YAE L KOHEN

Rabbi Benjamin Blech will
go behind the scenes of the
Vatican.

Yael Kohen will present her book, We Killed: The Rise of
Women in American Comedy, along with some hilarious
video clips.

Pure Golda,
Michelangelo's
Jewish Mysteries,
Funny Women

The JCC's Gottlieb Family Festival of the Arts
celebrates Broadway, film, culture and more.

Elizabeth Applebaum
Special to the Jewish News

Rabbi Blech will reveal the story of
the Maimonides find, and also will
discuss unusual Jewish discoveries at
hough he was the author of
the Sistine Chapel, during his appear-
The Guide for the Perplexed,
ance at the Jewish Community Center of
Maimonides (1135-1204 C.E.) left Metropolitan Detroit's Gottlieb Family
a riddle, regarding a complicated legal mat- Festival of the Arts, which will be held
ter, when he died.
Aug. 25-Sept. 1 and will feature events
It has plagued scholars to this day.
and speakers ranging from a Broadway
It wasn't that the answer wasn't there;
show to Israeli film, jazz to literature (see
the challenge was getting to it.
page 57 for a complete schedule).
Along with numerous other invaluable
Jewish manuscripts, Maimonides' original When In Rome
document — the one that would finally
Rabbi Blech is being hosted by the
solve the mystery — is part of a private
JCC's SAJE (Seminars for Adult Jewish
collection at the Vatican. Virtually no one Enrichment) and the Jewish Federation's
is allowed to access it.
FedEd and will speak Aug. 28 and 29.
Several years ago, Rabbi Benjamin Blech,
An author and lecturer who has
a professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University appeared on 20/20, Nightline and The
in New York, was invited to Rome for a
Oprah Winfrey Show, Rabbi Blech devel-
rare opportunity to view the book.
oped a close relationship with the Vatican
He immediately called his colleagues,
thanks to a chance encounter.
He was asked to attend a conference of
scholars, rabbis. Finally — a chance to
physicians from around the world, where
learn the answer! The Maimonides text
he was to present an award to a Jewish
was thousands of pages long, but Rabbi
Blech promised to look until he found it.
doctor who had saved the lives of many
A few weeks later, Rabbi Blech arrived
men and women during the 9-11 attacks.
at the Vatican and was brought to the col-
There, he was approached by a Jewish
lection.
man who had a longstanding business
relationship with the church in Rome.
And what was there for him to see?
Not the full document as he expected,
The two began speaking, and eventually
the man asked Rabbi Blech if he might be
but five random pages, all carefully con-
tained under glass.
interested in meeting the pope.
Then something extraordinary happened.
Rabbi Blech admits: "I thought he was
It was, Rabbi Blech believes, even miraculous. just bragging" A few weeks later, the

T

Tovah Feldshuh re-creates her
Tony-nominated role as Golda
Meir in Golda's Balcony.

rabbi was on his way to Italy.
Centuries ago, even decades ago,
the Catholic Church — like the rest of
Christianity — was nothing if not hostile
to Judaism.
So Rabbi Blech could not have imag-
ined what it would be like to meet the
head of that church, Pope John Paul II.
"He should be listed among the
Righteous of the Nations and given
sainthood:' Rabbi Blech says. "Did you
know that when he visited Israel he put a
prayer in the Kotel asking God to forgive
Christians for all the sins they had com-
mitted against the Jewish people?"
Rabbi Blech's visit in Rome included
private meetings with church leaders,
Shabbat services at the Great Synagogue
(followed by a dinner that included the
Vatican's secretary of state) and a tour
of the Sistine Chapel, where he began to
take a closer look at Michelangelo's work
of art.
He noticed that the images "have
a great deal of kabbalistic and Jewish
aspects in them" — not to mention secret
messages.
Michelangelo, who was deeply dis-
turbed by anti-Semitism, did not want
the job of painting the Sistine Chapel — a
commission from Pope Julius II to create
a glorious work honoring the saints and
Jesus and Mary, Rabbi Blech said.
"But there isn't a single New Testament
figure in the paintings" and the central
focus is the famous image of God bring-
ing Adam to life, from Genesis in the
Jewish Bible. There are Hebrew letters as
well, and pictures of Jewish prophets.
And that's how it was — in the begin-
ning.
Next it was time to gather the proof.
Rabbi Blech is an expert in Kabbalah
and Judaism.
Playwright and best-selling author Roy
Doliner is an expert on Michelangelo and
has made note of the artist's many Jewish
connections (such as becoming fascinat-
ed, at a young age, with Jewish teachings).
Together, the two wrote a book, The
Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden
Messages in the Heart of the Vatican.
In addition to being the focus of one of
Rabbi Blech's talks, it is the subject of a
full-length film on the Discovery Channel.

Artists Bowen Kline and Tony Roko
show their work at the Janice Charach
Gallery, where they will collaborate on a
painting of Golda Meir.

Are Women Funny?
Journalist-author Christopher Hitchens
was about to get everyone riled up yet
again.
Hitchens, rarely without a scotch in one
hand and a cigarette in the other, wrote an
article in a 2007 issue of Vanity Fair that
asked: "Why are women ... not funny?"
The response was quick and sharp:
essays, letters to the editor and rebuttals
on YouTube.
Yael Kohen, on the other hand, was "kind
of confused, and I thought it was a little
ridiculous and I put [the essay] down"
Kohen is 33 and grew up with TV
shows like Murphy Brown and Designing
Women, clever and award-winning com-
edies starring women. Reflecting on
Hitchens' essay, "I thought: 'What is he
talking about?"'
She decided to find out.
The University of Michigan grad,
now a reporter and editor in New York,
approached her editor at Marie Claire mag-
azine. She pitched a story idea: "Why don't
we call women and ask them what it's like
to be a woman in comedy?" Soon, what
began as an essay developed into a book:
We Killed: The Rise of Women in American
Comedy (Sarah Crichton Books; 2012).
Kohen will discuss her book and the
role of Jewish women in comedy at
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 27, as part of
the Gottlieb Family Festival of the Arts.
(Video clips will add to the fun!)
For Kohen, humor has no boundaries.
She knows plenty of men and women who
are funny. She enjoys comedians from
today, like Tiny Fey; from a while ago, like
Gilda Radner; and from decades ago, like
Elaine May. (Born in 1932, May gained
fame for her sketches, like "Mother and
Son," with Mike Nichols.)
"There are things known as `feminine
humor' or `masculine humor," Kohen
says. Humorous storytelling is tradition-
ally done by women while men do stand-
up comedy, "an aggressive art form"
Yet it's hardly only women who present
"feminine humor" or men who engage in
"masculine humor"
In fact, Kohen notes, one of American's
most popular sources of comedy, Saturday
Night Live, featured Tiny Fey, who was
regarded as having a "masculine sensi-

Pure Golda on page 56

August 22 • 2013

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