Davidic Ancestry: Beyond the Begats

Star of David

Encyclopedia Britannica

Star of David, Hebrew Magen David (“Shield of David”), Magen also spelled Mogen, Jewish symbol composed of two overlaid equilateral triangles that form a six-pointed star. It appears on synagogues, Jewish tombstones, and the flag of the State of Israel. The symbol—which historically was not limited to use by Jews—originated in antiquity, when, side by side with the five-pointed star, it served as a magical sign or as a decoration. In the Middle Ages the Star of David appeared with greater frequency among Jews but did not assume any special religious significance; it is found as well on some medieval cathedrals. The term Magen David, which in Jewish liturgy signifies God as the protector (shield) of David, gained currency among medieval Jewish mystics, who attached magical powers to King David’s shield just as earlier (non-Jewish) magical traditions had referred to the five-pointed star as the “seal of Solomon.” Kabbalists popularized the use of the symbol as a protection against evil spirits. The Jewish community of Prague was the first to use the Star of David as its official symbol, and from the 17th century on the six-pointed star became the official seal of many Jewish communities and a general sign of Judaism, though it has no biblical or Talmudic authority. The star was almost universally adopted by Jews in the 19th-century as a striking and simple emblem of Judaism in imitation of the cross of Christianity. The yellow badge that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe invested the Star of David with a symbolism indicating martyrdom and heroism.

Dovid, Melech Yisrael: 4 Facts about This Iconic Jewish Song

Dr. Yvette Alt Miller

The words David Melech Yisrael Chai Vikayam (David, King of Israel, Lives Forever) were first declared by the great Jewish sage Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi in the 2nd Century CE. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, a court of rabbis who guided Jewish life in the land of Israel. One of the Sanhedrin’s jobs was tracking the waxing and waning of the moon in the sky. When the first new crescent moon reappeared in the sky, the Sanhedrin would call witnesses who’d seen the moon reemerge, then declare that a new Jewish month had begun.

The moon’s fluctuating brightness in the night sky reminded Rabbi Yehuda of the ever-shifting fortunes of the Jewish people. He personally witnessed the oppression and humiliation of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, persecuted by their cruel Roman overlords. Yet instead of giving into despair, Rabbi Yehuda reminded himself that just as the moon waxes and wanes, so too does the glory of the Jewish people. The kings of Israel who were descended from David might have seemed to be no more, but Rabbi Yehuda had faith that one day their glory would return. Thus, he came up with an unusual way to let people know a new moon had reappeared:

“Rabbi Yehuda Nanasi once said to Rabbi Hiyya (another member of the Sanhedrin): Go to a place called Ein Tav and sanctify the New Moon there, and send me a sign that you have sanctified it. The sign is: Dovid Melech Yisroel Chai Vikayam (Talmud Rosh Hashanah 25a).

This declaration gave the Jewish people hope: even when the glory of the House of David seems to disappear from the world, we have faith that one day his kingdom will reemerge.

David Melech Yisrael Chai Vikayam has become part of the monthly “Kiddush Levanah” (Sanctification of the New Moon) service, said by Jews around the world each month when the first crescent of the reappearing New Moon appears in the night sky.

Zionist Anthem

The song David Melech Yisrael Chai Vikayam became a popular song with early Zionists whose activities rebuilding Jewish life in the Land of Israel seemed to fulfill the prophecy of the song, that one day the glory of King David’s life and legacy would begin to be rebuilt.

On November 29, 1947, the nations of the world, meeting in the United Nations, voted on whether or not to establish a modern Jewish state in the ancient land of Israel. One by one, the nations of the world cast their votes. In the end, thirteen countries voted against, ten abstained, and thirty-three voted in favor of allowing Jews to create a Jewish homeland once again. In Israel, reaction to the news was rapturous. Crowds poured into the streets, singing and dancing. One of the songs that reverberated through the land was David Melech Yisrael.

Blessing After Haftarah Reading #4

Samcheinu Adonai Eloheinu b’Eliyahu hanavi avdekha
uvmalkhut beit David m’shichekha.
Bimhera yavo v’yageillibenu, al kis-o lo yeshev zar
v’lo yinchalu od acherim et k’vodo,
ki v’shem kod-sh’khanishbata lo shelo yikhbeh nero l’olam va-ed.
Barukh ata adonai magen David.

