Last Thursday while I was tuning into “The Pitt” to watch my primary care physicians Dr. Michael Robinavitch, Whitaker, Santos, et al wrap up their Independence Day shifts in the Emergency Department, something gave me pause.
No, I’m not talking about when the paramedics bumped Robby’s motorcycle or when Langdon saved a patient’s spinal cord by performing a closed cervical reduction. I’m not even talking about the moment when Robby finally admits to what he’s been telegraphing to his colleagues all day: He is feeling hopeless and suicidal. What made me pause the show and stare at my screen was Duke’s tattoo.
“Does Duke from ‘The Pitt’ have a Star of David tattoo?” I furiously googled.
The short answer is no, he doesn’t. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…
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In season two, Duke, played by Jeff Kober, is Dr. Robby’s motorcycle mentor and friend who comes into the Pitt at Robby’s insistence. When Robby’s motorcycle (necessary for his impending sabbatical/vision quest) is hit by the ambulance bay in the penultimate episode of the season, Duke insists on tuning up the bike himself — despite the revelation that he has an aortic aneurysm that will almost certainly kill him if it isn’t surgically repaired.
It’s during this scene that Robby and Duke have a deep conversation about life and, coincidentally, Duke’s massive right shoulder tattoo is on display. To the untrained eye, the design looks like a simple Star of David with a box in its interior. Inside that box is a more ornate illustration with a multi-spired object sitting on a field of completely filled-in color.
My colleague at Kveller Lior Zaltzman and I began throwing around theories. Was it a Star of David with a menorah inside? Or a Star of David with the Moshiach flag? Or a Star of David with a lotus flower to signal that Duke is a Jewish-Buddhist or Jewbu? The idea that Robby’s biker friend is Jewish does not feel that far-fetched given just how Jewish the Pitt’s senior emergency attending physician is. But I still wasn’t convinced we had pinpointed the correct image.
I started researching if there were any lesser known Jewish star symbols or Buddhist or Hindu hexagrams that were a match. (Hexagrams are a common design in Buddhist, Hindu and Jain Dharma symbology.) When I came up bust on that line of inquiry, I asked for help solving the mystery in Hey Alma’s weekly Thank God It’s Shabbat newsletter. One reader suggested it could be a Jewish star and a claddagh to represent Jewish and Irish heritage. Another thought it could be a Star of David encircling a four-headed shin, like those found on the tefillin placed on the head. And then, reader Lauren Fox solved the whole thing. They sent me a link with the exact illustration of Duke’s tattoo.
So what is the tattoo exactly? Apparently, it’s something called Sri Aurobindo’s symbol, which depicts two interlocking triangles with a square in the center, encasing a lotus floating on water.
Sri Aurobindo was an Indian political revolutionary turned yogi and spiritualist. In 1910, Aurobindo settled in the city of Pondicherry, where he practiced yoga, wrote numerous philosophical books and, in 1926, formed the Sri Aurobindo Ashram with his followers. One of Aurobindo’s close spiritual collaborators was a woman named Mirra Alfassa, also called “The Mother,” who apparently designed the symbol.
“The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda,” she described. (Sat-Chit-Ananda is a Sanskrit term describing reality, as it is understood in Hinduism and yogic philosophy.) “The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter under the form of life, light and love. The junction of both — the central square — is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme — the lotus. The water — inside the square — represents the Multiplicity, the Creation.”
So does that make Duke a follower of Sri Aurobindo? It’s kind of a “yes, and” situation. In their note, Hey Alma reader/mystery-solver Lauren also claimed that the tattoo is not character make-up, but is Jeff Kober’s real tattoo. Given that Kober is a teacher of Vedic meditation and he has described Sri Aurobindo as his “favorite teacher of all time,” this seems a likely theory. In the same way that the show has blended Noah Wyle‘s Jewishness into Dr. Robby, “The Pitt” seems to be pulling from Jeff Kober’s own spiritual practice to form Duke’s character.
