Star of David

This article is about the hexagram as a Jewish symbol. For other uses, see Hexagram.
"Jewish Star" redirects here. For other uses, see The Jewish Star (disambiguation).
"Magen David" redirects here. For the halakhic commentator, see David HaLevi Segal.

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

The Star of David (Hebrew: מָגֵן דָּוִד, romanized: Magen 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.


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  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).