Jesus and Blasphemy

http://jesusprophecies.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/jesus-before-the-sanhedrin/ Jesus Before the Sanhedrin 23 Apr On what basis in Jewish law was Jesus convicted by the Sanhedrin? Matthew and Mark say the high priest accused Jesus of blasphemy (Matthew 26:65; Mark 14:63). Did Jesus commit blasphemy? If not, why did the high priest believe he did or at least was able to convince the other priests present that Jesus spoke blasphemy? Luke records the trial held by the Sanhedrin in the morning: Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God. Then said they all, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said unto them, Ye say that I am. And they said, What need we any further witness? for we ourselves have heard of his own mouth. (Luke 22:69-71 KJV; emphasis mine) In both Matthew 26:63 and Mark 14:61 Jesus was asked if he were the Christ the Son of God (the Blessed). When he replied, yes, and said he would come from the right hand of God to judge the nation, they cried: “Blasphemy!” The trial in the evening in the home of the high priest within the Temple compound was not a legal trial, because no trial could be held at night if the death penalty was sought. The court did meet in the evening, but not for crimes that required the death sentence. Luke records the legal trial in the morning in the Hall of Hewn Stones on the Temple mount. This is where the Sanhedrin regularly met to hear the cases brought before them. They made their judgments before God, as the Temple stood just west and slightly north of the Sanhedrin meeting place. Yet, the Jews today say the crime for which Jesus was found guilty could not have been blasphemy because the only way anyone could commit blasphemy was to utter the ineffable Name—YHWH! Is this true or are they mistaken? Jesus said there were several kinds of blasphemy. He explained to the crowds when his public ministry was just beginning that all kinds of sins and blasphemies will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy committed against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven, either in the age in which Jesus preached (age of the Law) nor in the age to come—age of grace or the Gospel age (Matthew 12:31-32; Mark 3:28-30). So, which is correct, the New Testament accounts or what the Jews believe today? To understand this we must realize that the Jews today represent only a small faction of Judaism in the 1st century CE. Only the Pharisaical segment of Jewish society survived. Now it is certainly true that Judaism today is a varied culture, but it is also true that this variety come from the teaching of one group in the 1st century, namely, the Pharisees The Pharisees receive a bad name, understood from the writings of the New Testament. Nevertheless, Jesus did most of his debating with this sect. Very little is recorded of Jesus speaking with other segments of Judaism, like the Sadducees, Zealots, Herodians, Essenes or followers of John the Baptist to name a few. Jesus spoke with, dined with and debated with the rabbis and chief priests of his day, many of whom were Pharisees. They were the leaders of the nation and Jesus showed respect for their office and told the people to do so, as well. My point is not to demean Judaism today by saying they are wrong concerning their understanding of blasphemy as it was understood in the 1st century. Nor do I wish to blame the Jews for the death of Jesus. Jesus died for all mankind. The Jewish leadership in the 1st century acted as the representatives of all humanity when they sentenced Jesus to die. If the Jews were not the chosen people, then another tribe would have represented mankind and that tribe would have done the same thing. So, the Jews—per se—are not to blame for the crucifixion; the whole world is to blame, for we all have sinned and Jesus died to reconcile each of us to God. As the Scriptures conclude, we were God’s enemies—all of us—when Christ died for us (Romans 5:8-10. We love God, only because he love us first (1John 4:10, 19). So what is the conclusion? Can we know for certain? Yes, I believe we can, and the truth comes from the writings of the Jews—the Babylonian Talmud. Notice (‘blesses’, ‘blessing’, and ‘blessed’ are used by the rabbis for ‘curses’, ‘cursing’ and ‘cursed’): It has been taught: [The blasphemer is not punished] unless he ‘blesses‘ the Name, by the Name. Whence do we know this? — Samuel said: The Writ sayeth, And he that blasphemeth [nokeb] the name of the Lord… when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death. How do you know that the word nokeb [used in the Hebrew] means a ‘blessing‘? — From the verse, How shall I curse [Ekkob] whom God hath not cursed; whilst the formal prohibition is contained in the verse, thou shalt not revile God…[B. Sanhedrin; 56a (emphasis mine)] All this is saying is a blasphemer blasphemes God by cursing the Name (YHWH) with the Name, and then it gives the citation from Scripture that supports their understanding. The question as it applies to our argument is: did the high priest view Jesus remark as cursing (blessing) the Name with the Name according to Leviticus 24:16? The charges laid against Jesus at this point was that he said he would destroy the Temple and in three days build it up again. Viewed in this light the priest could have seen Jesus, a mere man, claiming to sit on the Throne of God, as God, coming to judge and destroy the Temple – the house of God and Jerusalem the city of God. Thus, cursing the Name with the Name. But to continue with the Talmud: …But perhaps it means ‘to pierce,’ as it is written, [So Jehoiada the priest took a chest,] and bored [wa-yikkob] a hole in the lid of it, the formal injunction against this being the verses, Ye shall destroy the names of them [idols] out of that place. Ye shall not do so unto the Lord your God? — The Name must be ‘blessed’ by the Name, which is absent here. But perhaps the text refers to the putting of two slips of parchment, each bearing the Divine Name, together, and piercing them both? — In that case one Name is pierced after the other. But perhaps it prohibits the engraving of the Divine Name on the Point of a knife and piercing therewith [the Divine Name written on a slip of parchment]? — In that case, the point of the knife pierces, not the Divine Name…[B. Sanhedrin; 56a (emphasis mine)] The point here is the Israelites were commanded to destroy the names of the gods they found in the Promised Land, but they were commanded to never do so to their God. Concerning our present argument, did the high priest view Jesus’ statement as a threat to destroy the name of God from out of the land (Deuteronomy 12:3-4)? By saying he was coming in the clouds to judge Jerusalem, implying destruction, the high priest could have viewed Jesus’ remark as a threat to destroy the place where God had placed his Name. Finally, we come to the present-day understanding of the Jews as it pertains to blasphemy. Notice: …But perhaps it refers to the pronunciation of the ineffable Name, as it is written, And Moses and Aaron took these men which are expressed [nikkebu] by their names; the formal prohibition being contained in the verse, Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God? — Firstly, the Name must be ‘blessed’ by the Name, which is absent here; and secondly, it is a prohibition in the form of a positive command, which is not deemed to be a prohibition at all. An alternative answer is this: The Writ saith, [And the Israelitish woman's son] blasphemed wa-yikkob [and cursed], proving that blasphemy [nokeb] denotes cursing. But perhaps it teaches that both offences must be perpetrated? You cannot think so, because it is written, Bring forth him that hath cursed, and not ‘him that hath blasphemed and cursed’, proving that one offence only is alluded to.