Cause us to rejoice Adonai in Your servant Elijah the prophet, and in the kingdom of the House of David Your anointed one… may he come speedily and cause our heart to exult. No outsider shall ever usurp his throne, nor shall any others inherit his glory, for by Your holy Name did You promise him that his lamp would never be extinguished. Blessed are You, Adonai, shield of David.

Birkat HaMazon (Grace After Meals)

Ra-cheim A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu al Yis-ra-eil a-me-cha,
v'al Y'ru-sha-la-yim i-re-cha,
v'al Tsi-yon mish-kan k'vo-de-cha,
v'al mal-chut beit Da-vid m'shi-che-cha,
v'al ha-ba-yit ha-ga-dol v'ha-ka-dosh she-nik-ra shim-cha a-lav...

Have mercy, Lord our God, upon Israel Your people, upon Jerusalem Your city, upon Zion the abode of Your glory, upon the kingship of the house of David Your anointed, and upon the great and holy House over which Your Name was proclaimed.

Book of Ruth: Recasting David’s Foreign Origins

Dr. Yael Avrahami

https://www.thetorah.com/article/book-of-ruth-recasting-davids-foreign-origin

Moses is saved from the Nile, Samuel is born to a barren woman, but where is David’s birth story? Abraham is introduced with a genealogy, King Saul is introduces with a genealogy, but, other than naming his father (Jesse), David’s genealogy is missing from the Book of Samuel, a book with more than 40 chapters dedicated to David’s life. The Bible tells us the names of the mothers of all kings in the Davidic dynasty but one – David’s mother is not mentioned.

Admittedly, no hard and fast rule exists that biblical heroes need to come with birth stories (neither Joshua nor Abraham have one) or genealogies. Nevertheless, such lack of information on David, the King of Israel, the founder of the Messianic dynasty, really calls for an interpretation (אומר דורשני).

Josephus' Portrait of David

Louis Feldman, Hebrew Union College Annual , 1989, Vol. 60 (1989), pp. 129-174

n. 6

There can be no doubt that the name of David was by Josephus' time intimately connected with the Messianic age. Already the prophet Hosea (3:5) declares that "afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king." The very fact that Matthew (1:1-17) and Luke (3:23-38), contemporaries of Josephus, trace the ancestry of Jesus qua Messiah back to David is a strong indication that such a genealogy was expected for a Messiah as a matter of course by this time. Indeed, the Messianic concept is almost never mentioned without adding a reference to the kingdom of the house of David, so that the appellative "son of David" or even David himself becomes almost the personal name of the Messiah. We may call attention, in particular, to the words of Rabbi Judah the Prince (Rosh Hashanah 25a) at the end of the second century, presumably reflecting an older and popular tradition: David, King of Israel, is alive and vigorous."

In contrast to this downgrading of David's importance, we may note that Philo, who generally has very little to say about the books of the Bible beyond the Pentateuch, elevates him, referring to him not merely as one of the disciples of Moses and of his companions--words which, as Erwin R. Goodenough {Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 1964, 94) has noted, Philo commonly uses in an allegorical sense--but as a member of the inner circle of Moses and hence a member of the mystic guild, since the terms is also found, in particular, with reference to devotees of Dionysus in their revels. Indeed, for Philo, David in his Psalms is said to have been moved to an ecstasy of heavenly and divine love, while his whole mind was snatched up in holy frenzy (madness', a term used of the Bacchic Maenads, Euripides, Bacchae 665) by a Divine possession while he found his gladness in God alone.

In even greater contrast to Josephus, the rabbis elevated David to the point where Rabbi Akiva, a younger contemporary of Josephus (Sanhedrin 38b) declares that on the Day of Judgment David will sit on a throne adjacent to that of God. Even his pupil Yose ben Halafta protested, saying, "Akiva, how long will you profane the Schechinah?" in allusion to the fact that Akiva had done so by placing a human being side by side with God. A late aggadah (Beth Ha-midrash [ed. Jellinek] 5.167-168), based upon an older tradition, has a scenario wherein on the Day of Judgment, at a great banquet prepared by God for the righteous, God offers the wine cup for the recitation of grace successively to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua, each of whom declares himself unworthy of the honor because of sins which he has committed. Finally, God turns to David, who accepts the honor; hence, we see that eschatologically at least, David, despite his cruelty toward the Moabites and the Ammonites (2 Samuel 12:31), whom he made to pass through brick-kilns and under saws and axes of iron, and toward the sons of Rizpah, whom he delivered to the Gibeonites to be hanged (2 Samuel 21:9), and, of course, despite the affair with Bathsheba of course, the affair with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 2-27), appears to occupy a position superior to that of Moses himself. Indeed, in the Talmud (Yoma 22b), Rabbi Huna (third century) points out that Saul sinned only once, whereas David sinned twice (in being responsible for the death of Uriah and in taking a census), and according to the third century Rav, even a third time (in listening to the evil reports of Ziba against Mephibosheth) — yet these sins did not cause his downfall.

