The Work
Marc Chagall's twelve stained glass windows for the Hadassah University Medical Center synagogue chapel in Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, installed in 1962, are among the most celebrated works of religious art of the 20th century. Each of the twelve windows represents one of the twelve tribes of Israel, drawing on the tribal blessings of Genesis 49 and Deuteronomy 33. The windows use Chagall's characteristic saturated blues, reds, greens, and yellows in abstract-figurative compositions where animals, symbols, and figures float in pools of brilliant color. Each window is approximately 3.3 by 2.5 meters, and together they transform the small circular chapel into a space of overwhelming chromatic luminosity.
Biblical Source
Genesis 49 records Jacob's deathbed blessings of his twelve sons, assigning each a symbolic attribute: Judah is a lion's cub (49:9), Issachar a rawboned donkey (49:14), Dan a serpent (49:17), Naphtali a doe set free (49:21). Deuteronomy 33 records Moses's parallel blessings before his death on Mount Nebo. Chagall used these symbolic attributes - lion, donkey, serpent, doe, sheaves, sun, moon - as the compositional building blocks of each window's imagery, creating a visual midrash on tribal identity that is simultaneously ancient and contemporary.
The Artist
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) described the Jerusalem commission as 'a unique chance to realize some of my deepest feelings about the Jewish identity.' He was a secular Jew, but his art was inseparable from the Jewish religious and cultural world of his Hasidic childhood in Vitebsk. The windows were his first major commission in Israel, and he worked on them for three years, producing the designs in his studio in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, and having them executed by the Charles and Brigitte Marq workshop in Reims. The windows survived the Six-Day War of 1967 with only minor damage, quickly repaired.
Iconography
The windows follow a system in which each tribe's symbolic attributes from Jacob's and Moses's blessings determine the imagery. Judah's window is dominated by the lion and the vine ('his garments in the wine of his sons,' Genesis 49:11); Joseph's window shows sheaves and sun and moon from Joseph's dream (Genesis 37:7-9); Benjamin's window depicts a wolf and an arrow. The abstract color fields in which these figures float are organized around the liturgical color associations of the tribes - blue for Zebulun (the sea), green for Levi (the priestly tribe), red and gold for Judah - though Chagall's interpretations are his own rather than strictly traditional.
Significance
The Jerusalem windows are the most important work of religious stained glass created in the 20th century. They demonstrate that the ancient tradition of sacred light - the theology of divine illumination made visible through colored glass that the Gothic builders had perfected - retained its power in a radically different religious and cultural context. The windows also mark the return of major artistic attention to Jewish biblical iconography at a moment of Jewish national renewal, connecting the ancient tribal promises of Genesis to the new state of Israel.
The technical collaboration between Chagall and the Atelier Simon in Reims -- directed by the master glassmaker Charles Marq and his wife Brigitte Simon -- was one of the most significant partnerships in the history of twentieth-century stained glass. Marq developed new techniques for painting and staining glass to achieve the intense, layered colors that Chagall's designs required, and the two worked closely together on the translation of Chagall's painted designs into glass. The result is glass of a quality and chromatic intensity not seen since the medieval period, and the collaboration produced not only the Jerusalem windows but Chagall's subsequent glass commissions at Reims Cathedral, Metz Cathedral, and the United Nations in New York.
The Jewish prohibition on figurative images in sacred spaces -- derived from Exodus 20:4-5 and Deuteronomy 5:8-9 -- presented both a challenge and an opportunity for Chagall's Jerusalem commission. The challenge was to create windows that would be visually compelling without using the human figures that were central to his painting style. The opportunity was to discover whether his characteristic visual language could be fully expressed through animals, plants, Hebrew letters, and abstract shapes alone. The result demonstrates that it could: the twelve windows are among the most powerful of his works, the absence of human figures giving the animals and symbols a greater visual and symbolic weight than they might carry in a more figuratively diverse composition.## Visiting Info
The windows are in the Abbell Synagogue at the Hadassah University Medical Center's Ein Kerem campus in Jerusalem, approximately 5 kilometers southwest of the city center. The synagogue is open for visits Sunday through Friday (morning hours; check for current schedule as times vary). There is a small admission fee. Ein Kerem is served by buses from Jerusalem central station. The surrounding village of Ein Kerem, traditionally the birthplace of John the Baptist, is itself a pilgrimage site with multiple churches and a pleasant village center.