A star is worn
By Dea Hadar
Dangling from belly buttons, earlobes and necklaces, tattooed on private parts and featured boldly on clothing, the six-pointed Star of David is a best-seller these days
haaretzdaily.com
"Whoever has a Star of David, raise your hand!" the rapper Subliminal shouts to the perspiring crowd. The dense mass of youngsters obediently wave their Stars of David, refracting the light back to the stage. Subliminal (Kobi Shimoni) skips from one side of the makeshift stage to the other. This is the yard of the Gymnasia Realit high school in Rishon Letzion; the performance took place last Wednesday as the culmination of a day devoted to the effort to eradicate drunken driving. He wore red hip-hop garb and had a thick chain around his neck from which hung a clumsy Star of David - or magen David in Hebrew, meaning "shield of David." Next to him was his partner, "the Shadow" (Yoav Eliasi); behind him, the deejay's space (manned by Ami Yehezkel) is draped with the Israeli flag.
"My enemies are united, they want to annihilate me, we are nursing and arming those who hate us - enough!" he declaims-sings to the students who chant the ultranationalist lyrics word for word. Then they sing the chorus of "Divide and Rule": "Together we'll survive, alone we'll fall."
One of those flashing his Star of David is Uri, a 16-year-old student in the school. He was one of the first 5,000 people to buy the latest CD released by the rapper, in August. Attached to the disc was a Star of David with the same kind of chain that soldiers use for their army dog-tags. Now Uri is waving his in the air.
"For me, the Star of David is not some passing fashion - it symbolizes love for the state, and faith, and Zionism," says the teenager, whose bleached-blond hair is saturated with jell. "I will wear this for always."
Another flash from a Star of David emanates from the direction of Shiran Sultan, 17, who recently bought her large, silver-plated pendant in Jerusalem. "This Star of David is everything for me. I feel a tremendous closeness to it," she says, kissing it and pressing it against her chest. "I know that everyone is wearing these now. For most of them, it's a beauty thing, but for me it's Judaism. And it brings me luck. Everything that happens to me is thanks to this Star of David. It will be on me for all time, even when it is not in fashion anymore. Even in another 70 years, I will still wear it."
In the meantime, on the stage, Subliminal forges ahead relentlessly. "I won't give in today, won't ever give in, with a Star of David until my last day."
Spirituality and Zionism
The universe of Stars of David unleashed by Subliminal in Rishon Letzion is only a tiny fraction of the vast galaxies of these objects that are now swirling across Israel. It's not difficult to find signs that the Star of David trend is at its height. The six-pointed symbol is the main attraction at jewelry stands in the street, is a best-seller in prestige shops, appears on jeans, underwear, socks, posters, shoelaces and is being spray-painted on buildings. People are walking around with a Star of David tied around their neck, hanging from an earlobe, dangling from their belly buttons and tattooed on intimate areas of their body. At club parties, Stars of David are filled with a liquid that glows in the dark. On Tel Aviv's trendy Sheinkin Street, the stores are filled with colorful, kitsch collections of Star of David accessories that prove that when Zionism and fashion converge, there is no limit to bad taste.
About a month ago, Orna Banai, as her alter-ego Limor, wore just such a large pendant on the popular Channel Two show "Only in Israel" and declared (in jest) that she was going to run for the Knesset. People who want to show that they are in fashion wear a Star of David, and local designers are arguing about who came up with the idea. Merchants say that the demand for the national emblem is constantly growing, like the size of the objects themselves.
"In the past few months, the Star of David has entered the fashion scene very powerfully," says Hezi Asis, the manager of Pink on Sheinkin Street. He, too, wears the symbol around his neck and insists that he will never remove it. Every two weeks, his stock of them runs out, he says.
"Children and parents come together to buy them. I also have earrings with the Stars and Stripes, but the Star of David is the big seller these days. I would say that people are connecting with it in a mood of spirituality and Zionism, because we are in a state of war. For some people it may be a passing trend, but not for me. I also think that for a lot of others, it symbolizes love for this country and not giving up anything. At last the nation is wising up."
"Unfortunately, it has reached us, too, and it's absolutely shocking," says Shai, a young man with hair in the form of an eruption of thorns, and gloves on his hands: He works at Dragon Tattoo, which, as its name suggests, provides tattooing and piercing services. Employees there say that in the past few months, they have had at least one client a week who has asked for a Star of David tattoo.
