Suffering Israel: Sharing the Sufferings of God and Messiah

“In all their affliction” Marc Chagall (1887–1985) spoke of his bewilderment as a Jew being confronted with a world of pogroms, Jewish-Christian encounters, and antisemitism coming to its culmination in the Shoah. When he inserted into his paintings crucifixion scenes picturing a crucified Jewish Jesus amidst Israel’s sufferings, he wished to blend Jewish elements with a universal meaning. The picture of this suffering Jew—the central figure in the Christianity he knew—should present vividly the sufferings that befell the Jewish people at that time and also have some universal mea