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The Star of David: A Symbol That Means Everything—and Nothing

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JL;DR SUMMARY The Star of David, also known as the hexagram, carries a complex legacy as both a symbol of Jewish identity and a historical motif used in various cultures. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski.

  • At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself.
  • This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude.
  • Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from.
  • But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
  • And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.
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Tags

Jewish HistoryStar Of DavidJewish IdentityZionismKabbalahNazismSymbolismIsraeli FlagPrague Jewish Community

Places mentioned

Rome, Italy
"I was just looking at pictures from when I visited Rome 14 years ago for my bar mitzvah, let's say."
Prague, Prague, Hlavní mešto, Czechia
"As far as we can tell, the sort of like origin of it being sort of exclusively associated with Jewish identity starts in 1354 in Prague."
Vienna, Austria
"It's on the seal of the Jewish community of Vienna in 1655."
Budweis, Jihočeský, Czechia
"And it's on the synagogue in a Czech city called Budweis."
Germany
"the world thought we had moved on. We moved on from that, you know, like that was in the 17th and 18th century. It was, you know, used for, for segregation, for oppression. But with the emancipation of the Jews in Europe that had really faded and stopped."
This podcast episode was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 48284
Cairo Source ID 64
Retrieved 2025-04-04 05:30:37 UTC
Curated 2025-04-04 06:10:12 UTC