The Chagall Lounge is the venue for most major events and receptions in the Knesset. The lounge was designed by one of the most respected Jewish artists of the modern era, Marc Chagall, incorporating several of his works of art. The floor is paved with 12 mosaics and the walls are decorated with spectacular woven tapestries. The tapestries express a large number of stories and prophecies of the Bible. The central and most prominent piece of tapestry is the one you saw last week, expressing among many other stories, Matan Torah on Har Sinai.
The prominent figures on the tapestry are Moshe Rabeinu and King David. Both appear twice: Moses appears when receiving the Tablets of the Law, and again when he was following a child at the head of the children of Am Israel leaving Egypt, topped with a cloud symbolizing the Divine Providence protecting them. The coffin carried by the people walking after Moses carry the bones of Yossef. David appears playing the harp, and before him the figure of the younger David holding the severed head of Goliath. At the center of the artwork there are many biblical figures, and references to exile and the Holocaust.
The value of the tapestries is estimated at $24 million.
Having said that, the lounge hosts a document with inestimable value: the Declaration of Independence Scroll. In the past it was the original scroll that was displayed in a glass case. a few years ago, however, it was decided that it should be preserved in the state archive, and a replica was placed in the lounge.
