The Vatican. Its incredible art collection. The Raphael rooms. His famous fresco, the School of Athens. Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. If you’re Catholic, the center of your faith, the home of your spiritual leader, the locus of papal history for over a millennium. Either way, a must do when in Rome.

When a Jew visits the Vatican, however, some uneasy feelings may arise. Supersessionism–the idea that Judaism was merely a preliminary stage of religious development that finds its fulfillment in Jesus and the Catholic Church–is a central tenet of Catholicism, a truth which, the Church holds, Jews in their stubbornness have resisted. Not to mention the history of Church persecution; expulsions, ghettoization, and the perpetuation of anti-Semitism though the Christ-killing accusation.

I visited the Vatican this summer. I went to see the art and, frankly, just to experience it. I booked a tour on “Skip the Line” (a good idea for busy tourist destinations), which, for about $40, gets you ticket for a group tour at a designated time.

My tour was scheduled for 3:30. There were throngs of visitors. I hugged the Vatican walls to catch some shade against the oppressive Roman summer heat. Then I happened to see a group of religious Jews. Turns out they’d booked a tour at the same time with Marco Misano, owner of Roman Jews, a company that offers tours of Rome through a Jewish perspective. Two days earlier, I’d taken his tour of the Jewish Ghetto. (See my previous post.) I called out to him, and he kindly invited me to join his group even though I hadn’t registered and his tour costs a lot more than $40. As a private tour guide, he seems to have some special privileges at the Vatican, and, before I knew it, I was hustling past the crowds, and found myself in the middle of Vatican Square.

God works in mysterious ways.

After Marco’s brief introduction, we entered the massive building housing the Vatican museum. At this juncture, I need to say I’m obsessed with the Holocaust. Ask anyone who knows me. But honestly, the Holocaust was not forefront on my mind at that time. Why would the prospect of viewing amazing Renaissance art make me think of the Holocaust?

But Pope Francis had other ideas. The current Pope wants everyone who enters the Vatican to know he’s been to Auschwitz. On July 29, 2016, to be exact. As soon as you walk in, you see a video playing on a screen. Lo and behold, before I could even get my bearings, there before my eyes, the barracks of Auschwitz.

And a video of the Pope entering the death camp under the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei gate.

What, I wondered, was going on? Why does the Pope want visitors to know he went to Auschwitz? I’m not sure, but here’s some theories. Penance for the Church’s role in the Holocaust. Maybe, but I think unlikely. Identification with the fate of the Jewish people during the Holocaust? Perhaps. Or, a less charitable reason (and, with apologies to the Pope, where my mind went when I saw the video): the Church is appropriating the suffering of Jews as its own. Just as the Church tried to take away our own relationship to our faith, the Church wants to integrate the Holocaust within its own history of martyrology, as a kind of modern day crucifixion of the chosen people.

In any event, the Pope had made sure that the Holocaust and Jewish-Christian relations would be front and center of mind as I journeyed through the Vatican.

Actually, the issue was going to arise anyway during the first stop of Marco’s tour: the Lapidarium. What, you ask, is a lapidarium? It’s a place where stone monuments and fragments of archaeological interest are exhibited. This one contained fragments of Roman funerial art and inscriptions dating back to the First through Fourth Centuries A.D.

In fact, there were two lapidariums, one Christian and the other Jewish.

The Christian one was in front.

The Jewish one, unsurprisingly, was in the back. According to the Vatican website, “these inscriptions offer an invaluable window into Romano-Jewish life of the 3rd and 4th centuries CE.”

Some of the Jewish funereal art, identifiable as such with the image of a menorah, were viewable in the front room.

But, by and large, the Vatican’s “window into Romano-Jewish life” was closed. Most of the Jewish fragments were inaccessible, housed in an adjacent room cordoned off by a rope. In front of the rope sat a guard. He had his chair, his fan and his one and only job: to make sure no one steps past the rope. It’s not, Marco explained, that the Vatican doesn’t want people to see the Jewish fragments. Rather, the Vatican wants to extract extra money for the privilege of viewing them, something like 50 euros per person ($55) beyond the regular entrance fee.

The guard was kind enough to leave his seat for a moment so that I could be photographed in front of the rope:

This experience makes you wonder what other ancient Jewish artifacts lie hidden within the Vatican’s massive complex. As with any museum, only some of its collection is on display. But there’s also the widespread belief that the Vatican holds ancient Jewish treasures, including perhaps the Menorah from the Second Temple. After all, the Arch of Titus shows it, along with other vessels from the Temple, being carried into Rome following the Temple’s destruction.

