Abstract
Not until after his bar mitzvah did [Marc Chagall] change his first name from Moshe, the name of the liberator from Egyptian bondage. But in depicting [Jesus] in so transformative a setting as The White Crucifixion, Chagall made from the seasonal overlapping of Passover and Easter a painting that manages to blend his flair for summoning beauty with the giftof tragic depth. Instead of a loincloth covering the otherwise naked Savior, he is wrapped in a tallis. Surrounding him is not the jeering mob that medieval painters sometimes portrayed, but instead the inhabitants of the shtetl. Instead of the pastoral charm that Chagall characteristically evoked, there is chaos, with an atmosphere of terror and flight enveloping those fragile Torah scrolls. The palette of the White Crucifixion is recognizably Chagall's, but the brightest color in this painting is flameorange; and a Nazi thug, wearing an armband, is burning down a synagogue. Here was a portent of the consuming fire from which precious few would be spared. Desperate refugees hover on a boat. (Could Chagall have anticipated his own good fortune in escaping across the Atlantic three years later?)