[B. Sanhedrin; 56a (emphasis mine)] The point here is that the mere pronunciation of the ineffable Name is NOT blasphemy according to the Talmud. The modern Jewish understanding of the matter of blasphemy is clearly wrong, according to their own ancient writings. The conditions for blasphemy are: one must curse (bless) the Name with the Name, or one reviles God, or one destroys the name of God. Any one of these three conditions would be seen as blasphemy. So what did Jesus say to the high priest before the Sanhedrin? Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said (meaning yes, I am the Son of God): nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. [Matthew 26:64 KJV; parenthesis mine] Did the high priest see Jesus’ statement as “reviling” God (Exodus 22:28)? If Jesus were a mere man, he was placing himself upon the throne of God and judging the people of God. If he wasn’t viewed as insane, the priest could have judged this as abasing God, bringing him down to the level of a man, or saying a mere man could judge as God. Judging from the statements found in the Talmud, the high priest could have chosen any one of the conditions he wished and accused Jesus of blasphemy—seeing him as a man, but claiming to be God’s own Son and sitting at God’s right hand—upon the very Throne of God! However, since Jesus was merely telling the truth, his remark was a statement of his Deity and proved true in 70 CE. Nevertheless, according to the Scriptures, Jesus was found guilty of blasphemy, a sin worthy of death according to Jewish law. For this sin alone the Jewish authorities wished to have Jesus executed. http://www.answering-christianity.com/bassam_zawadi/jews_jesus_blasphemy.htm One argument often raised by Christians in order to try and prove the deity of Christ is that they say that the Jews accused Jesus of committing blasphemy. However, I am here to argue that the Jews misunderstood them and that Jesus never did commit blasphemy. We will also examine the real reason why the Jews accused Jesus of blasphemy. Here is one passage in which the Jews accuse Jesus of committing blasphemy... John 10:31-39 31 Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, 32 but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?" 33 "We are not stoning you for any good work," they replied, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God." 34 Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are "gods" ' [d]? 35 If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— 36 what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? 37 Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. 38 But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." 39 Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp. Jesus over here is rebuking the Jews for how they don't understand scripture. Jesus then says in verse 37 that if he does the works of the Father (obviously because nothing he does is of his own authority (John 5:30) and he is doing what God is commanding) then they should believe that he is God's son (son of God in the sense that he is serving God) and that they will know that the Father is in him and that he is in the Father (this shows oneness of purpose, see similar examples in John 17:21). Jesus told them the real reason why they wanted to kill him... John 8:37-40 37 I know you are Abraham's descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. 38 I am telling you what I have seen in the Father's presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father. [c]" 39 "Abraham is our father," they answered. If you were Abraham's children," said Jesus, "then you would [d] do what Abraham did. 40 As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. Jesus is accusing them of killing him simply because they do not like or want to accept his teachings. Jesus clearly stated to them that he is a MAN who was telling them the truth that he heard from GOD. NOT THAT HE IS GOD!!!!!!!!

Eat in Sukkah (7 days) :the Ushpizin another post

Eat in Sukkah (7 days) The festival of Sukkot, commemorating G-d's enveloping protection of the Children of Israel during their 40-year journey through the desert (1313-1273 BCE), is celebrated for seven days, beginning from the eve of Tishrei 15. During this time, we are commanded to "dwell" in a sukkah -- a hut of temporary construction, with a roof covering of raw, unfinished vegetable matter (branches, reeds, bamboo, etc.) -- signifying the temporality and fragily of human habitation and man-made shelter and our utter dependence upon G-d's protection and providence. "How [does one fulfill] the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah? One should eat, drink, and live in the sukkah, both day and night, as one lives in one's house on the other days of the year: for seven days a person should make his home his temporary dwelling, and his sukkah his permanent dwelling" (Code of Jewish Law, Orach Chaim 639:1). At least one k'zayit (approx. 1 oz.) of bread should be eaten in the sukkah on the first evening of the festival, between nightfall and midnight. A special blessing, Leishiv BaSukkah, is recited. For the rest of the festival, all meals must be eaten in the sukkah (see the Code of Jewish Law or consult a Halachic authority as to what constitutes a "meal"). Chabad custom is to refrain from eating or drinking anything outside of the sukkah, even a glass of water. Also see: the Ushpizin Links: The Big Sukkah; The Temporary Dwelling; The Easy Mitzvah • "Water Drawing" Celebrations (7 nights) When the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, one of the special Sukkot observances was to pour water on the Altar. The drawing of water for this purpose was preceded by all-night celebrations in the Temple courtyard; on the 15 steps leading to the azarah (inner courtyard) stood Levites while playing a variety of musical instruments, sages danced and juggled burning torches, and huge oil-burning lamps illuminated the entire city. The singing and dancing went on until daybreak, when a procession would make its way to the Shiloach Spring which flowed in a valley below the Temple to "draw water with joy." "One who did not see the joy of the water-drawing celebrations," declared the sages of the Talmud, "has not seen joy in his life." While water was poured each day of the fetival, the special celebrations were held only on Chol Hamoed since many of the elements of the celebration (e.g., the playing of musical instruments) are forbidden on Yom Tov. Today, we commemorate these joyous celebrations by holding Simchat Beit HaShoeivah ("joy of the water drawing") events in the streets, with music and dancing. The Lubavitcher Rebbe initiated the custom of holding such celebrations on Shabbat and Yom Tov as well -- without musical instruments of course. The fact that we cannot celebrate as we did in the Temple, said the Rebbe, means that we are free to celebrate the joy of Sukkot with singing and dancing every day of the festival.

