 Hi there and welcome back to my youtube channel this is Daniel Rosal and on this channel you can find videos about all things related to life in Israel and Jerusalem. Speaking of which last week I uploaded a video about the history of the flag of Jerusalem. Like several other cities in Israel Jerusalem has its very own municipal flag which can be seen flying outside the city hall and absolutely everywhere on Jerusalem day. It contains a line of Judah set against the backdrop of the western wall and with the national flag of Israel as its background. If you're really looking to up your flag trivia game I'll leave a link to that video in the description. Today though I wanted to talk a little bit about the flag of Israel and its history. Israel's national flag is arguably one of the more recognizable flags among those of world nations. It consists of two horizontal blue stripes with a star of David at its center. The exact shade of blue used in the national flag has a Pantone value of 286C. Its hexadecimal code is 0038B8 and in human terms it's a dark shade of blue. Since the advent of digital printing and because we live in the world of information it's customary now to define the exact colors used in national flags by digital values like these. However these precise shades of color typically aren't actually standardized by governments. Instead Israel's national flag code sets out the official measurements of the flag to be 220 centimeters in width by 160 centimeters in height. This yields an aspect ratio for the flag of 11 to 8. Despite this non-official variants are pretty commonplace and of course there's no such thing as the flag police. The fact that most world flags have the same aspect ratio by the way is both convenient and deliberate. A core tenet of international diplomatic protocol is that flag displays should be of equal size so as to convey visually the idea of absolute equality between nations. This works great when every flag is the same width and height but ends up being a bit of a headache when say you need to display the flags of Israel and Nepal next to one another. For plenty more obscure flag facts like these I highly recommend an expert's guide to international protocol which will tell you way more about flags than you probably ever wanted to know. But back to the flag of Israel. The Israeli flag is regulated by a piece of legislation commonly referred to as Chok Hadegal which means the flag law. Although its actual title is Chok Hadegal Vahasemel, the law of the flag and the symbol or more accurately the symbols such as state symbols. It describes the specific shade of blue to be used as tekhelet and specifies that each blue stripe should be exactly 25 centimeters in width via a love shene pasay tekhelet kehay berochav. The blue and white color of the flag is generally accepted as symbolizing the talit or in more classic Hebrew pronunciation the talit which is a prayer shawl which has been used by Jews since ancient times. The blue of the talit as the flag law mentions is the shade of tekhelet. This was a special type of dye mentioned in the Tanakh which was prized throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Scholars dispute exactly which organism produced this special dye although some assert that it's the modern seasail known by the botanical name of Hapilex trunculus and that is a rabbit hole for a different day and probably for a different author. The other symbol on the state flag of course is the Maghain David or the Star of David in English. Interestingly the history of the flag of Israel actually predates the establishment of the state. That's because the modern Zionist movement the one led by Theodor Herzl and begun in 1897 was active for about 50 years before the state of Israel was formally declared in 1948. The current flag of Israel was first adopted at the Zionist Congress in Basel Switzerland in 1897. It was then the flag of the World Zionist Organization or WZO for short. The World Zionist Organization still exists by the way but for the sake of clarity now has a different flag. Given that the goal of the Congress was the eventual establishment of a Jewish state it's only natural that the flag they chose would later become the state symbol of Israel. Nevertheless an interesting exchange of views is recounted at the Congress involving David Wolfson, a Lithuanian Jewish businessman and an influential early backer of the Zionist cause. Wolfson explained that the question of what flag the future Jewish state should use had been nagging at him but that inspiration had come from of all places is Talitbag. We already have a flag Wolfson explained to the Congress and it is blue and white the Talit which which we wrap ourselves when we pray that is our symbol. Let us take the Talit from its bag and unroll it before the eyes of Israel and the eyes of all nations. So the flag that has now become the Israeli flag sort of became the state symbol by default. Having been proposed at a relatively early stage of the Zionist movement it gained critical early traction among the state's most influential backers. An early prototype was displayed at a procession in Rishon Lezion in 1885. It was hoisted on November 29th 1947 to celebrate the UN partition resolution and again on May 14th 1948 when Israel declared its statehood and began its process of international recognition. The flag was officially adopted as the national flag of Israel on October 28th 1948 some five months after the establishment of the state. Interestingly even though the WZO flag seemed to have attracted a critical mass of early supporters the early government of Israel wanted to put the matter of what its national flag should be up for public consultation. Two days before the foundation of the state the People's Administration of Israel which was Israel's provisional government in Hebrew Menhele Te Am announced that a public competition would be held soliciting suggestions for a name for the country and Israel eventually won out. On June the 10th the People's Administration decided that they should also give the public a chance to think about what symbol they wanted to appear as Israel's national emblem which is sort of the national seal of the state. That competition was announced three weeks after the declaration of statehood on June the 10th and the final date for submissions was June 14th 1948. I've confirmed that date from various sources including the National Library of Israel and unless I'm missing something that means that the new Israeli government gave the public exactly four days in order to get their best and brightest ideas as to what the state emblem should look like by homing pigeon camel email I'm just kidding about that one or however else they could. Even if that date is incorrect and the contest actually started on the date when Israel was founded the initial tender still closed only one month after the declaration of statehood so either way it's an incredibly short consultation period and a tall feat for any graphic designer artist rabbi or man woman or child with an idea to send in about what the national emblem should look like. Some things about life in Israel never change. In total 164 different applicants submitted some 450 different design suggestions for consideration. The National Library of Israel has a great blog on its website with some of the interesting proposals that were sent in. If you're curious to check those out I'll pop a link in the description. Ultimately the competition was won by Gabriel and Maxim Shamir better known as the Shamir Brothers and some of the most famous graphic designers in Israel's history. Their winning design was a menorah surrounded by some olive branches. They won the second public consultation process because perhaps the then government realized that even by emerging Israeli standards of chaos four days was kind of pushing it. Ironically despite the breakneck speed of the initial consultation process the government ultimately took some time about deciding what the final emblem would be arriving at their choice in 1949. It was of course decided to use different symbols for the national emblem the menorah and the flag the star of david although the state's emblem was ultimately chosen for the presidential standards. When critics complained about how long it took to ultimately decide upon these symbols Ben-Gurion retorted choosing a flag and emblem for the state is not done every day. By the way although the national flag of Israel is the best known official flag in Israel it's actually only one of several. Israel has a presidential standard which is sort of like the official flag of the presidency containing the symbol of state a menorah set against a blue background which is generally a slightly darker shade than the one used on the national flag. If you walk around the president's residence in Rechavia in Jerusalem you'll see this flag presented on vertical pendants along the pain walk. There's even a slightly different version of the presidential standard on a yellow background which is intended for use when the president is at sea. There's a flag for the prime minister which I've personally never actually seen being used and you guessed it there's officially a slightly different to the prime minister's flag which is officially designated for use when the prime minister is at sea. If you want to go down the rabbit hole of checking out all these interesting alternate national flags and standards and please do the Wikipedia has a pretty cool resource and I'll put a link in the description or you can google flags of Israel and you'll probably find it pretty quickly. For research for this video I've relied upon several sources some of those include Britannica Encyclopedia the National Library of Israel the State Archives and a fascinating blog by Santiago Dottor. I'll link those in the description too. I hope this video has been interesting if there is another topic of interest about Jerusalem and Israel that you like me to see cover please do consider leaving me a comment or dropping me an email which is listed in the about tab on this YouTube channel. Thanks for watching please consider liking and subscribing if you'd like to receive more videos from me and have a very good day.