The Star of David family of fonts,
and the triangular Sta'm font
the Ashuri font, the font used in Mesopotamia. The Ashuri font is written horizontally and the letters were not designed well geometrically, compared to the Latin font or modern Hebrew fonts.
Abraham came to the Land of Kna'an in approximately the year 1750 B.C.E. and brought with him The Ashuri font is used today on the coins of the Bank of Israel, and the official documents of the Samaritans, who number less than 2000 people throughout the world.
The Latin font was developed about 280 B.C.E., and has remained almost unchanged since that day. The font is written horizontally, primarily with straight lines, and it basic letter is the letter “O”, the basis for the letters C, G, Q, and indirectly for the letters B, P, R, and S. The number of letters in this alphabet is between 26 and 30.
The Romans, who used the Latin font, conquered Judea in 63 B.C.E. militarily, but only partially culturally. The destruction of the Temple took place in 70 C.E. and in the year 117 C.E. the Romans left the land of Yehuda.
At that time there were Jewish populations in various settlements around the Mediterranean (as, for example, in the southwest of the city of Rome, by the sea was a settlement Ostia, and in Tunis the island of Djerba). Jewish slaves who had been exiled from the Judea to north and central Europe became “Ashkenazim”, and “Sefaradim” in western Europe. Europe, which had a strong Roman culture, also included a small element of Hebrew culture.
The Roman culture disintegrated in Europe, and Christianity was strengthened as an alternative. On January 1, 800 C.E., the Christian Church crowned Charlemagne as emperor. He strengthened the Church financially, and the Church developed, among others, both the fine arts and manuscripts. The basic font in Europe was Latin.
Between 63 B.C.E. and 9 C.E., the Hebrew culture turned inward (as a reaction to the outside European culture), and it gradually developed the Hebrew font which is used today. In order to distinguish the Hebrew from the Latin, the Hebrew font was based on the rectangle as in the letter ם - the final letter mem. The Hebrew font contains 30 letters, and in addition has diacritical marks to express vowels. The Hebrew font contains very few diagonal lines.
The Star of David appears for the first time in Jerusalem in 100 B.C.E., without any link to the Hebrew culture. It gradually entered into the Hebrew culture as a symbol.
When the Jews were expelled from Vienna in 1700, it became the symbol of the Jew, as opposed to the cross - the symbol of the Christian. The Star of David is not only as a Jewish symbol but by various other cultures as well, and not every Jewish community identifies with it.
The basic form of the Hebrew letter is a rectangular. The horizontal lines are always thicker than the vertical ones, as opposed to Gothic script, where the vertical lines are thicker. Of the Hebrew letters, 19 are what might call “top-heavy,” with the upper part emphasized, while only 5 are “bottom-heavy,” with the lower part emphasized.
One of the ways in which Hebrew fonts are classified is by the ratio between the top line of the letters and the height of the letters. This ratio, for the Ashkenazic font is 1 to 3.5, for the Sefaradic font it is 1 to 4, and for the Sta'm font - the most ornate - it is 1 to 3. Up to the year 1000, Hebrew had no system for indicating vowels. About that time, the diacritical marks were introduced to indicate vowels. As those preparing Hebrew manuscripts were primarily involved in trying to make the fonts ornate, they paid very little attention - if at all - to the diacritical marks.
From the end of the 19th century, when Jews began to return to the Land of Israel, the Bezalel Art Academy was founded, and as part of the renaissance of the Return to Zion, a new font, Sta'm Betzalel, was developed. This is the most decorative font in Hebrew.
In 1982, I began my work in Israel as an architect and for the first twelve years I worked primarily in pencil. Slowly I began to develop my own font. This font has been used in designing this Hagadah, but the design has been instrumental in modifying the font.
The fonts used in this Hagadah are my Star of David font and the Triangular Sta'm font, the latter a combination of the Star of David and the Sta'm Betzalel fonts.
The Star of David font family is based on two forms: a) two triangles with a common vertex, similar to an X with lines on the top and bottom; b) an inverted triangle. In my font, the ratio is between 1 to 4.3 and 1 to 6. The lines are much thicker, and this can present a problem when the Dagesh - the dot in the middle of a letter used to indicate that the letter is doubled - must fit into a particular letter, specifically the letters mem and shin. As a compromise, these letters are stretched where there is need for a dagesh.
In the case of the letter lamed and the alef where the ratio is between 1 to 4.3 an d 1 to 6, the top left corner is always vertical. In all the other letters, the lines are at a 30 degree angle.
The diacritical marks (nikkud) can take any one of four different forms, depending on the context:
1) poetry, as in Ozi V'zimrat Yah, where the marks are diagonal ellipses, based on the musical notes;
2) slavery, where the marks are rectangular, reminiscent of the bricks when the Jews were slaves;
3) food-related, where the marks are based on the rhombus, reminiscent of grains of wheat;
4) All others are round - in various sizes and sometimes filled and other times hollow.
The Triangular Sta'm font:
This font was meant to be used for contemplative passages. For design reasons I did not use it as originally planned, and reserved it for the Introduction. In all the letters alef, gimmel, lammed, ayin, peh, peh suffix, tzaddi, tzaddi suffix and shin the rhombus is emphasized. In addition, the letter mem “hangs,” without the normal base of this letter.
Visual Description
1) The Star of David font, basic form.
2) The Star of David font, the figures of the letters.
3) The Star of David font, the figures of the diacritical marks.
4) The Triangular Stam font.