King David Genes

Nadine Epstein, Moment Magazine March-April 2012

Three thousand years ago, tradition says the prophet Samuel anointed a lowly shepherd named David king of Israel. A warrior who could defeat Goliath and write love psalms, David managed to pull the quarreling Jewish tribes together into one nation and then ruled a kingdom that today remains the heart of Jewish claims to the land of Israel. Living from approximately 1040 to 970 BCE, he had at least one daughter and 22 sons, and amassed enough wealth and power for one of those sons, Solomon, to build the Temple in Jerusalem.

Male descendants of King David ruled Israel until the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem in 597 BCE, and Jews scattered. Some managed to stay in Palestine, others fled to Egypt, but the victorious Babylonians took most of the nesi’im—the princes of the Davidic line—to Babylon. There, the King David line continued: Princes of the House of David were appointed by religious leaders to govern the Jewish community. This person was called Rosh ha’gola, which translates as “head of the exile” or exilarch. Fraught with behind-the-scenes political infighting, the position survived the Arab conquest of Baghdad but came to an end when the last exilarch, Hezekiah, was imprisoned and tortured to death in 1040 CE.

Descendants of the exilarchs and other nesi’im fanned out across Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt and the Mediterranean basin in search of new lands in which to practice their faith. Some stayed in Spain, Portugal and Italy, and from there migrated to Europe. Like other Jews, they followed varying routes to modernity, separating into Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi and other groups. Some families, especially rabbinic ones, kept careful track of their pedigrees, passing the tradition of royal descent from generation to generation... Often related through marriage and with intertwining family trees, they generally trace their lineages to great 18th and 19th century rabbis such as the Ba’al Shem Tov, Rebbe Nachman, the first Lubavitcher rebbe and Saadya, the Gaon of Vilna, or further back to 16th century luminaries such as the Maharshal in Lithuania (Shlomo Luria) and the Maharal of Prague (Judah Loew ben Bezalel)...

So how do we know that these great rabbis of Eastern Europe were descended from King David? Tradition has it that they are all descended from the royal house through Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki, known as Rashi, the great biblical commentator born in 1040 in the French city of Troyes...The question of whether the 1,000-year connection between Rashi and King David can be verified is a matter of contention. According to the late David Einsiedler, who wrote in the scholarly journal, Avotaynu: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, “Careful examination of all available sources leads to the inescapable conclusion that there is no complete, reliable and positive proof of claims of descent from King David, whether via Rashi, Judah Loew the Elder, or any of the other families claimed. There are at present no known sources that could fill the gaps or set the record straight. It is possible that there may be actual descendants somewhere, but at present, no one can produce sufficient and unquestionable proof of this claim.”

...

Rashi is not the only way for a family to link itself to King David. Sephardi families usually trace their lineage through the line of exilarchs and at least two major ones trace their line back to the last exilarch.

After the last exilarch, Hezekiah, was killed in 1040 CE—the same year that Rashi was born—his two grown sons, Yitzhak and David, fled Baghdad with their families to Granada, Spain, then a vibrant center of Judaic life with a Jewish grand vizier. Each son became the patriarch of a family that would become highly prominent in the diaspora.,,In 1066 the Jewish grand vizier of Granada was assassinated and the Shaltiel family headed north to Spain and Portugal. There, many family members flourished, while others traveled east to Salonika and Italy. Still others intermarried for several generations with the Jewish kings of Narbonne, an independent city-state founded by Charlemagne that stretched north from Barcelona to Aquitaine and was a major hub of Jewish scholarship. Narbonne’s ruling families are said to be descended from Natronai, a former exhilarch in Baghdad who had been force to flee after losing political support.

Chaim Luria estimates that there are 80 million people who are related to King David today. These include the royal families of England and Europe, who claim to be the descendants of the Jewish kings of Narbonne, who are said to have intermarried with Europe’s aristocracy, infusing the nobility of France, Flanders, Scotland and England with Davidic blood. Continents away, the Imperial Solomonic Dynasty of Ethiopia claimed Davidic descent through the Queen of Sheba.