Why are we Jews always our own worst enemies? I ask it particularly of The Jewish Week in the aftermath of your article that purports to offer reaction to my new book, “The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo’s Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican.” Both in the preface and in the book’s conclusion, my co-author Roy Doliner and I make clear our major message: Michelangelo, 500 years ahead of his time, was profoundly upset that the Church of his day ignored its Judaic roots, and he tried to infuse his art with messages of tolerance and understanding, especially in light of his fascination with kabbalah and traditional Jewish sources he had studied in his youth in a secret school in Florence.
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the back cover are rave reviews by two of the most eminent scholars in the field; one of them, Enrico Bruschini, is the official art historian of Rome, appointed by the Vatican to serve as guide to the past three American presidents on their visits to the Sistine Chapel. They applaud our erudition, our scholarship and our novel findings. How different from the approach taken by your reviewer. /
Looking only to create controversy — and perhaps even stir the pot of anti-Semitism — the article repeats scurrilous and hate-filled quotes of bloggers of anti-Semitic sites, giving them an outlet for their odious rantings in the pages of a respectable Jewish weekly. Instead of stressing all the positives of a book that convincingly proves Michelangelo’s infatuation with Jewish texts and universalistic ideals, Stewart Ain seems to have gone out of his way to denigrate our efforts.
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