Rabbi Benjamin Blech

Rabbi Benjamin Blech is an internationally recognized educator, religious leader, author, and lecturer.

He has written 12 highly acclaimed and bestselling books, with combined sales of close to half a million copies, including three as part of the highly popular Idiot’s Guide series. His book, Understanding Judaism: The Basics of Deed and Creed, was chosen by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations as “the single best book on Judaism in our generation.” Together with an accompanying six-hour video, filmed by the producers of 20/20 and featuring Rabbi Blech, it is presently being used as the basis for study groups in numerous synagogues and universities around the United States.

His book, Taking Stock: A Spiritual Guide To Rising Above Life’s Financial Ups and Downs, was featured in a full-page article in the Sunday New York Times. Another work, If God is Good, Why Is The World So Bad?, has been translated into Indonesian, and it enjoyed a powerful reception in Indonesia in the wake of the tsunami.

In a national survey, Rabbi Blech was ranked number 16 in a listing of the 50 most influential Jews in America.

A recipient of the American Educator of the Year Award, he has been a Professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University since 1966.

A tenth-generation rabbi, Rabbi Blech is Rabbi Emeritus of Young Israel of Oceanside, which he served for 37 years.

He presently is a frequent lecturer in Jewish communities as far-flung as Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Israel. Closer to home, he has served as Scholar-in-Residence at hundreds of synagogues throughout the United States and Canada, and he has been active on behalf of countless Jewish causes. His lectures on tape have an international following and are among the most popular from among the thousands made available on the Web through Aish Hatorah.

Rabbi Blech has appeared on national television (including The Oprah Winfrey Show), hosted a popular weekly radio program in New York, and written for Newsweek, The New York Times, and Newsday, as well as for a wide and varied number of scholarly publications.

As a result of his personal meeting with the late Pope John Paul II, he was instrumental in securing the loan of precious Jewish manuscripts for exhibition in Israel, and he is presently involved in further negotiations for the return of precious Judaica held by the Vatican that may well prove to be of historic significance.

Rabbi Blech is an unusually eloquent and gifted speaker, as well as a profound contemporary theologian and religious spokesman, who has made a major impact on the many tens of thousands of people he has addressed.

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Biography/History

Catholicism

Judaism

The Sistine Secrets

Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

Talking Points

Rabbi Benjamin Blech is an internationally recognized educator, religious leader, author, and lecturer. A recipient of the American Educator of the Year Award, he is a Professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University since 1966. He has appeared on national television (including the Oprah Winfrey Show); hosted a popular weekly radio program in New York; and written for Newsweek, The New York Times and Newsday, in addition to a wide and varied number of scholarly publications.

Roy Doliner studies span the spectrum of the humanities: languages, comparative religion, art history, Italian and Roman history, and Judaica (including:Talmud, Midrash and Kabbalah). Mr. Doliner is often called upon to act as a docent for scholars and international visitors to Rome and the Vatican Museums. He divides his time between Rome and New York City.

Description

500 years ago Michelangelo began work on one of the most famous paintings and tourist sites in the world—the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling is the largest fresco painting on earth in the holiest chapel in the Christian world. Yet, in this entire enormous work, there is not one single Christian image. What the public does not yet know is the extent, the quantity, and the shocking nature of all of Michelangelo’s hidden messages. Only in the last few years have many pieces of the puzzle come to light as a result of some very fortunate discoveries including several new works either found or finally definitively attributed to him, the cleaning and restoration of many other pieces, especially the extensive cleaning of the Sistine Chapel, and the uncovering of an underground movement of interfaith freethinkers and Kabbalists during the Renaissance that had its central “hideout” in Florence.

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