The Wailing Wall, Knesset, Jerusalem

In the early 1960s, Kadish Luz, the speaker of the Knesset, wrote to Chagall asking him to create an artwork for Israel’s future Parliament building¹. The deep, unique bond that immediately formed between the two men, as well as Chagall's heartfelt commitment to the Jewish people’s destiny, culture and heritage, led him to offer Israel an exceptional gift: a group of monumental works, including three tapestries, 12 floor mosaics and a wall mosaic².

The Knesset building, one of the young State of Israel’s first official buildings, opened in August 1966. It is an example of Brutalist architecture, a style featuring the use of bare concrete and minimal decoration that emerged in Europe after the Second World War.The interplay between Chagall's works creates a complete narrative, just as the techniques he chose—mosaic and tapestry—dialogue with each other to create a reception room with a coherent perspective. They illustrate various figures and stories from the Bible: the Creation, the Exodus, the Apocalypse, Moses and King David. Using subtle, symbolic imagery, Chagall also introduced events from his own life and contemporary history: the Holocaust, the immigration of Jewish communities to the Promised Land and the founding of the State of Israel. All of these features blend together to form a single story with a unified message.

Chagall’s close ties with Luz and their warm talks influenced his final choice of themes³. At the time of these conversations, the exact location of the work to be created had not yet been determined. Right from the outset, Chagall was involved in the project’s development and in designing the site as a whole. The architect, Joseph Klarwein, and the planning and implementation coordinator, Emanuel Friedman, met the artist at his home in France and sent him plans and models of the building. Chagall initially decided to create three tapestries for the lobby. In December 1963, the artist visited the Knesset building site, the Department of Antiquities and Museums in Jerusalem, the nearby Ma'ale Hachmisha kibbutz and the Eilat mountains. In July 1964, he returned to Jerusalem, telling Klarwein and Friedman that he had completed the sketches for the tapestries and that the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins had already begun weaving them⁴. During the visit, Chagall studied the layout of the lobby's ceiling, pillars and floor and said he wanted to create a pavement mosaic. In December 1965, he expressed his desire to add a large wall mosaic next to the windows overlooking Jerusalem's cityscape, reshaped by new buildings such as the Israel Museum, government offices and the Hebrew University campuses.

Chagall insisted on hiring the mosaicists Heidi and Lino Melano rather than the Israeli artist Dodo Shenhav, whom the Knesset had originally asked to work on the project. The contract the Melanos and the project managers signed clearly spelled out why: “It is public knowledge that the mosaicists have been working in cooperation with Mr. Marc Chagall for many years, that they are familiar with his artistic thinking, that they enjoy his full trust and that they are capable of giving their work a style in keeping with Mr. Chagall's conception and ideas.⁵” After several meetings with Luz, Chagall and all the stakeholders, Lino and Heidi Melano were asked to install and supervise the mosaics in the lobby.

For the wall mosaic, Chagall drew inspiration from the Wailing Wall, the Jewish people’s holiest ancient ruin and the only surviving remnant of the outer enclosure of the Temple complex in Jerusalem. It was Luz's idea to illustrate Psalm 137, whose first verse reads: “By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.” The psalm voices the Jewish people’s homesickness for Israel and for Jerusalem in particular. However, Chagall did not depict their longing literally by showing them sitting miserably on the riverbanks. Instead, he strove to translate the message of the psalm, which urges the Jews to always remember Zion, even in the happiest times. He chose the Wailing Wall as the symbol and representation of the city.

Chagall was familiar with many depictions of the Wailing Wall, a subject he himself painted in 1931 during his first visit to Israel. In that work, which he gave to the Tel Aviv Museum, he painted the wall up close, showing the wild plants growing between the stones. The Knesset mosaics are bathed in a “mysterious atmosphere and shine with mystical light”, Melano wrote in a letter to Chagall on July 11, 1966⁶. The wall mosaic’s central feature is the menorah, the seven-branched candelabra and religious symbol that has become the State of Israel’s national emblem. Above the menorah, an angel blows into a shofar (a ram's horn), calling the people on the right of the wall home to Zion. Here, Chagall referred to a story in the Book of the prophet Isaiah: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord on the holy mount at Jerusalem.” (Isaiah, 27: 13). According to the art historian Ziva Amishai-Maisels, Chagall understood this exhortation for Isaiah's contemporaries, but also applied it to all exiles, especially those of his own time: the angel in his mosaic issues a universal appeal to return to Jerusalem⁷. He recalled one of the cornerstones of Jewish culture—memory, homesickness and longing—feelings that are also the essence of his own artistic expression.

In December 1963, Chagall saw the ancient mosaics at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, a visit that undoubtedly influenced his decision to add mosaic ornaments to the lobby’s marble floor⁸. He drew inspiration not only from how the Ancients used mosaics, but also from how they are inlaid like ancient vestiges in a marble tiled floor.In a letter to the Knesset speaker, Chagall gave instructions for the mosaic: “It must be as light as the clouds in the sky and not obscure future tapestries.⁹” The small sketches for the floor mosaics certainly fit this description. Melano enlarged them on a 1:1 scale on the floor and placed them on a wall that was retouched by Chagall, as Hillel S. Burger’s pictures show. Unlike the preparatory sketches for the tapestries, the drawings for the floor mosaics show no indication of color. The challenges of color and the complexity of transposing light, flowing lines into mosaic were the topic of letters and on-site discussions between Chagall and the mosaicists.

The mosaics recall the ones on the floors of fifth and sixth-century synagogues in Israel discovered during 20^th-century archaeological excavations at Beth Alfa, Hamat Gader, Jericho, Beth Shean and other places. They usually depict the zodiac, local birds and animals and sometimes Jewish symbols such as the Ark of the Covenant, the shofar and the menorah. These floor mosaics are important evidence that Jewish art existed at a very early date, despite the prohibition set out in the Second Commandment: “Thou shalt not make any graven image.” For a long time, it was thought that the origins of Jewish art dated back no further than the late Middle Ages, inspired by Christian illuminated manuscripts. However, murals discovered at the Dura-Europos synagogue in Asia Minor and floor mosaics in synagogues in Israel provide tangible, visual evidence that Jewish art has existed for a very long time, bearing witness to a cultural and community life at a very early date. According to Amishai-Maisels, the mosaics in the Knesset symbolise both the existence of cultural life in the Holy Land in ancient times and its rediscovery in our era. The connection that Chagall seeks to establish relates to the cultural and personal spheres, national rebirth and the rediscovery of ancient Jewish art, linked to his revolutionary artistic language¹⁰.

Speaking at the unveiling of the tapestries, Chagall said, "My ideal, what my heart desires, is to be close to the spirit of the land of the prophets. My work at the Knesset is a grain of my soul.¹¹” He left an everlasting message on the floor and walls of the Knesset, that of the Jewish people’s spiritual heritage, reminding Israel's leaders that they must remember the past and look to the future when called upon to make the important decisions that shape the country.