The "Four Kinds"

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2618/jewish/The-Unpopular-Tzaddik.htm The "Four Kinds" (6 days) "And you shall take for yourself on the first day," instructs the Torah in Leviticus "the splendid fruit of a tree, fronds of dates, the branch of the thick-leafed tree and aravot of the river." Torah SheBaal Peh (the oral tradition given to Moses at Sinai and handed threough the generations, and later documented in the Mishnah and Talmud) identifies the four kinds as the etrog (citron), lulav (unopened palm branch), hadass (myrtle twig, of which three are taken) and aravah (willow, two twigs). The palm branch, three myrtle twigs and two willow twigs are bound together (with rings made from palm leaves). Each day of Sukkot -- except Shabbat -- we take the lulav in hand, recite a blessing over it, take hold of the etrog, hold the "Four Kinds" together, and move them back and forth in all directions (right, left, forward, up, down and back). An additional blessing, shehecheyanu, is recited the first time that the Four Kinds are taken during the festival. We also hold the Four Kinds during the Hallel prayer (moving them as above in specified places in the text) and the Hoshaanot prayers (during which we march around the reading table in the synagogue) which are included in the daily service each day of Sukkot. Chassidic Stories The Unpopular Tzaddik The Unpopular TzaddikBy Yerachmiel Tilles PrintE-mail Discuss (18) Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz was a spiritual giant in his generation. At first, his greatness was mostly unknown to his contemporaries, but he had no regrets; indeed, it suited him just fine. He spent his days and nights in Torah-study, prayer and meditation. Rarely was he interrupted. But then, the word began to spread, perhaps from fellow disciples of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, that Rabbi Pinchas was very, very special. People began to visit him on a regular basis, seeking his guidance, requesting his support, asking for his prayers and beseeching his blessing. The more he helped them, the more they came. The trickle to his door became a stream and the stream became a daily flood of personal stories and requests for help. Rabbi Pinchas was overwhelmed. He felt he was no longer serving G-d properly, because he no longer had sufficient time to study, pray and meditate as he should. He didn't know what to do. He needed more privacy and less distraction, but how could he turn away dozens and even hundreds of people who genuinely felt that he could help them? How could he convince them to go elsewhere, to others more willing and qualified than he? Then he had an idea. He would pray for heavenly help in the matter. Let G-d arrange it that people not be attracted to seek him out! Let G-d make him be despicable in the eyes of his fellows! "A tzaddik decrees and Heaven agrees," they say. Rabbi Pinchas prayed and so it became. No longer did people visit him. Not only that, on those occasions when he went to town, he was met with averted heads and a chilly atmosphere. Rabbi Pinchas didn't mind at all. Indeed, he was delighted. The old pattern was restored; rarely was he interrupted. Then the "Days of Awe" of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur passed, and there remained only four brief busy days to prepare for the Sukkot festival. In previous years, there had always been some yeshiva students or local townspeople who were only too glad to help the pious rabbi construct his sukkah-hut. But this time, not a single soul arrived. No one liked him, and no one even thought to help him. Not being handy in these matters, the rabbi didn't know what to do. Finally, having no choice, he was forced to hire a non-Jew to build his sukkah for him. But the hired man did not possess the tools that were needed, and Rabbi Pinchas could not get a single Jew in the neighborhood to lend him tools because they disliked him so much. In the end, his wife had to go to borrow them, and even that was difficult to accomplish due to the prevailing attitude towards her husband. With just a few hours remaining till the onset of the festival, they finally managed to complete a flimsy minimal structure. As the sun slid between the forest branches and the Rebbetzin lit the festive candles, Rabbi Pinchas hurried off to shul. Despite his solitary ways, he always made a point to attend the congregational prayers on the holidays; besides he didn't want to miss the opportunity to acquire a guest for the festival meal, something so integral to the essence of the holiday. In those days in Europe, people desiring an invitation to a meal would stand in the back of the shul upon the completion of the prayers. The householders would then invite them upon their way out, happy to so easily accomplish the mitzvah of hospitality. Rabbi Pinchas, unfortunately, did not find it so simple. Even those without a place to eat and desperate for an invitation to a sukkah in which to enjoy the festival meal, turned him down without a second thought. Eventually, everyone who needed a place and everyone who wanted a guest were satisfied, except for the tzaddik, Rabbi Pinchas. He trudged home alone, saddened and a bit shaken up at the realization that he might never have another guest, not even for the special festive meal of the First Night of Sukkos. Alas, that too was part of the price of his freedom.... It was worth it, wasn't it? Pausing just inside the entrance to his sukkah, Rabbi Pinchas began to chant the traditional invitation to the Ushpizin, the seven heavenly guests who visit every Jewish sukkah. Although not many are privileged to actually see these exalted visitors, Rabbi Pinchas was definitely one of the select few who had this experience on an annual basis. This year, he raised his eyes and saw the Patriarch Abraham--the first of the Ushpizin and therefore the honored guest for the first night of the festival--standing outside the door of the sukkah, keeping his distance. Rabbi Pinchas cried out to him in anguish: "Father Abraham! Why do you not enter my sukkah? What is my sin?" Replied the patriarch: "I am the embodiment of Chessed, serving G-d through deeds of loving-kindness. Hospitality was my specialty. I will not join a table where there are no guests." The crestfallen Rabbi Pinchas quickly re-ordered his priorities. He prayed that everything be restored to as it had been, and that he should find favor in the eyes of his fellows exactly as before. Again his prayer was answered. Within a short time, throngs of people were again finding their way to his door; seeking his guidance, asking his support, requesting his prayers, and beseeching his blessing. No longer could he devote all or even most of his time to his Torah-study, his prayer, and to his meditation. But thanks to his holy Sukkot guest, this was no longer seen as a problem. Biographical Note: Rabbi Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz (1726-1791) was considered to be one of the two most pre-eminent followers of the Chassidism's founder, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (along with Rabbi Israel's successor the Maggid of Mezritch).

