Exodus & Exile: Migration themes in Biblical images

Crucifixion

Artist Emmanuel Levy

Accession number 2004-2

Emmanuel Levy's ‘Crucifixion’, like Marc Chagall’s ‘White Crucifixion’, was a personal protest against Jewish persecution in mainland Europe during the Nazi era. As the Ben Uri Collection entry notes Christ is presented “as an orthodox Jew with his Tallit (prayer shawl) and prayer phylacteries.” “The label ‘Jude’ in blood red above and the rows of white crosses (traditionally marking Christian graves) symbolise the many Jews who were being killed at the time.”

The crucifixions of Levy and Chagall “symbolised the Nazi's Jewish victims in order to remind Christians that Christ was a Jew and they should stop persecuting his brothers”. Such persecution remains an ever-present danger for migrants, whether from the dangers of crossing vast expanses of ocean in flimsy crafts or from the scapegoating of those who are ‘other’ by those in receiving communities. 

According to René Girard’s mimetic theory, human beings imitate each other, and this gives rise to rivalries and violent conflicts. Such conflicts are partially solved by a scapegoat mechanism. Scapegoating alludes to the ritual proscribed in Leviticus 16 where communal sins were metaphorically imposed upon a he-goat, and the goat was sent out into the desert to die. The person that receives the communal violence is a ‘scapegoat’ in this sense: his or her death or expulsion being used as a regeneration of communal peace and restoration of relationships. 

This mechanism, which is endemic in human societies and applied with particular frequency to migrants, is exposed, subverted and undermined by both Judaism and Christianity in order that scapegoating as a practice be ended. Crucifixion paintings like those by Levy and Chagall also play their part in exposing and subverting the scapegoating mechanism.