From the Golden Calf to Gezi Park: Religious Imagery and Modern Protest

THE GUARDIAN
By Fr. Giles Fraser

Simon Peres in the Chagall hall of the Knesset. Behind him,
Moses receives the Ten Commandments, as envisaged by Marc Chagall.

UNITED KINDOM---is extremely odd that Marc Chagall – originally Moishe Shagal – has become the poster boy of Jewish art because his work so spectacularly offends against the fundamental principle of all Jewish aesthetics, the second of the Ten Commandments: "You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image or any likeness of anything that is in the heavens above or in the earth below" (Exodus 20:4). From an orthodox perspective, it counts as idolatry, the No 1 thought crime of the Hebrew Bible. Representations are dangerous, the Bible warns. They collapse reality and come to have an independent life of their own. And when they are representations of the divine, this is especially dangerous. God cannot be pictured. Indeed G-d cannot even properly be spoken. [link]