Theories abound. According to Marco’s website, “Perhaps the most attractive hypothesis situates the Menorah deep within the vaults of the Vatican’s vast collection. Many have claimed the Catholic Church hid the candelabrum either in the secret vaults beneath the Vatican or beneath the Church of Saint John the Lateran (which was officially theorized in 1291).”

There’s some pretty wild stories attesting to the Menorah’s presence at the Vatican. One of them, cited by Marco on his website, has a Rabbi Aderet from Monsey (a largely Orthodox city in Rockland County, New York) making contact with someone in the Vatican and offering $6 million to release the Menorah. (Why the Vatican, which is worth more than $10 billion dollars, would settle for such a paltry sum for this priceless object, is unexplained.) The plan was to somehow smuggle the Menorah out of the Vatican, get it on a ship bound for New York, unload it and bring it to the rabbi’s home. (How they were planning on getting past customs is anyone’s guess.) The Rabbi would dig a large hole in his back yard and bury it there for safe keeping until the Messiah’s arrival. A million dollars was allegedly paid to the Vatican by an anonymous Persian man as a sort of down payment. But the plan went awry when the Israeli Chief Rabbis found out about it and, logically, demanded the Menorah be sent to Israel rather than Monsey. The Persian man must have been quite wealthy, for when the Vatican offered to refund his $1 million dollars, he refused, content in the knowledge he’d done his share to rescue the Menorah.

It’s interesting to speculate, had the plan succeeded, what would have been the greater surprise: that the Messiah had at long last arrived or that the Menorah was being dug out from a backyard in Monsey.

Dr. Steven Fine’s 2016 book, “The Menorah,” an authoritative history of the object, its history and symbolism, relates some even taller tales. In one, an Oscar Goldman, owner of an electrical supply store in Kew Garden Hills, Queens, visited the Vatican in 1962 as part of a delegation of Jews to meet Pope John XXIII. After the visit, he reports, he was escorted down a staircase to a darkened room whereupon he thought he saw the Menorah and other Temple treasures. A related story has a Jewish electrician (the same Mr. Goodman?) being sent to fix the Vatican’s power supply when the electricity went out. As he walked into the basement (where apparently the electrical box was located), he saw his childhood friend, Chaim, who he knew before the war from his yeshiva in Moravia. Incredulous, he asked Chaim what he doing in the basement of the Vatican. Chaim responded that he’d survived the war by converting the Christianity, and, with his knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish sources, gotten a job with the Vatican as an archivist. Chaim instructed him to be quiet, and then, late at night, took him into the “depths of the basement,” showing him the Menorah and other treasures, and swearing him to silence on pain of death lest the secret get out. The electrician kept his word until he lay on his death bed, whereupon he related his wondrous story.

I ran into Dr. Fine, who I know socially, after returning from Rome. He asked me if I’d seen the Menorah at the Vatican. He meant this, of course, as a joke because–spoiler alert–it’s not there (or anywhere else). Most likely, as he establishes in his book, the Menorah was melted down for its metal during the sack of Rome or destroyed during the many fires the city endured. Or perhaps it was pillaged from Rome by the Vandals, shipped to North Africa, whereupon it was lost, perhaps at sea or otherwise. Dr. Fine concludes: “The menorah at the Vatican is an urban legend [of recent vintage], often believed by people of goodwill who really want the menorah to exist. For them, the menorah is the symbol of the Jewish people—all the more so once the Arch of Titus menorah was chosen for the Symbol of Israel” (p. 206).

Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble.

After the Lapidarium, we journeyed from room to room. One that stood out was the Gallery of Maps, dating from 1580, which features 40 impressively detailed panels of maps of Italy by an Italian artist and scientist, Ignazio Danti.

We continued on, encountering a room with artwork that reminded me of the Church’s less than flattering view of my religion. The room contained colorful angelic images interspersed with paintings in shades of brown. Wouldn’t you know it, the colorful ones were of Christian imagery, while the brown ones were scenes from the Torah (the “Old Testament” in the Church’s lexicon).

I suppose the message was that Christianity–the new–is exciting and alive while Judaism–the old–is desiccated and lifeless.

In another room, there was a portrait of Moses with the first half of the Ten Commandments.

But when you look closely at it, you notice something interesting. One of the commandments is missing! Specifically, the Second: “thou shall not have any other Gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” The first one is there, “I am the Lord your God.” So are numbers three through six, which have been reordered two through five, with Commandment number 3, “don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” as the second, number 4, to keep the Sabbath, the third, number 5, to honor your parents, the fourth, and number 6, not to murder, the fifth.