the Four Kinds [taken on Sukkot

http://www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/3106/jewish/ The Ushpizin According to Kabbalistic tradition, we are visited in the sukkah by seven supernal ushpizin ("guests") -- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David. On each of the seven days of the festival, another of the seven ushpizin (in the above order) leads the group. (The sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880-1950) spoke of seven "chassidic ushpizin" as well: the Baal Shem Tov, the Maggid (Rabbi DovBer of Mezeritch), and the first five rebbes of Chabad: Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Rabbi DovBer of Lubavitch, Rabbi Menachem Mendel (the "Tzemach Tzeddek"), Rabbi Shmuel, and Rabbi Sholom DovBer. The Lubavitcher Rebbe would speak each night of Sukkot on the special characteristics of both the biblical and the chassidic ushpizin of the day and their connection to each other and their specific day of the festival.) The-Four-Mysteries-of-King-Solomon.htm The Four Mysteries of King Solomon Despite all the wisdom granted to [King] Solomon . . . he was mystified by the Four Kinds. As it is written: “Three things are wondrous to me”—these are the Passover offering, matzah and maror [eaten at the Passover seder]; “and four I do not know”—these are the Four Kinds [taken on Sukkot].2 On Sukkot, the Torah commands us to take the “Four Kinds”—the etrog (citron), lulav (an unopened frond of a date palm), hadas (myrtle twig) and aravah (willow twig). As is often the case with the Torah’s commandments, the “Written Torah” (the Pentateuch or “Five Books of Moses”) conveys this mitzvah in a few cryptic words, leaving it to the “Oral Torah” (the traditional interpretation of the Written Torah taught by Moses and handed down through the generations) to decipher their meaning. In the Written Torah, the verse regarding the Four Kinds reads: And you shall take for yourselves . . . the splendid fruit of a tree, fronds of dates, the branch of the thick-leafed tree and aravot of the river . . .3 King Solomon, the Midrash tells us, was mystified by this verse. “Who says that ‘the splendid fruit of a tree’ is the etrog?” he queried. “All fruit trees produce splendid fruit! [As for] ‘fronds of dates,’ the Torah tells us to take fronds, in the plural . . . yet we take a lulav, the unopened heart of the palm. And who says that ‘the branch of the thick-leafed tree’ is the myrtle? . . . And concerning the ‘aravot of the river’—all trees tend to grow near water.” How, indeed, do we know that “the splendid fruit of a tree, fronds of dates, the branch of the thick-leafed tree and aravot of the river” are the etrog, lulav, myrtle and willow? The Talmud, which summarizes forty generations of the oral tradition of Torah interpretation, identifies the Four Kinds through a series of homiletic exegeses of the Hebrew words employed by the verse. The clue to the identity of “the splendid fruit of a tree” lies in the word hadar (“splendid”), which can also be read as ha-dar—“that which dwells.” The etrog is unique in that, while other fruits each have a particular season in which they grow, the etrog “dwells in its tree all year round,” continuing to grow and develop under a variety of climatic conditions.4 As for the lulav, the Torah indeed writes, “fronds of dates,” but the word kapot (“fronds of”) is spelled without the letter vav, meaning that it can also be read kapat, “the frond of,” in the singular. In addition, the word kapot also means “bound,” implying that we are to take a closed frond (“the heart of the palm”). By these means, the Oral Torah identifies the second of the Four Kinds as the lulav.5 There are many “thick-leafed trees” in whose branches “the leaves completely cover the stem”; but the Hebrew word avot (“thick”) also means “plaited” and “rope-like.” Hence the “branch of the thick-leafed tree” (anaf eitz avot) is identified as the myrtle twig, whose overlapping leaves grow in knots of three, giving it the appearance of a plaited rope. There is another plant that meets this description—the hirduf (oleander, Nerium oleander)—but the Talmud rejects that possibility as inconsistent with the rule the “[the Torah’s] ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its pathways are peace” (since the hirduf is a thorny and poisonous plant).6 The aravot of the verse are identified as willow branches, because of the willow’s tendency to grow near water, and the elongated shape of its leaves (like a river).7 Another identifying mark of the aravah is that willow bushes tend to grow in close-knit groups (aravah is related to the word achavah, “brotherhood”). So what was it about the identity of the Four Kinds that so mystified King Solomon? Surely “the wisest of men” was as proficient in the ways of Torah exegesis as the Talmudic sages whose analysis is summarized above. In any case, there are many cryptic passages in the Torah where laws are derived from double meanings and variant spellings of its words. Solomon’s dramatic declaration regarding the etrog, lulav, myrtle and willow—“[Three are wondrous to me] and four I do not know”—must bode a deeper meaning, a meaning that relates to the inner significance of the Four Kinds taken on Sukkot. Four Species of Man The Four Kinds, says the Midrash, represent four types of people. Man’s mission in life consists of two basic challenges, learning and doing; or, as these relate to Jewish life, Torah and mitzvot. The Torah is the vehicle by which we gain knowledge of our Creator and insight into the essence of life; the mitzvot, the divine commandments, are the means by which we build a better and holier world, developing the physical creation into a “dwelling for G‑d.” These two endeavors define the four personalities represented in the Four Kinds. >The etrog, which has both a delicious taste and a delightful aroma, represents the perfect individual who both learns and achieves. The lulav, being the branch of the date palm, produces fruit that has a taste but no aroma; this is the prototype of the reclusive scholar who grows in wisdom but shuns the world of action. The fragrant but tasteless myrtle is the activist whose profusion of good deeds consumes all his time and energies. Finally, the tasteless, scentless willow represents the person who neither learns nor does, actualizing neither his intellectual potential nor his capacity to improve the world. On Sukkot, concludes the Midrash, these “Four Kinds” are “all bound together in one bundle,” each an integral part of the community of G‑d.8 The Tormented Fruit In light of this, we can understand