"A lot of combat soldiers ask for it," says Motti Gal, a tattooist. "Most people want a standard Star of David, but there are some who want to add a little interest in the form of a dove, or flowers, or Japanese letters, or initials. A while back, two brothers and a sister came in to have the same Star of David done on the hand. Everyone is trying to do the patriotic thing, but it's not our symbol. We stole it. It's a shame and disgrace."
Man and his symbols
How did the Star of David - which, until not so long ago, had a stodgy and slightly embarrassing image - turn into the essence of trendiness today? With everyone, from Subliminal to fashion designer Tovaleh Hassin to Oz Agbaba from Holon, who had a Star of David tattooed on his crotch six years ago ("the girls like it," he smiles slyly), insisting that his Star of David is the original, it's difficult to determine who the first Zionist of the current wave really was. According to Benny Padani, from the prestige chain of jewelry stores bearing his name, the current flood of national symbols is simply a fashion wave imported from overseas.
"In the past few years, the crucifix has become a very `in' adornment," he explains. "It is not perceived as a religious symbol but as an aesthetic statement. The Star of David symbol has also become very fashionable, and many non-Jews all over the world are wearing it."
He has expanded the selection of gilded pendants in his stores, which cost between NIS 1,000 and NIS 4,000. But even if some people treat the Star of David as an item of current - and passing - fashion, many others wear it as a symbol of defiance in the face of Palestinian terrorism.
"Two years ago, hardly anyone wore a Star of David," says Shulamit Daos, 21, of Moshav Ahiezer, who is looking for a chain for the Star of David she recently found in storage in her home. "Now, because of the situation, it has become a hit. It generates unity. For me, the Star of David symbolizes that I am Jewish and that I am proud of my country. It is our symbol."
According to Prof. Moshe Zimmermann, head of the Department of General History in Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Star of David fashion can be seen as another indication of the Americanization of Israeli culture. It is, he says, a kind of local processing of the eruption of commercialized patriotism that struck the United States after 9/11. At the same time, Zimmermann also views the phenomenon as an expression of the distress in which Israel finds itself.
"The more we lose the battle against the Palestinians, the more people feel a need to cling to symbols," he says. "Enfeeblement brings an attachment to symbols, which become a substitute for any real achievement. In the past we have already seen signs of this trend among the settlers - the Israeli flag they carry has become larger and larger in order to show how successful we are. It is a reaction of despair to the situation."
Adds Zimmermann: "It is not difficult to recall another symbol that had great graphic power - the swastika - which the Germans cultivated and imbued with content. That symbol gave the Germans a feeling of partnership and success, a feeling of `we are really something.' To this day it is in great use. The moment a group feels distress, it draws closer to its system of symbols."
The source of the Star of David - the symbol, not the fashion - is not clear. It is known that in the past, this symbol, which consists of two triangles superimposed on each other, bore a magic meaning and was used as a decoration on amulets and graves in the Near East and India. The Encyclopedia Hebraica relates that the Star of David appears as a decoration without any religious or national meaning in synagogues in Galilee in the second and third centuries B.C.E.
"There are all kinds of stars, with five, six, seven or eight sides," Zimmermann notes. "The six-pointed star is not rare. Many different nations in many different places used it. The guild of beer-makers in Hamburg, for example, has used the Star of David as its symbol since the Middle Ages."
Over the years, Jewish communities in various locales adopted the symbol. However, it was only in the 19th century, after its use in synagogues and on headstones spread, that its status as the Jewish symbol par excellence was entrenched. In 1897, the leaders of the Zionist movement chose the Star of David as the symbol that would adorn the movement's flag, which later became the Israeli flag.
Zimmermann: "That form had a very clear association with Judaism. Therefore, when the Zionist movement, and later the Nazi movement, looked for something to symbolize the Jews, they came up with the star. Simple geometric symbols have a powerful effect. The Christians have a cross, the communists have a pentagram, the Muslims have a crescent, and the Jews also got a star of their own and vested it with meaning. The source of such symbols is not always clear."
The folkloristic belief that the symbol appeared on King David's shield is not based on historical fact. "It was an act of genius to call the symbol the `magen David,'" Zimmermann observes. "When people try to imbue an abstract symbol with historical content, they invent a story to stand behind it. This story was invented."
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