" 

 :: Well, may I ask both of you to refrain from personal attacks here. 
 :: In general, there is of course no rule that there must be exactly one writer or painter etc. But having a choice, I think one should try to get as large diversity as possible. It is true, that the diversity is not only in terms of occupation but also gender, time etc. I think there is currently a good coverage of different times starting with James Mayer de Rothschild, i.e. from the beginning of the 19th century. One may think of including a rabbi from an earlier age. There is a dedicated section on Rashi with a woodcut showing him, therefore I thought it is not necessary to include the same picture once again in the collage. I don't have another candidate. 
 :: My comments to the proposed persons: 
 ::* I agree with  that Michel de Montaigne and Irène Némirovsky are bad candidates for the reasons given above. The relation to Holocaust is not really established by including Némirovsky. She was murdered in the Holocaust, but there is no ""story"" behind it on which the reader would focus. 
 ::* As for Simone Weil, she can be considered as an alternative to Mirra Alfassa, if there are good arguments why she is a better candidate. One may have one person who converted to another faith, as an explicit example. 
 ::* As for Chagall vs. Pissarro, whatever the motivation of some editor may or may not be, we should not make our choice to show this editor that he/she is right or wrong. I vote for Pissarro, for two reasons: 1) to increase the Sephardi faction, and 2) because Chagall is included in at least 4 other collages (Russian Jews, Belarussian Jews, Ashkenazy Jews and Jews). Having the same person in all collages makes the reader think that there was only one Jewish artist worth mentioning.  
 ::* As for Marcel Proust, I cannot yet judge. In my opinion, if someone comes from a mixed family, the person can be considered if a kind of Jewish identity can be seen in the biography. E.g. in the case of Pissarro, it is written about his father that ""Upon his death, his will specified that his estate be split equally between the synagogue and St. Thomas' Protestant church."" This tells me that the father was a member of the Jewish community (while the mother was probably protestant), and this should have been reflected in the family life. Is there any sign of Jewish identity in the case of Proust? And if yes, whom can Proust replace in the collage?   "