For Israel: PMS 300 blue. The vertical flag is simply the horizontal version turned
90 degrees clockwise.
Ian Sumner, 11 October 2012
Origins of the Colours and the Stripes
The color blue in the flag of Israel derives from the ancient dye tekhelet, mentioned many times in the bible (Numbers 15:37-39). This color was used to dye a thread of the ritual fringes, or tzitzit that all Jewish males are commanded to wear, and which are tied to the corners of the ritual garment, the tallit. This is a specific color, derived from the dye produced by the snail Murex trunculus, known in Hebrew as the hilazon. This is the same dye known historically as Tyrian purple. The confusion of shades comes from the fact (rediscovered recently) that when wool dyed with the dye from Murex was exposed to sunlight, the dye became a bright blue, but when the dyed wool was hidden from light, the color produced was that of royal purple. This change is due to the exposure of the compound dibromoindigo (purple) to ultraviolet light, producing the compound indigo (blue, chemically identical to the vegetable dye). This can be an explanation why some Israeli flags (in the past) were almost colored purple, while others are sky blue – these two colors were seen as deriving from the same natural source (the Hebrew word argaman was used for the purple shade). This color is of immense symbolic importance in Judaism and was used in many articles in the Temple in Jerusalem as well, including the outer robe of the high priest. An excellent discussion about the symbolism and ritual importance of this specific blue dye in Judaism can be found at this website [including]:
"And the Rabbis said: Why does the Torah enjoin us regarding tekhelet? Because tekhelet resembles sapphire, and the Tablets were of sapphire, to tell you that so long as the people of Yisrael gaze upon this tekhelet they are reminded of that which is inscribed on the Tablets and they fulfill it, and so it is written, 'And you shall see it and remember.'"
(Mishnat Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 14).In ancient times purple and blue dyes derived from snails were so rare and sought after that they were literally worth their weight in gold. These precious dyes colored the robes of the kings and princes of Media, Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome. To wear them was to be identified with royalty.
Ted Kandell, 6 December 2001
It is frequently said that the Israeli flag is designed to resemble a Jewish prayer shawl (tallit), which is white with stripes (no Shield of David – that is a flag-only feature). However, the tallit (and, occasionally, the smaller tallit katan) usually has black, not blue, stripes, and therein lies a tale.
The fringes, as worn in antiquity (on many garments, not just prayer shawls – any four-cornered garment must have them, and garments of that kind [e.g. togas] were more widely worn back then; now, without such garments, the prayer shawls are specially made) and again by many today, are both white and blue, with the white, in some opinions, outnumbering the blue. It is said that when the source and process of dying was lost about 1500 years ago, and Jews were left with only white threads (a practice anticipated and approved of by the Talmud, the corpus of Jewish law, about three hundred years earlier), they began to incorporate colored stripes into their garments to commemorate the lost blue threads (with white still predominating, as it may have on the threads themselves, leaving colored stripes on a white garment). The color here was not important, as it was only custom – there are all-white shawls, white-on-white stripes, rainbow stripes, and many others. Black came to predominate, at least in Europe. This may be because black dye was cheapest, or because of a misreading of Maimonides' law code – he uses a word which could mean either "dark" or "black" to describe the original, fringe-dye. He obviously means "dark," as in "dark blue," as the fact that it was blue was well known (see below), and he was limiting it (other opinions range from reddish or purplish blue all the way to greenish blue or green). However, some read this as "black" and dyed their stripes accordingly.
Others, however, especially in Africa and Asia, had their stripes the original blue. I have even heard an opinion that this was an ancient practice, dating to when dyed fringes were worn – the shawl was dyed to match the threads, white with some blue (stripes). With the blue fringes lost, some changed the stripes to black, so it would only be a commemeration. The Rev. Ezra Stiles of Yale University in the 18th Century reports that Rabbi Isaac Carigal, an emmissary from Turkey and Israel, wore blue stripes on his tallit, by the way.
I imagine the founding Zionists prefered blue to black, for both historical as well as aesthetic reasons, and, although the story runs that a European proposed the pattern pointing to his prayer shawl, they probably chose the African/Asian colors immediately.
A page on the Israeli Foreign Ministry's site claims that the Shield of David, historically a secular symbol, was added to offset the religious imagery of the Tallit, with something similar happening to the State arms (olive branches [secular, perhaps] added to a menorah [religious]). An interesting theory.
And why blue? The Talmud explains that it is meant to evoke the sea, both in color as well as in source (a sea snail). The sea's color reminds us of the heavens' color (blue), and, of course, heaven reminds us of God.
One last story. During World War II, playwright Ben Hecht
wrote A Flag is Born, a play alerting the world to the
Holocaust. In it, an old Jewish couple, escaping from Europe,
gives a tallit to a young Jew right before they die. The young
man turns the tallit into a flag and goes off to fight for a
Jewish state – which happens to fictionalize an actual
event, described above.
Nathan Lamm, 7 December 2001
Just for the record, A Flag is Born was actually
conceived and written after World War Two, according to
the American
Jewish Historical Society.
