"I Work for People Who Love . . .": David Lazer, Marc Chagall, and the Jewish State

David Lazer, an editor of Nowy Dziennik in Krakow, a founder of Maariv in Israel, and the editor of Maariv's literary section, maintained written and personal contact with Marc Chagall from 1957 to the mid-1970s. Lazer visited Chagall at his home in Vence and Saint-Paul-de-Vence. This article presents their correspondence and describes their meetings and the nature of their relationship, which was sentimental and emotionally rich. Lazer was a great storyteller with a talent for eloquent statements, supported by his knowledge of Jewish culture and literature, which included a fascination with Jewish folklore. This allowed him to feel at ease in the Yiddish cultural sphere, which was important to Chagall and through which he expressed his personal and creative identity. Lazer was also a good source of information on current affairs in the bloc of Central and Eastern European countries, about which Chagall was extremely curious, and Lazer likewise kept Chagall informed about the political problems faced by Israel. Lazer wrote detailed reports about each of his visits to Chagall for Israeli readers, for whom the world depicted by Chagall in his paintings was very familiar—a village, a shtetl, a Jewish street. In one letter to Chagall, Lazer told him that he was the author of the largest number of articles about him in the Hebrew press. Apart from the artistic value of his paintings, Lazer's fascination with Chagall stemmed from the cultural proximity of the diasporic Jewish world, which had given them a similar spiritual and intellectual formation, and from his interest in Yiddish literature.