Supplement of Chagall and The Goat

Another Jewish artists had an obsession for goats: Menashe Kadishman.
Here there is a link to his paintings
As we can clearly see, these sheep - which at the end turn out to be goats - express emotional contents which are quite different from the loving and benevolent glance of Chagall's beasts.

They are suffering. Real scapegoats. Even more: Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi ( God's lamb who bears the world's sins). It is not by accident that Menashe Kadishman is the artists who was chosen to make the the Holocaust's monument in Berlin's Jewish Museum.

He is the artist of the Holocaust. Suffering sheep and goats are led to their fate. The unconscious implication is...Because of their guilt. They assassinated their Father and now they identify with Him, and suffer the same destiny. Just like the Goat Dionysus, the Sacred Child, who - according to Orphic myth - was dismembered by the Titans while he was playing. Freud wrote that the image of Dionysus -the dismembered child - condenses the image of the assassinated Father (the Goat of Greek tragedy) and of the Son who perpetrated the assassination (Totem and Taboo 4:5).

The pain of the assassinated Father (filial piety) and of the atoning Son (guilt) condense in the staring eyes of the sheep.

      

The Kriophoros (The Ram's Bearer) at the Barracco Museum in Rome (5th cent. B.C.) and  The Good Shepherd (allegory of the Christ) 3d century AD 
...And then Menashe Kadishman, the Ram's Bearer (21 cent. AD).

And whose "cock" is the one in the 3d century mosaic representing the Good Shepherd?

As I mentioned in

Chagall and The Goat

The presence of the cock and other birds is very meaningful too.

Firstly, birds are a very obvious phallic symbol. And as such they also remind the presence of the powerful paternal penis. Just like the bird of the Holy Ghost (Cf. Maestri and Disciples ).

Secondly, a cock is indeed eaten at Yom Kippur eve, after a significant ritual, in which a cock for every male of the family is rotated above the head. Then thrown away and recovered. The cock has become the scapegoat for Israel's sins, and as such is sacrificed and eaten. Just like in ancient times a goat (scapegoat) fulfilled that role.
A cock is the symbol of the penis, and it is because of its excitement - sin that must be sacrificed - castrated.
Even in the Gospel a cock is associated with a connotation of guilt, as is written: " Jesus said to him, 'Truly, I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times'" (Matt. 26:34).

      

The first image is by Chagall, as a fore mentioned. The second image is from an Hellenistic tomb in the Tell of Maresha, about thirty miles south west of Jerusalem (2nd century BC). According to Hellenistic beliefs, a dead man soul - which had been successfully transported by Karon and his bout beyond the Styx river - heard a cock's voice, which meant that he was allowed to enter the dead's world.

The third is a work by Jaques Lipchitz displayed in the sculptures' garden in the Museum of Arts in Tel Aviv, entitled 'Sacrifice III'.

      

(Kadishman in Tel Aviv)

An angry Father

By the same artist: The Sacrifice of Isaac

    

...And the reconciliation through his own horn - penis

As Theodor Reik has shown, the original totemic beast, which became the symbol of Jahveh, was the ram, and the Jews still use his horns as a ritual instrument. (Cf. note [i], in El - The Bull )

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