Yes, this is yet another one of my oddball Pages that has nothing whatsoever to do with politics. Gotta take a break from all the haters & the bad crazy every once in a while and remember that there’s still much that is good & beautiful in the world.

A few months back I was looking for images of pomegranate blossoms and ran across a photo of a floral motif on a remnant of the second temple in Jerusalem. According to the caption, it’s a combination of the “common” (it was new to me) Jewish six-petaled flower “inter-combined with Herod’s heart shaped daisy-like floral design of six petals while a smaller six petaled flower is nested in the center.”

The author of the web page speculates that the Star of David was possibly based on the lily or pomegranate (blossom). I was intrigued by that idea, and when I read the story accompanying the photo that struck my fancy, my imagination was captivated. If you visit the site in question and scroll about halfway down, you can see it for yourself. Here’s what the story above it says:

2928 / 832 BCE

When king Solomon built the first temple, he decorated the inner chamber with at least five hundred pomegranates.

“and he made chains in the inner chamber, and put them on top of the pillars, and he made one hundred pomegranates and put them on the chains” - Chronicles B 3:16

“and the pomegranates, four hundred, for the two latticework, two rows of pomegranates, for one latticework-to cover the two domes of the capitals on top of the pillars” - Chronicles B 4:13

I know the destruction of the second temple by the Romans was a tragedy for the Jewish people, and I know that many deeply resent the fact that that the Dome of the Rock sits atop its ruins and would like to see it gone, but I’m not going to let that get in the way of my delight at the beautiful motif and the story accompanying it (even though the story is about the first temple).

Anyway, I decided to create my own version of the flower so I could use it in graphics applications. It took me a good half a day to to sketch it, scan it, then take it into Adobe Illustrator and manually trace the scan (with the dreaded pen tool). Below is the original sketch & the finished graphic.

My hand-drawn sketch

The finished graphic

So why am I making a page to tell everyone about it? Well, because I wanted to make it available to whoever might like to use it. Since Tu B’Shevat was just a couple of weeks ago and spring will soon be upon us in all wondrous rebirth, I figured now would be a particularly fitting time to share it.

You can download the zip file containing the SVG image from here. I chose SVG because it can be viewed in any browser and is a vector format that is scalable without loss of quality. If you open it in a vector drawing program like Illustrator, you should be able to manipulate it however you like—color the petals, change the thickness/color of the outlines, resize it, take it apart, whatever.¹

A few quick examples:

Add or remove parts

Create a bookmark. I had no time to add color, so use your imagination!

Use it on a greeting or thank you card, or even on an invitation. Embossed gold foil in ivory or cream colored cardstock would be elegant, as would silver on white cardstock (it would also stand out great on a dark color). I know the style of the “chai” doesn’t really fit well with this quickie design, but it’s the only Hebrew word I had on hand besides “shalom”.

I hope someone will find the flower useful and have as much fun playing around with it as I did creating it. That is all. ;o)