Santiago Dotor, 7 December 2001
I had been told as a youth that many shawls used black instead
of blue in memory of the destruction of the Temple in the year
70. Is this legend or is there anything to it?
Al Kirsch, 7 December 2001
I have heard of this as well, but cannot find it in any
reference works I have checked. The presence of the stripes, and
their dark color, are definitely because of the blue dye of the
threads, but black is a bit unclear – it may be because of
the reason you wrote. A problem is that Judaism never really used
black for mourning. When white is used for purity (it is also
used for shrouds), its opposite is given as scarlet. A similar
claim, that Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox Jews wear black as a
sign of mourning for the Temple, fails for the same reasons
– it may be somber, but not really mourning. Of course,
black may have been used for mourning because surrounding
peoples, especially European, used it. This would explain why
European Jews use black, but not Sephardic Jews.
Nathan Lamm, 7 December 2001
Much about colours in Judaism, specifically with vexillologic
orientation, may be found in Ruder
1999.
Željko Heimer, 7 December 2001
I have more recently read that one possibility may be the
common classical-era (Greek, Roman etc.) practice of putting
designs on the edges of garments – this carried over to
Jewish religious garments as stripes.
Nathan Lamm, 17 May 2004
With regard to the colours in the tallit, this is
somewhat controversial, especially depending on whether you're
Orthodox or not. Originally, the blue used was called
tekhelet but the formula was lost a few hundred years ago. Since
the middle of the 19th century, there have been attempts to
discover what animal was used to make the colour and the process
to extract it. Some people claim to have rediscovered
it but this is still controversial. I understand that
there is a small firm in Israel that makes material it claims is
of the colour tekhelet. If you like to watch
pop archaeology, there have been a couple of episodes of the
Naked Archaeologist on cable television devoted to this
subject. The problem with using blue on the tallit is
that purists say it should not be used because you can't be sure
that it is tekhelet.
William E. Hitchins, 3 September 2007
There are two firm, from two different sources. Furthermore,
since the dye is handmade and depends on a variable source of
ultraviolet light (i.e., the Sun) to turn from purple to blue,
the shades can be different from set to set. I wear the blue dye
on both my "large" and "small" tallitot,
and have several of the latter, and the shade of dye is different
on each. Generally, a darkish blue.
Nathan Lamm, 4 September 2007
If you want to know about the blue used in tzitzit,
namely the colour know in Biblical sources as tekhelet, I
recommend the book by Zvi Ruder [rud99],
where he covers the story in details with all the historical
background and modern repercussions.
On the other hand, you may want to see my article [zhe06a] based on this book, that
sumarises it in this regard, but this is, alas, published in
Croatian only, so far: at <www.zoz.hr/2098_1.pdf>
and <www.zoz.hr/2099_web.pdf>).
However, it should be clear that the colour of tekhelet
is not meant to be in the talit - the shawl, but in the tzitzit,
the fringe that are attached in it. The talith itself
could be of any colour, and the stripes could be of any other (or
not at all present for that matter). The historical taliths (of
"modern era"), in fact, rarely used anything else
beside black for the stripes, while the modern taliths
are to be found in many different combinations including such
that uses stripes of "all the colours of the rainbow"
(see example at <www.jewishsource.com>).
As Zvi explains in his book, the connection between the colour tekhelet
and the colour of the stripes in the taliths must be
some kind of error, although it is firmly rooted in the
"mythical" memory of both Jews and Gentiles
There seems to be no evidence that there were any special taliths
or prayer shawls being in use in the period of the clasical
Jewish state and the Temple in Jereusalem - as there was no need
for it. The teliths seems to be "invention" of
post-Temple period - when the clothing ways also begun to change
so the need for special piece of rectangular clothing was needed
to fulfill the religious requirements.
For example the variety of taliths on the painting byx
Maurice Gottlieb "Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom
Kippur" 1878 at wikipedia.
Željko Heimer, 4 September 2007
By the late 19th Century, when the modern Israeli flag was
being designed, stripes had been a feature on tallitot
for centuries if not longer.
In Ashkenazic (Northern European) countries. There is
some evidence that (at least some) Sephardic (Southern
Europe/Mediterreanian) Jews wore blue stripes. For example, Rev.
Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University in the 1700's,
describes a Turkish Jewish friend as wearing a blue-striped
tallit. Furthermore, stripes are, by now, universal, even if only
white-on-white.
There have been suggestions that the stripes ultimately derive
from the stripes worn on the edges of Greek and Roman togas.
Nathan Lamm, 4 September 2007
The point is, that there is no religious requirement for the
stripes, as some may imply, and there is certainly no requirement
that these be blue. They may be blue, but may be of any other
colour (including white...) Also, the main part of the talith
itself is not necesserly white - there are rabbinic authorities
who clearly describe it being entirely of other colours. Of
course, such talith were and still are extremely rare
and probably just theoretic.
It seems that rabbinic literature does not "study"
stripes on the taliths, the main concern for them are
colours in the fringe (tzitzit) where tekhelet
thread should appear (and where today as a rule it does not, due
to the loss of the craft of preparing the exact blue dye).
Željko Heimer, 4 September 2007
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