The Sistine Secrets by Benjamin Blech, Roy Doliner Page B

tree, since a compassionate God had provided a cure for the consequence of their sin within the self-same object that caused it. It is hard to imagine any Christian being aware of this, either in Michelangelo’s era or even today. Only someone who had studied the Midrash could have known such a thing. Yet, sure enough, there in the panel of Original Sin, Michelangelo’s forbidden Tree of Knowledge is a fig tree.
    When we tour the Sistine in the upcoming chapters, only a strong familiarity with this body of Jewish knowledge will permit us to grasp the countless Midrashic allusions that Michelangelo worked into his frescoes—something unfortunately almost completely unknown and ignored by contemporary scholars.
    Pico, as indicated by his library, also greatly admired the Talmud, a vast compendium of Jewish law and commentary composed over a five-hundred-year period beginning roughly at the time of Jesus. What sets this work apart from almost all other books of the time is its unique system of thought, what is even today referred to as “Talmudic logic.” It conditions us to see the universe and to think in a multilayered way, as opposed to the Church’s uncritical, linear, and unanalytical approach. Its predominant theme is to question. It links reason to faith. It values logic as a prime good and allows for the legitimacy of conflicting opinions. It also places great stress on the ability to harmonize seeming opposites. These were hardly ideals for the Church, which therefore sought to suppress it. But Michelangelo, while not able to study the Talmud in depth, learned from his teachers to incorporate at least some of its values into his outlook and its multiple levels of meaning into his artwork.
    The Judaic study that had the greatest impact on Michelangelo was the one for which Pico is perhaps best remembered. Pico had the largest Judaic library of any gentile in Europe, and—more striking still—holds the record for the biggest private library of Kabbalistic materials gathered in one place anywhere. Kabbalah was Pico’s passion. In fact, his dedication to this branch of Jewish knowledge may well explain his very positive feelings toward Jews and Judaism.
    Kabbalah, comprising the esoteric and mystical tradition of Judaism, is supposed to have its origin in the secrets the angels dared to transmit to Adam. Kabbalah is a Hebrew word that literally means “received.” Because its teachings are extremely complex and deal with subjects not everyone is capable of handling, it is ideally taught only to those mature enough to “receive” its hidden knowledge, by way of a master to a select chosen disciple. But the Zohar, which first appeared in Spain in the thirteenth century published by a Jewish writer named Moses de Leon—ostensibly as a manuscript he found dating back to the Talmudic era—and other Kabbalistic works were available for study, and Pico took full advantage.
    What fascinated Pico so? And what was it in Kabbalah that captivated Michelangelo to the extent that almost every part of the Sistine ceiling bears traces of its teachings? We can only hint at some of the answers.
    Surely part of the answer lies in the major premise of Kabbalah that beneath the surface of every object are hidden “emanations” of God. Things are far more than they seem to the naked eye. What a provocative concept for an artist—especially one whose credo was “Every block of stone has a statue inside of it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” These emanations of the Divine, known as the Ten S’firot (ten communications), represent the “series of intermediate stages” that make the creation of the finite world possible—almost like the steps necessary for an artist to bring his ideas to life. Moreover, these Ten S’firot, representing all of God’s attributes, have a direct correspondence with the physical body of a person. God is imminent in the corporeal; the body has sparks of the Divine. And that of