"This is my modest gift to the Jewish people who have always dreamt of biblical love, friendship and of peace among all peoples. This is my gift to that people which lived here thousands of years ago among the other Semitic people."
Marc Chagall, February 6, 1962
One of Marc Chagall's greatest masterpieces, his gift to the Jewish people, the twelve stained glass windows at the Abbell Synagogue of the Hadassah University Medical Centre's Ein Kerem campus are world famous. Richly coloured, each represents one of the twelve tribes of Israel with vivid imagery, Jewish symbols, and floating figures of animals, fish and flowers; a tour-de-force.
Chagall told that "All the time I was working, I felt my mother and father looking over my shoulder; and behind them were Jews, millions of other vanished Jews―of yesterday and a thousand years ago." Thus like much of his art, each window depicts Chagall's real and imaginary worlds, his love for his people, his early life in the Russian shtetl, and his deep sense of identification with Jewish history. Nevertheless the Hebrew tanach (bible) was his primary inspiration, particularly Jacob's blessings on his twelve sons and Moses' blessings on the twelve tribes. Each window is dominated by a specific colour and contains a quotation from the individual blessings. Chagall envisaged the synagogue as "a crown offered to the Jewish Queen," and the windows as "jewels of translucent fire."
"A stained glass window is a transparent partition between my heart and the heart of the world...To read the Bible is to perceive a certain light, and the window has to make this obvious through its simplicity and grace... The thoughts have nested in me for many years, since the time when my feet walked on the Holy Land, when I prepared myself to create engravings of the Bible. They strengthened me and encouraged me to bring my modest gift to the Jewish people, that people that lived here thousands of years ago." Marc Chagall
The synagogue is modest from the outside
Chagall and his assistant, Charles Marq, worked on the project for two years, during which time Marq developed a special process for applying color to the glass. This allowed Chagall to use as many as three colors on a single pane, rather than being confined to the traditional technique of separating each colored pane by a lead strip.
The synagogue was dedicated in the presence of the artist on February 6, 1962 as part of Hadassah's Golden Anniversary Celebration.
