SELECTED REFORM RESPONSA
The six-pointed star was rarely used by the early Jewish community. It is found carved on a stone in the Capernaum synagogue and also on a single tombstone in Tarentum , Italy , that dates from the third century. Later Kabbalists used it, probably borrowing it from the Templars (Ludwig Blau, “Magen David, ” Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 8, p. 252). It is also found in some nonKabbalistic medieval manuscripts. None of these usages, however, was widespread.
A Jewish flag is mentioned for the first time during the rule of Charles IV of Hungary, who prescribed in 1354 that the Jews of Prague use a red flag with David's and Solomon’s seal. Also, in the fifteenth century, the Jews of that city met King Matthias with a red flag featuring two golden six-pointed stars and two five-pointed stars. Aside from this, we have no record of any Jewish community using a flag, and, of course, the six-pointed star now so commonly seen was rarely used as a Jewish symbol before the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Then, the newly emancipated Jewish community wanted an easily recognizable symbol akin to that of Christianity and so adopted the six-pointed star, which was then used frequently on books, synagogues, cemeteries, tombstones, and so on. The star soon became recognized as a sign of Judaism : by 1799 it was already used in anti-Semitic literature. In 1822 the Rothschilds used it for their coat of arms, and in 1897 the Zionist Congress in Basel adopted it as its symbol. Subsequently, the State of Israel used it in its national flag, although the official symbol of Israel is the Menorah . Naturally, all of us also remember the times when we were forced to use the six-pointed star on badges that identified us to hostile neighbors.