JERUSALEM.- The exhibition Behold the Man: Jesus in Israeli Art opens with Chagall’s Yellow Crucifixion, painted at the height of World War II. The work depicts Jesus with a Christian martyr's halo, but also with tefilin (phylacteries) on his arm and head, as a symbol of Jewish suffering. Sigalit Landau’s video work marks the end of the exhibition where the artist stands on a watermelon, submerged in the Dead Sea – alluding to the description of Mary, mother of Jesus, standing on the earth.

"The exhibition unfolds between these two works - showing how the forbidden figure of Christ also served as a source of inspiration for 19th century Jewish artists, and Israeli artists from the 20th and 21st century," says curator Amitai Mendelsohn. "Christ's complexity – both human and divine; weak yet powerful – can be overtly present, like in Chagall’s work, or covert , as in Landau’s work, expressing personal aspiration, or mobilized to convey social and political criticism."

Throughout history, Jesus was an anathema for the Jews who lived under the ominous shadow of the cross. But 150 years ago, Jewish artists and intellectuals from Central and Eastern Europe, reclaimed Jesus as a Jew to bring him back into the fold. As in Chagall’s work, artists sought to use the figure of Jesus to mediate between Judaism and the dominant Christianity.

At the beginning of the 20th century, artists drew on Jesus’ resurrection to resonate with the Jewish people return to their land. In his Self-Portrait with a Flower (1923), painted but a few months after his immigration to Israel, Rubin depicts himself sunburned and dressed in white, against the background of sand and sea. In his right hand he holds paint brushes, and in his left a jar of water with white lilies; the Christian symbol of Mary’s Annunciation of the birth of her son, the Christian Messiah. "This indicates Rubin’s sense of mission, and may express his desire to proclaim new art in the Land of Israel," says Mendelssohn.

After the establishment of the State of Israel, local artists tended to identify with Jesus the man, as a symbol of personal suffering. For example, in his performance Via Dolorosa (1973), Motti Mizrachi, disabled since childhood, walked on crutches along the Via Dolorosa in the Old City of Jerusalem, carrying his own photographic portrait on his back.

In other works, Jesus’ figure was used to convey cutting, political statements. Micha Kirshner's photograph from 1988, at the outbreak of the first intifada, shows a Palestinian mother with her daughter, she gave birth to in an Israeli prison, sleeping on her, wrapped in a shawl-like cloth, reminiscent of a Tallit. "Their pose is reminiscent of the Madonna with child, and at the same time recalls the Pieta where Mary holds the body of Jesus taken down from the cross," says Mendelsohn. "The shawl also recalls the crucified Jesus in a prayer shawl by Chagall, but here the situation has been reversed. Christ no longer symbolizes the Jewish victim, but the Palestinian victim of the Israeli occupation."