What gives? Clearly, this omission is no mistake. Turns out that Catholicism has its own version of the Ten Commandments! It folds the Second Commandment into the first, moves all the other ones up a notch, and then divides the last one “you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor” into commandments nine and ten. (Interestingly, the Protestants rejected this reordering and restored the order according to the Jewish version.) I suppose having a separate commandment against graven images was not going to fly in a religion whose very symbol is the graven image of Jesus on a cross. The Church may also be a bit touchy about stressing monotheism since in some way Jesus can be viewed as separate from God.

I continued with Marco’s group for some time until we reached a closed door. If I wanted to see the Raphael rooms, Marco informed me, I’d have to continue on my own, for he was bypassing them and heading straight for the Sistene Chapel. Apparently he’s got some special privilege with the Vatican that allows him to take a shortcut. Normally, he said, it would take another hour and a half to reach the Chapel. Wanting to see the Raphael rooms, I joined the masses of others in the labyrinth that is the Vatican museum.

Soon after heading out on my own, I was enjoying the splendor of Raphael’s frescos as well as the beautifully tiled floors.

Proceeding along, I noticed some interesting things. Everyone travels one way. Once you begin your journey through the Vatican, there’s no going back. As far as I could tell, you can’t exit until you’ve completed the whole tour. No back sliding allowed! There’s also no air conditioning, and Rome’s really hot in the summer (37 Celsius/100 Fahrenheit every day I was there), so the place was pretty stuffy. And there weren’t many places to sit down, nor, did I notice, other than at the entrance and exit, any bathrooms. I met some weary older folks. My advice for mobility challenged folks visiting the Vatican: don’t.

Surprisingly, there was good deal of modern art. Apparently, the Vatican is making an effort to be contemporary. There was even a blank canvas with a white frame, worthy of something you’d see at MOMA.

Most people zipped by these pieces in an effort to reach the Sistene Chapel. But I was intrigued, especially when I entered a room and, to my amazement, found works from the great Jewish artist, Marc Chagall.

One of them in particular drew my attention.

It’s called “Crucifix–Between God and the Devil.” It’s one of a series of paintings by Chagall depicting Jesus as a martyred Jew, wearing what seems to be a tallit (prayer shawl) as a loincloth. I looked at the date: 1943. That’s when I teared up. The Pope had already primed me to think of the Holocaust and here was Chagall bearing witness to the suffering of our people at its darkest hour. Even more, to my mind, using Christian iconography to condemn the silence of the world, and perhaps even the Church as well, a pictorial crying out to heaven over the daily mass slaughter of Jews.

At long last–about an hour and a half after I left Marco’s group, as he had predicted–I arrived at the entrance to the Sistene Chapel.

Before I entered, a guard instructed me to remove my hat and not take any pictures. Other guards were inside the chapel to enforce these edicts. I was entering a sanctuary, a holy space.

There was a menorah of sorts there, sitting right there in the open, and definitely not the one from the holy Temple.

Ironically, this space, the very site where Cardinals meet to crown Popes, has perhaps the most unchristian art in the Vatican. Michelangelo’s iconic frescos contain not a single depiction of Jesus. No crucifixion scenes. No apostles. Almost every image, other than the Last Judgment, is from the Hebrew Bible; the creation story, the flood, the patriarchs and the prophets. There’s also the most famous artistic rendering of a butt in all of art history, God literally ordering Adam’s ass out of Eden.

Perhaps, as Marco claimed, this was Michelangelo’s less than subtle way of expressing to Pope Julius II his feeling about being forced to spend four years painting the ceiling. (He did it, by the way, using scaffolding, not lying on his back as commonly believed.) I am less inclined to believe Marco’s theory that Michelangelo’s frescos were influenced by his “studies of the Talmud, Torah, and Kabbalah” or that, according to Rabbi Benjamin Blech’s 2008 book The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo’s Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican, they contain coded “messages of brotherhood, tolerance, and free-thinking to encourage ‘fellow travelers’ to challenge the repressive Roman Catholic Church of the time.”

Exhausted after a long and emotional afternoon, I was ready to leave. As with any museum, you exit through the gift shop. And, sure enough, the Vatican had one.

Actually, not one. Because if you missed the first one, there was another.

And yet another.

And then, to my surprise, a “pharmacy” (though no prescriptions needed, I presume). The pharmacist was apparently out. I guess like any respectable pharmacy, it closes earlier than the store.

Just in case you somehow missed the three gift shops, the Vatican wanted you to know not all was lost. There would be one more chance, an ultimate chance, to buy.

And, at long last, a bathroom. After passing through all those gift shops, the Vatican wanted to assure visitors that, unlike the items at the gift shops, the bathroom was free.

My visit complete, I headed back into the sweltering Roman evening and set out to enjoy a meal at a kosher restaurant.