to go and check for such stars on houses and ask the owners to destroy them. No one liked the idea, but no one dared to say No of course. Everyone said the famous statement "Good morning, Mr President, thank you for everything. Thank you very much for everything. I like you", but in Arabic at that time.

No wonder there are so few ancient Stars of David left in the world...it seems that archaeologists find only those which escaped the mutilators' eyes!

Petroglyph

 scienceviews.com reported about unusual Petroglyphs (rock drawings)  found East of Cedar City, Utah

 In order to make the glyphs more legable, someone traced them with white paint. This should not be done. 

Moghul Art

Hexagram inside a hexagon in a latticework in the Humayun's Tomb
in Delhi, India.
A few days ago I saw a film about the Moghul dynesty which ruled India until 1857 - there were times when they were the richest rulers in the world. These are the guys behind the Taj Mahal...and they loved hexagrams. I hope to find more photos of their superb hexagrams.

Picture is courtesy of "diametrik"  who published it on Flickr 

Baptist Synagogue

Picture is courtesy of William Lebovich, architectural historian/photographer, who is its copyright holder. It appeared on the Washington Post in an article by Frank Van Riper with the following caption:

Lobby of 19th Street Baptist Church still has mosaic floor from when it was B'nai Israel Congregation. Stained glass window at back now features a praying Jesus.

Quantum Physics

Diagram is courtesy of Dr. Remo Roth who wrote to me:

…[the Star of David] is the symbol of the arrangement of the first three quarks and antiquarks; Thus, the Seal [Seal of Solomon, Star of David] belongs to quantum physics, or even to a deeper region which Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli called the psychophysical reality, a reunion of the split between matter and spirit/psyche, outer and inner world, masculine and feminine principle (and especially important for your country: a reunion of Judaism/Christianism with the Islam). It is the symbol of the 21st century, since at the beginning of it we will have to deal with this reunion – or go under in an apocalyptic catastrophe.

Why the Star of David on the Yellow Badge?

Following is my note to the article about the Yellow Badge in Wikipedia

This entry doesn’t explain why the Nazis designed the yellow badge in the shape of a Star of David and not in any other shape. It also doesn’t describe who decided to design the yellow badge, where and when.
To fill these gaps see: “Under the Nazis the term "yellow badge" first appeared in Robert Weltsch's article "Tragt ihn mit Stolz, den gelben Fleck" ("Wear the Yellow Badge with Pride"), published in the Judische Rundschau on April 4, 1933, in reaction to the anti - Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933. At that point no official Jewish sign was in existence and there were no plans to introduce such a sign. Weltsch was apparently referring to the slanderous and abusive inscriptions painted on the windows of Jewish - owned stores and businesses in "Operation Boycott" of April 1, and the relapse to medieval times that it signified.
The proposal to impose a distinctive mark on the Jews was first made by Reinhard Heydrich at a meeting held in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogrom, in November 1938.