the four things that mystified the wisest of men. If the “splendid fruit” in the Four Kinds represents the harmony of learning and accomplishment, why is this the fruit that “dwells in its tree all year round”? One would expect such perfection from a fruit maturing in tranquility, in a climate that is singularly attuned to its nature and needs—not from one whose development is agitated by ever-shifting conditions. And yet, time and again we indeed find that the greatest lives are those beset by travail and challenge; that the most balanced personalities are forged by the need to deal with changing circumstances and to constantly adapt to new climates and environments. This, to King Solomon, was one of the great mysteries of life. How does vacillation fuel growth? Why is it that the individual who enjoys a tranquil existence is never as “fragrant” and “delectable” as the one who is battered by the vicissitudes of life? Pressed Leaves The lulav, too, perplexed the great mind of Solomon. Is not the very nature of intellectual discourse that it produces varied opinions and conclusions? In the words of the Talmud, “Torah scholars sit in numerous groups and study the Torah. One group deems a thing impure, and another deems it pure; one group forbids a deed, and another permits it; one group disqualifies something, and another renders it fit.”9 So when the verse speaks of “fronds of dates,” we are inclined to understand these words in their literal, plural sense. For if the second of the Four Kinds connotes the Torah scholar—the human mind enfranchised to assimilate the divine wisdom—should it not consist of two palm branches, in keeping with the plural nature of the intellect? Should not their leaves be opened and spread, pointing to the various directions that the rational examination of a concept will take when embarked on by the mind of man? And yet, the lulav commanded by the Torah is a single, closed frond, its leaves fused to a single rod pointing in a single direction. As the above-quoted Talmudic passage concludes: “Should a person then ask: How, then, might I study Torah? But all was received from a single Shepherd.” This was the second of the two mysteries pondered by King Solomon. How do the flock of opinions and perspectives of Torah relate to their “single Shepherd”? How can the divine wisdom be funneled through the multifarious world of human reason and remain the singular truth of a singular G‑d? The Plaited Twig The myrtle in the Four Kinds represents the “deed” aspect of life—the manner in which we fulfill the purpose of creation with the physical actions of the mitzvot, thereby constructing a “dwelling for G‑d in the physical world.” Thus, the Torah identifies the myrtle by alluding to its “plaited” appearance, given it by the way that its leaves grow in clumps of three: the number “three” represents the realm of action, which is the third of the soul’s three “garments” or vehicles of expression (thought, speech and deed). Here lies what is perhaps the most profound mystery of all. How can the finite and mundane physical deed “house” the divine essence? Indeed, the plaited twig that comes to mind when thinking of the physical world is not the fragrant myrtle, but the barbed and poisonous hirduf! Yet it is the material world where G‑d elected to make His home. It is the physical deed to which He imparted the ability to serve as man’s highest form of communion with Him. Why? To the wisest of men, this was one of the four phenomena to which he could only say: “I do not know it.” A Brotherhood of Trees The fourth of Solomon’s mysteries concerns the willow, a plant with neither fragrance nor taste, devoid of learning as well as deeds. Why is this species counted among the Four Kinds? The verse itself answers that question by referring to the fourth kind as “aravot of the river.” The willow might not exhibit any positive qualities, but its roots are embedded in the banks of its ancestral river and nourished by the waters of its heritage. It, too, is a child of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; in its veins, too, course the love and awe of G‑d that they bequeathed to all their descendants. Another hallmark of the willow is that “it grows in brotherhood.” This alludes to a unique feature of the human “willow.” Taken alone, he might exhibit not a single positive trait or achievement; but when gathered in a community, the aura of holiness that suffuses each individual soul suddenly comes to light. Thus our sages tell us that the divine presence rests upon a gathering of ten individuals (the number that comprises a “community”) even if they are not engaged in the study of Torah or the performance of a mitzvah. This is also the significance of the minyan (the quorum of ten required to recite certain prayers): ten individuals gathered together represent a quantum leap in holiness. Ten ignorant boors make a minyan, while nine pious scholars do not. This is what mystified King Solomon about the willow. How does ten times nothing add up to something? If each on his own possesses no visible expression of his innate holiness, how does that change when ten of them come together? All trees grow on water, mused the wisest of men; what sets the willows apart, earning them a place among the Four Kinds? Simply the fact that they grow close together? Impossible Truths If we think of these mysteries, they are as enigmatic and elusive as when King Solomon pondered them thirty centuries ago. But we usually don’t think of them at all, so deeply are they ingrained in our reality. Despite their logical incomprehensibility, these are obvious and ever-present truths in our lives. Why do vacillation and hardship fuel growth? How can contradictory ideas embody a singular truth? Why does a simple physical deed elevate us to levels of holiness and G‑dliness unequaled by the most transcendent spiritual experience? How are a number of ordinary human beings magically transformed when knit into a community, greatly surpassing the sum of their individual parts? King Solomon couldn’t explain these mysteries; certainly, we cannot. But we recognize these as axiomatic to our lives, as four cornerstones to our existence that bear the stamp of a Creator within whose infinite being opposites merge and paradoxical truths harmoniously reside.10 FOOTNOTES 1. Proverbs 30:18. 2. Midrash Rabbah, Vayikra 30:14. 3. Leviticus 23:40. 4. Talmud, Sukkah 35a. 5. Ibid. 32a. 6. Ibid. 32b. 7. Ibid. 33b. 8. Midrash Rabbah, Vayikra 30:11. 9. Talmud, Chagigah 3b. 10. Based on an entry in the Rebbe’s journal dated Sukkot 5702 (1941); Reshimot #62, pp. 16–20.

