I read the Sermon Rabbi Samuel M. Stahl wrote about the Star of David and there was the story about the Jewish Gang symbol: On August 1998 the board of Harrison Central High School in Gulfport Mississippi told fifteen-year-old student Ryan Green not to wear his Star of David since it might be interpreted as a gang symbol.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Broken Star of David
In Tsarskoe Selo (Pushkin), 20 miles south of St. Petersburg, Jewish sculptor Vadim Sidur (1924 - 1986) built a monument entitled " “The Formula of Sorrow”, to commemorate the deaths of 10,000 local Jews during the Nazi occupation. The monument is comprised of abstract letters “J” and “D” denoting the word Jude. A broken Star of David completes the monument.
A broken Star of David appears also in the architect Daniel Libeskind design of the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
Leningrad Codex
The Leningrad Codex contains sixteen decorative geometric patterns of medieval Jewish art. One of them, the cover page, shows a Star of David in a square while the square is in a circle. There are Hebrew verses from the Bible around the star and the square, and in the center of the Star there's a dedication of the book to the writer's teacher.
The Leningrad Codex is the oldest surviving complete copy of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, written by Shmuel ben Ya'akov in Egypt in 1008.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia entry: Leningrad Codex
Synonyms
The term Star of David has many synonyms and that's one of the obstacles on the way to collect information about it. These synonyms are sometimes relating to similar or even identical shapes in other cultures, which bear other meanings, but because of the similarity of the shapes people tend to label them with the same name. Life could have been easier if everybody used one term…
Magen David (Hebrew) or Mogen Dovid (Ashkenazi Hebrew) or Shield of David or David's Star or Jewish Star (Judenster, Yellow Patch) is a six-pointed star created from two equilateral triangles and is known as the symbol of Judaism.
Solomon's seal or Seal of Solomon was according to Jewish Islamic and Christian legends King Solomon's signet ring that gave him the power to command demons. It is in the shape of five pointed stars (pentagram) or six pointed stars.
Estoile is a six-pointed star with wavy rays. There are estoiles with eight points and others with four points like Cross estoile.
Mullet (or molet) is a six-pointed star with straight rays. In English it is heraldry with five straight points and in French it is heraldry with six points. Mullet of eight points is called octagram.
Hexagon in Greek means: having six angles; a polygon with six sides.
Hexagram is a six-pointed star formed by extending each of the sides of a regular hexagon to form two equilateral triangles.
Hexahedron is a polyhedron that has six faces (like a cube).
Chinese checkers is a board game for two to six people. Each player tries to jump his marbles from one point of a six-pointed star shaped board to the opposite point. It is not a Chinese game – it got its name in the United States to make it sound more exotic.
Shatkona (Yantra) is an Indian yoga "superposition of two triangles, one pointing upwards and the other downwards, forming a star with six points, also known as David's Star. This form symbolically represents the union of purusha and prakriti or Shiva-Shakti, without which there could be no creation".
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Flag Proposals
Santiago Dotor edited a web page about the Israeli flag proposals in 1948. I found there a few interesting things about Stars of David:
- Nissim Sabbah of Tel Aviv proposed two blue stripes, a white background, a Star of David in the middle and seven gold stars.
- Mordechai Nimtza-bi proposed in a book entitled The Flag 8 variations, designed by Zeljko Heimer, which were not accepted. All proposals included a Star of David.
- Oteh Walisch, graphic artist, proposed seven golden Stars of David.
- 164 people participated in a competition announced on 10 June 1948 by the committee for considering the flag question. These participants submitted 450 designs. The text of the Call for Proposals stated clearly that each proposal should include "Magen-David, or seven stars (gold or other color) [but] any other proposal or idea would be accepted for consideration as well"
The First Hexagram
Dr. Dan Gazit wrote (in Hebrew) that the Magen David is one of the variations on the motive of the rose, which was prevalent right after the invention of the pair of compasses. There are no such roses on the Nabateans' ceramics because they used free hand and not compasses for making them.
I think when Dr. Dan Gazit says Magen David he means Hexagram. Uri Ofir claims that the origin of the Jewish Magen David is from the Tabernacle, but that doesn't imply that there weren't hexagrams before that.
According to Greek mythology Perdix, the nephew of Didalus, invented the first pair of compasses. Anyhow compasses seem to be here since immemorial time, and it's hard to pinpoint the date people started to use them, as well as it’s hard to trace back the first Hexagram.
Peki'in
On the Israeli 100 NIS banknote there's a picture of the synagogue in Peki'in, and a view of this western Galilee village. Peki'in is a symbol of the conservation of the Jewish ember since there are a few Jews whose families never went to exile. Parts of this synagogue are two thousand years old and there's a Star of David on its walls.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
