World's Top Catholic Worships Marc Chagall, a Jew

THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD
By Menachem Wecker

Marc Chagall’s “White Crucifixion” depicts Jesus, wearing a tallit instead of a loincloth.

ILLINOIS --- Gallery 395A is tucked away in a corner on the third floor of the Art Institute of Chicago’s modern wing. Turning a corner, one is confronted by a nook, which contains a Max Beckmann self-portrait, Georges Braque’s “Woman at an Easel (Green Screen)” and Marc Chagall’s “White Crucifixion” (1938). In interviews with Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin for the 2010 biography “El Jesuita,” Pope Francis identified “White Crucifixion,” which depicts a Jewish Jesus, wearing a tallit instead of a loincloth, as his favorite work of art. That the chief executive of the Catholic Church has an affinity for a painting that was created by a Russian Jewish artist and also includes the symbol of the eternal wanderer, who was punished for abusing Jesus and became the pretext for centuries of anti-Semitism, is drawing a range of reactions. [link]