Star of David

Tekhelet colored Star of David, as depicted on the flag of Israel.

The Star of David (Hebrew: מָגֵן דָּוִד, romanizedMagen David, lit.'Shield of David')[a] is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism.[1] Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles.

The Star of David featured in the oldest complete copy of the Masoretic text.

A derivation of the seal of Solomon was used for decorative and mystical purposes by Muslims and Kabbalistic Jews. The hexagram appears occasionally in Jewish contexts since antiquity as a decorative motif, such as a stone bearing a hexagram from the arch of the 3rd–4th century Khirbet Shura synagogue. A hexagram found in a religious context can be seen in a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible from 11th-century Cairo.

Its association as a distinctive symbol for the Jewish people and their religion dates to 17th-century Prague. In the 19th century, the symbol began to be widely used by the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, ultimately coming to represent Jewish identity or religious beliefs.[2][3] It became representative of Zionism after it was chosen as the central symbol for a Jewish national flag at the First Zionist Congress in 1897.[4]

By the end of World War I, it was an internationally accepted symbol for the Jewish people, used on the gravestones of fallen Jewish soldiers.[5]

Today, the star is the central symbol on the national flag of the State of Israel.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ Jacob Newman; Gabriel Sivan; Avner Tomaschoff (1980). Judaism A–Z. World Zionist Organization. p. 116.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Oxf was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "The Flag and the Emblem" (MFA).
  4. ^ "The Flag and the Emblem" (MFA). "The Star of David became the emblem of Zionist Jews everywhere. Non-Jews regarded it as representing not only the Zionist current in Judaism, but Jewry as a whole."
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Reuveni2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).