Today the Star of David is the uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized Jew­ish sym­bol but was that always the case? In this fas­ci­nat­ing work that includes dozens of full col­or pho­tographs Dr. Nor­man explores the use of the hexa­gram through its use in Judaism, Chris­tian­i­ty, and Islam as well as in Bud­dhism and East­ern philoso­phies. What was it about the hexa­gram that made it so attrac­tive in mul­ti­ple faith tra­di­tions? He explains that the ear­li­est doc­u­ment­ed use of the hexa­gram is in Caper­naum in the third cen­tu­ry, and was dis­played promi­nent­ly in Prague in the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, but it did not become the defin­ing sym­bol of Judaism until the 1930s, when Nazis forced the Jews to wear a yel­low hexa­gram to indi­cate their Jew­ish­ness. The Star took on new mean­ing at that point, and then when it was adorned on the flag of the State of Israel in 1948, it took its place as one of the great reli­gious symbols.