“The White Crucifixion”, Marc Chagall, 1938, Art Institute of Chicago.
The Jewish artist, Marc Chagall, shows the crucified Jesus as a Jewish martyr. His head is covered as if he were in prayer and around his waist is a Jewish prayer shawl with it’s tzitzit or threads with knots to serve as reminders of the commandments to be observed in this life. Except here there are no knots because Jesus is already dead. Chagall wrote “For me, Christ has always represented the true archetype of the Jewish martyr”. But it is clear that for him the crucified Christ was also a universal symbol of innocent suffering. Chagall painted this in 1938 in the wake of what would become know as “Kristallnacht”, when on the 9th/10th November 1938 in cities across Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Jewish homes were ransacked, the streets covered in the broken glass from their windows, synagogues burned, Jewish graveyards desecrated, and people arrested for simply being Jews. In this painting to the left of the cross Chagall’s home village has been pillaged. Actually this event happened on the very night Chagall was born. As a result he grew up moving from town to town. To the right, a synagogue is being looted and burnt. Below the cross people flee in every direction. A mother holds her child close to her chest as she fees beyond our view. Also on the left on what looks like a river there is a boat filled with people. One of them extends an arm towards the cross. In one of his poems Chagall wrote: “I carry my cross every day, l am led by the hand and pushed forward, the night grows dark around me. Have you abandoned me, my God? Why?” Despite these scenes of death, destruction and abandonment, there is a central beam of light shining down unto the cross illumining the dead Jesus. This beam of brightness transforms the depiction of the senseless suffering of innocent people into what might properly be called a lament, and a lament is prayer. One candle on the menorah just below the cross has been extinguished, and yet the innocent Christ is aglow with divine light from above as if he has replaced the seventh candle.
This painting is on display in the newly founded Museo del Corso in Rome, to coincide with the beginning of this year of Jubilee. This holy year is an initiative which calls us together in hope. Can we find hope, if together we embrace our common humanity, letting the light of basic human goodness shine out in a darkening world? Tomorrow the Holocaust will be remembered by many in sincerity of heart. But what happened then continues still: we remain as a world trapped in the age-old conflict of Cain and Abel. It is time to let the light we bear shine forth.
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