Child of the Drawing Room kORCZAK

http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-1.htm Child of the Drawing Room He made his first moral decision at the age of five. Peering down at the courtyard around which his fashionable Warsaw building was wrapped like a fortress, Henryk Goldszmit confided to his maternal grandmother, the only one who understood him, his "bold scheme to remake the world." He would do away with all money, but how to do it and what to do next, he had no idea. The problem was perplexingly difficult, but the goal was clear. to fix things so that there would be no more dirty or hungry children like the janitor' s son and the gang down below with whom he was forbidden to play. "My little philosopher," said his grandmother, slipping him a raisin. He never knew the exact year he was born-July 22, 1878, or 1879 -because his father, Jozef Goldszmit, a prominent lawyer in Warsaw, delayed registering his birth. "I suffered a few difficult moments over that," Korczak was to write. "Mother called it gross negligence." Jozef may already have been showing signs of the instability that would eventually erupt into mental illness, or his procrastination may have been deliberate. Warsaw was then part of the Czarist empire (Poland having been partitioned over a century before by Austria, Prussia, and Russia), and many parents falsified their sons´ ages with the hope of postponing, even avoiding, their induction into the Czar´s army But though he hadn´t officially registered the birth of his first, and only, son, Jozef sent announcements to friends at home and abroad. He was extremely proud of a letter of blessing from the Chief Rabbi of Paris: "Your son will be a great man of Israel." Korczak kept the letter throughout his life, although he was aware that there had been little in his early behavior to give his father confidence that he was raising a great man. He was a dreamy child who could play for hours on his own. The large household was dominated by women: besides his mother, there were his younger sister and maternal grandmother, a cook, a maid, and a series of French governesses. Outside was a world where men had power, but in this elegant apartment of ornately carved chests and tables, plush sofas, and oriental rugs, "that stern regiment of women" held sway. In those days there were few places a child could play. Saxon Garden, in the heart of the city and not far from his home on Senatorska Street behind the National Theater, had no playgrounds with swings or soccer fields where a child could stretch his legs and work off his energy. Janitors took a broom to anyone who dared bounce a ball near their gates, and the police chased those children who made a sport of jumping on and off the red horse-drawn tramcars that clanged through the streets. Because it was considered bad manners for a child of good family to play in the courtyards, a sensitive, overprotected boy like Henryk could do nothing except sit indoors and "harbor secrets," or press his nose against the dining-room window and envy the janitor´ s son and the other roughnecks in the courtyard below. The boy heard repeatedly from his mother that poor children were dirty, used bad language, and had lice in their hair. They fought, threw stones, got their eyes poked out, and caught terrible diseases. But he saw nothing wrong with the janitor´s son and his friends. They ran about merrily all day, drank water from the well, and bought delicious candy from the hawkers whom he wasn´t allowed to go near. Their bad words were actually funny, and it was a hundred times more inviting to be down there with them than in that boring apartment with his French governess and his little sister Anna. "A child is someone who needs to move," he would write one day; to forbid this is "to strangle him, put a gag in his mouth, crush his will, burn his strength, leaving only the smell of smoke." The boy heard repeatedly from his mother that poor children were dirty, used bad language, and had lice in their hair. They fought, threw stones, got their eyes poked out, and caught terrible diseases. But he saw nothing wrong with the janitor´s son and his friends. They ran about merrily all day, drank water from the well, and bought delicious candy from the hawkers whom he wasn´t allowed to go near. Their bad words were actually funny, and it was a hundred times more inviting to be down there with them than in that boring apartment with his French governess and his little sister Anna. "A child is someone who needs to move," he would write one day; to forbid this is "to strangle him, put a gag in his mouth, crush his will, burn his strength, leaving only the smell of smoke."

Who was Janusz Korczak? I

http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-1.htm http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-0.htm The K I N G of C H I L D R E N -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The L I F E and D E A T H of JANUSZ KORCZAK by: Betty Jean Lifton St. Martin´s Griffin -New York Who was Janusz Korczak? "The lives of great men are like legends-difficult but beautiful, " Janusz Korczak once wrote, and it was true of his. Yet most Americans have never heard of Korczak, a Polish-Jewish children´s writer and educator who is as well known in Europe as Anne Frank. Like her, he died in the Holocaust and left behind a diary; unlike her, he had a chance to escape that fate-a chance he chose not to take. His legend began on August 6, 1942, during the early stages of the Nazi liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto-though his dedication to destitute children was legendary long before the war. When the Germans ordered his famous orphanage evacuated, Korczak was forced to gather together the two hundred children in his care. He led them with quiet dignity on that final march through the ghetto streets to the train that would take them to "resettlement in the East" -the Nazi euphemism for the death camp Treblinka. He was to die as Henryk Goldszmit, the name he was born with, but it was by his pseudonym that he would be remembered. It was Janusz Korczak who introduced progressive orphanages designed as just communities into Poland, founded the first national children´s newspaper, trained teachers in what we now call moral education, and worked in juvenile courts defending children's rights. His books How to Love a Child and The Child´s Right to Respect gave parents and teachers new insights into child psychology. Generations of young people had grown up on his books, especially the classic King Matt the First, which tells of the adventures and tribulations of a boy king who aspires to bring reforms to bis subjects. It was as beloved in Poland as Peter Pan and Alicein Wonderland were in the English-speaking world. During the mid- 1930s, he had his own radio program, in which, as the "Old Doctor," hedispensed homey wisdom and wry humor. Somehow, listening to his deceptively simple words made his listeners feel like better people. At the end, Korczak, who had directed a Catholic as well as a Jewish orphanage before the war, had refused all offers of help for his own safetyfrom his Gentile colleagues and friends. "You do not leave a sick child inthe night, and you do not leave children at a time like this," he said. I first heard of Janusz Korczak in the summer of 1978 when friends who had left Poland during the war stopped by my home on Cape Codwith a theater director who had just arrived from Warsaw. As she wasdescribing what it had been like for her troupe to perform in JanuszKorczak´s ghetto orphanage, I interrupted to ask who Korczak was. I couldn´t tell if she was more shocked at my ignorance or at my mispro- nunciation of his name, but she spent a few moments teaching me to say Kor-chock before answering my question. As we spoke about him that afternoon on Cape Cod, Korczak emergedas a utopian and yet pragmatic figure preoccupied with creating a better world through the education of children. I could also see him belongingto that unique group ofwriters, along with Lewis Carroll and James Barrie, who were most at home in the company of the children for whom they created their stories. With a difference. Korczak´s children did not romp with their nannies on the manicured lawns of Kensington Gardens butlanguished in the dark slums ofWarsaw. He set up orphanages and livedamong children in real life, not just in the imagination, for he saw themas the salvation of the world. It wasn´t that Korczak glorified children, as did Rousseau, whom he considered naive. Korczak