150 works by 40 artists explore the Jewishness of Jesus Christ

TIMES OF ISREAL
By Jessica Steinberg

"The Encounter (Jesus and the Jew)" by Reuven Rubin (c. 1922) is one of several paintings in the exhibition by the famed Israeli artist and pioneer.

ISRAEL---Jesus and the Jews have had something of a complicated relationship. In “Behold The Man: Jesus in Israeli Art,” a new exhibit at the Israel Museum, curator Amitai Mendelsohn examines that complex iconography up close, through the prism of Jewish and Israeli art. The exhibit features 150 works by some 40 artists, showing the evolving attitudes of Jewish, Zionist and Israeli artists toward Jesus. In order to tackle the many works dealing with Jesus, Mendelsohn divided the exhibit into sections, looking at Jesus deployed as a problematic figure in Jewish history, Jesus as the enemy, as a symbol of anti-Semitism, and as someone who had a “huge effect on Jewish existence,” he said. [link]