felt that within each child there burned a moral spark that could vanquish thedarkness at the core of human nature. Toprevent that spark from being extinguished, one had to love and nurturethe young, make it possible for them to believe in truth and justice. When the Nazis materialized out of that darkness with their swastikas, polishedboots, and leather whips, Korczak was prepared to shield his Jewishchildren, as he always had, from the injustices of the adult world. Hewent with them into the ghetto, although he had been offered refuge on the Aryan side of occupied Warsaw, and spent the last two-odd years of his life protecting them and other orphans from starvation and disease. The theater director described how she had watched with others from behind shuttered windows in the Warsaw Ghetto as Korczak, head held high, marched by with his little band on that last day. It seemed to her then that this man, who behaved as if he had a divine calling to savechildren, had failed, much as his fictional King Matt had failed in hisattempt to make the world a better place. And yet, by remaining true tohis principles and not abandoning the children when they needed himmost, he had achieved his own kind of victory. Korczak wrote of life as a strange dream, and sometimes my own life seemed just that as I began learning about his. Until 1978 I had been neither personally nor professionally involved with the Holocaust, but in the fall of that year my thirteen-year-old daughter and I went to live in Munich with my husband, who was beginning his study of the psychology of Nazi doctors. It wasn´t long before our small apartment was filled with books on the Third Reich and I was foraging through this grim library. Plunging into Holocaust literature, especially in Germany, was like plunging into an abyss. I seemed to be living in two time frames at once, with the past often taking on more reality than the present. Waking up in the middle of the night, I would transform the smoke stacks of the neighboring brewery into crematoria; the localtrain would become a cattle car; and Bavarian men parading in colorful costumes would metamorphose into the SS goose-stepping through the streets in full regalia. As an as- similated American Jew who had never dwelt on my Jewish identity, I was now confronted with what it meant to be a Jew during the Third Reich in Europe -and, for that matter, through all of history. Often, in the volumes describing the murderous behavior of Nazi doctors, I would find references to Janusz Korczak´s last march with the children. I wanted to know more about this man -a good doctor- who had chosen to die rather than compromise the principles by which helived. What had given him the strength to uphold those principles in aworld gone mad? But something else drew me to Janusz Korczak. I identified with him as a writer -as one who has written fantasies for children, and workingas a journalist in the Far East, reported on war-wounded, orphaned, anddisplaced children in Hiroshima, Korea, and Vietnam. Many of my booksare concerned with the right of all children to know their heritage andto grow up in a world unthreatened by war. Yet I might not have pursued my interest in Janusz Korczak any further had my husband and I not been injured in a car crash in Paris and gone to the Sinai to recuperate. On our return trip by way of Jerusalem, I heard that some of the orphans Korczak had raised and the teachers he had trained were living in Israel. And in that city of strange dreams I made a sudden decision to remain for a few months with my daughter in order to interview them. I rented a small stone house overlooking the walls of the Old City and went about with an interpreter to interview Korczakians, as they call themselves. They ranged in age from the fifties to the eighties, all having lived or taught in his Jewish orphanage during different periods after its founding in 1912. Many were alive because as Zionists they had emigrated to Palestine in the nineteen-thirties; a few had survived ghettos and concentration camps or had spent the war years in remote towns in Siberia. Others had come to Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War in the wake of the "anti-Zionist purge" that essentially swept Poland of its remaining Jews. " I dont want to talk about the dead Korczak, but the living one ," they would begin, disturbed at his being remembered for the way he died rather than for the way he had lived. It was not the martyr whom they had known and revered, but the vital, fallible father and teacher. Listening to them, I could envision Korczak as a modest, disciplined man who dismissed with an ironic quip problems that would have over whelmed others. Traveling to the kibbutzim and the cities he had visited during the two brief trips he made to Palestine in the mid-thirties, I tried to understand his state of mind then. Although not a Zionist, Korczak had been forced, like so many acculturated Jewish writers in prewar Europe, to keep one step ahead of the malevolent thrusts of history. When the rise of extreme nationalism in Poland caused him to despair about the future of his work, he turned to Palestine but was deeply ambivalent about whether or not to settle there. Believing that, to avoid being a deserter, " one has to remain at one´s post till the very last moment, " he was still in Warsaw on September 1, 1939, when the Nazi invasion of Poland settled the issue for him. Who was Janusz Korczak? I have on my desk his two best-known photographs: one of himself as a young boy that he used as the frontispiece of his book King Matt the First so that his readers could see him as he was when he was small and vulnerable like them; the other of a man whose eyes are intense and sad and whose bald head disappears into white space because an impulsive orphan ripped the photograph out of the developer before it was ready. These are the two Janusz Korczaks-the young utopian King Matt who dreamed of making a better world for children, and the skeptical Old Doctor who knew that one always falls short of attaining the dream. " It will be hard to describe Korczak to Americans, " the Korczakians had told me in Israel. I was to hear the same sentiments from Korczakians in Poland-but for different reasons. " He was very Polish, " Igor Newerly, Korczak´s former secretary and now a prominent writer, told me. " But at the same time that he was part of the Polish intelligentsia of his period, he was alone. A man with his own individualistic style and beliefs. He was warm and witty, but he was also lonely and sad. He was everything, and you have to capture that. " To capture everything, I soon realized, meant to see Korczak as both a Pole and a Jew. to be both-in the words of the novelist Tadeusz Konwicki -is more difficult than to be just a Pole or just a Jew. The problem is revealed in the semantics of the issue: a Polish Catholic is called a Pole, but a Polish Jew is called a Jew, not a Pole. Perhaps because Korczak was determined to live as both a Pole and a Jew in prewar Poland, he was not above criticism in his lifetime: many Jews saw him as a renegade who wrote in Polish rather than Yiddish or Hebrew, while no amount of acculturation could make the right-wing Poles forget that he was a Jew. The radical socialists and the communists of the interwar period saw him as a conservative because he was not politically active, and the conservatives saw him as a radical because of his socialist sympathies. There were those who considered him an eccentric, even as they sang his praises and supported his causes: unmarried, asocial, he was as intolerant of pompous and self-aggrandizing adults as he was tolerant and forgiving of mischievous children. As I talked with people in Warsaw i pondered how to write this book about Janusz Korczak. Those who do not want their Biographys written burn their papers; history had done that for Korczak. The Warsaw Ghetto, where he was confined from late 1940 until mid-1942, was destroyed by the Germans during the uprising there a year after his death. Consumed in the flames were the notebooks in which Korczak had jotted down his thoughts in his microscopic handwriting; his letters and memorabilia; his observations on children's sleep patterns, and the weight and height charts collected over thirty years that were to comprise a book on child development; his library of both literary and scientific books in French, German, and Russian, as well as Polish; and his drafts of books he planned to write. The relatives and childhood friends who would have been able to fill in the details of Korczak's early life and provide some portrait of his parents and sister died in the camps. To go in search of Janusz Korczak, as i did, was to seek a man who was no longer there in a place that was no longer there. His multi-ethnic world no longer exists. Warsaw, once called the Paris of the East, vibrant with caf‚s, fine restaurants, and cabarets, was leveled by the Germans during the uprising of the Poles in 1944. Rebuilt after the war (with the baroque Palace of Culture, an unwelcome gift from the Russians, dominating the skyline), the city resonates with economic and political discontent. During my four trips to Poland and my two trips to Israel between 1979 and 1986, the Korczakians were always generous enough to delve into their memories for one more detail about their experiences with Korczak. in the sparse archives in Warsaw and Israel I was able to find a few books of reminiscences by people who had known Korczak in one capacity or another. There were also copies of his twenty-four published fiction and nonfiction books-many of them autobiographical-as well as the newspaper and magazine articles, numbering over one thousand, that he wrote throughout his life. Other than the six dozen letters written in the late twenties and thirties that were saved by their recipients in Palestine, all that remains of Korczak's private papers is the diary that he wrote in the last desperate months of his life. Smuggled out of the ghetto after his death, it was sealed up in the walls of his Catholic orphanage in the Warsaw suburb of Bielany and retrieved after the war ended. Although Korczak died a year before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, many of his surviving Jewish orphans and teachers returned to Poland from all over the world to honor him during the commemoration of the Uprising´s fortieth anniversary in April of 1983. They came reluctantly, some because of the imposition of martial law in 1981 and the disbanding of Solidarity, but most because of the pain of reliving the past and of seeing how little remained of the world they had known. It is this lost world of Janusz Korczak, and of Warsaw's 350,000 Jews, that one encounters when one visits the former site of the Jewish quarter. It had been walled in by the Nazis to make the ghetto, and then burned by them to make the barren stretch of rubble that for many years after the war the Poles referred to as the "Wild West." New buildings have gradually risen over the ashes and rubble. The Ghetto Fighters Monument sits in the center of this unnatural landscape, reminding one of the unnatural cruelties which were committed there. The International Janusz Korczak Association, based in Warsaw, invited its members to an unveiling of his bust that now commands the front courtyard of the former Jewish orphanage. The irony would not be lost on the Old Doctor that the four-storied white building, gutted during the war, was restored in the mid-fifties without the garret room that had served as his study. The stretch of roof is no longer broken by the graceful arc of the three-paned window through which he had peered at the children playing below and fed the wild sparrows who kept him company. When the unveiling ceremony was over, the Korczakians wandered through the orphanage, looking-for what? Themselves as children or apprentice teachers? For the Old Doctor? For Stefa Wilczynska, who had been his codirector for thirty years? The Polish orphans who live there now moved like phantoms through the halls, making room for the old phantoms who had come back. They invited us to sit in the large recreation room, which had also served for dining and studying in Korczak's day, to watch them perform two short plays: one a humorous skit based on a scene from King Matt; the other a reenactment of the march by Korczak and the Jewish orphans to the train that transported them to Treblinka. The Polish children became the ill-fated Jewish ones they had heard so much about, walking slowly with Korczak to their unknown destination, even climbing up into an imaginary cattle car and gathering in a circle around him, swaying with the movement of the train, as he told them one last story in which good prevails over evil. On the chartered bus that was taking us back to our lodgings, I sat next to Michal (Misha) Wroblewski, a teacher who was the last among the survivors to have seen Korczak alive. He bad been working on the other side of the wall -at a job Korczak had managed to find for him- and returned to the ghetto orphanage late that afternoon to find everyone gone. Misha was silent for some time, and then he leaned over to me: " You know, everyone makes so much of Korczak´s last decision to go with the children to the train. But his whole life was made up of moral decisions. The decision to become a children´s doctor. The decision to give up medicine and his writing career to take care of poor orphans. The decision to go with the Jewish orphans into the ghetto. As for that last decision to go with the children to Treblinka, it was part of his nature. It was who he was. He wouldn´t understand why we are making so much of it today. " As I worked on this book back in New York City and Cape Cod, I came to see Korczak as a man who walked without fear over what the Hasidim call the narrow bridge of life, making at each stage the moral decisions that would inform his actions. 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My Brother’s Keeper –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Brother's_Keeper_(film) My Brother's Keeper is a 1948 British crime film in the form of a convicts-on-the-run chase thriller, directed by Alfred Roome for Gainsborough Pictures. It was the first of only two films directed by Roome (the other being the following year's comedy It's Not Cricket) during a long career as a film editor. The film stars Jack Warner and George Cole and was produced by Sydney Box.

Keeper My Brother’s Keeper – 1948 | 96 mins | Drama | B&W Plot Synopsis Two prisoners on their way to a West Country jail have escaped handcuffed together. One, George Martin (Jack Warner), is a hardened criminal; his companion Willie (George Cole) is a simple-minded youth who declares he is innocent of the crime for which he is awaiting trial. Martin steals a corporal’s uniform and passes Willie off as a deserter in his charge. They make their way to a garage owned by friendly Nora Lawrence, who gives them a night’s shelter. Next morning, while filing their handcuffs apart in a lonely cottage, they are disturbed by a man with a sporting gun. Martin has no compunction in killing him. A little later, their handcuffs broken, he deserts Willie. Meanwhile, the police hunt has been joined by Ronald Waring, whose news-editor disdains the fact that Ronald is on his honeymoon. While he is being shaved in a barber’s shop Martin finds. himself sitting next to the local police sergeant. Then, seeking refuge in a chapel, he. is recognised by the sergeant’s wife while Willie gives himself up and is charged with the sportsman’s murder. Martin telephones his wife for money. A sympathetic taxi-driver drives her from London to bring it to him. They arrive as the fugitive is cornered in the woods. With the police on three sides, he makes a final bid for freedom by entering a minefield. Watched by reporters, sightseers, his wife, and Nora, he nimbly picks his way. Suddenly there is a, flash, a roar, a spout of smoke; the pursuit is over. Reception[edit source | editbeta]My Brother's Keeper is a well-regarded film, with a reputation as a tight, tense and fast-moving thriller with Roome's previous editing experience being well utilised. The characterisation of the two main protagonists is praised for going deeper than the stereotypes of the tough, reckless criminal and the dim, hapless innocent. Via the 1950 film The Blue Lamp, and Dixon of Dock Green, the TV series developed from it which ran until the mid-1970s, Warner became forever engrained on the British consciousness as George "Evenin' all" Dixon, the avuncular upholder of law and order. My Brother's Keeper is often cited as an example of the dramatic range of which Warner was capable, before he became typecast. Cole's performance too is credited as one of the factors in his unusually smooth transition from child star to adult actor. The film's main weakness is cited as the interpolation of a pseudo-comic and largely irrelevant subplot involving a newspaper reporter trying to cover the story while on honeymoon in the area.