Leon the tourguide

Leon the tourguide
Leon the Tour Guide

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

A Lesson in Peace from the festival of Succot – The festival of booths.

Succot is one of the three pilgrim festivals of Israel. The other two are Passover and Pentecost (Shavuot). This means that one goes up to Jerusalem to celebrate them. Other festivals can be celebrated in your own town but these three festivals must be celebrated in Jerusalem.

Succot is different from the other two in that it has only one name, Hag Hasuccot, whereas the other two each have three names. These names signify three dimensions of the feast; an historic or national dimension, a natural dimension and a heavenly dimension.

These three dimensions signify the harmony between the nation of Israel, nature and God.

By celebrating these festivals we acknowledge that a harmony and unity exists between the nation of Israel, nature and God.

In celebrating Succot, however we are acknowledging an even higher unity, namely the unity of all mankind.

Without mankind the well-ordered arrangement of things would be disturbed, just as if the fruit stopped ripening in its season or the sun and the moon changed their course. Nature is only complete if all its parts exist and mankind and the Jewish People are two of those parts. Their existence is as necessary as all the other parts of nature.

God is above all the parts and guarantees their continued existence, therefore everybody and everything that exists must acknowledge the sovereignty of God. The nation of Israel does this by celebrating the festivals.

Sukkot, however is special, because it is the only festival when not only the Jewish people must go up to Jerusalem but all mankind must go up, according to the words of the prophet Zachariah:

Zachariah 14:16

“And it shall come to pass, that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths.”

The booth symbolizes a universal home. By building a Sukkah and living in it for 7 days, instead of in his regular home, a Jew symbolically goes out of his national boundaries to live among the rest of mankind.

Going out of one's home into the world is the opposite of what the Jew does for example on Passover when he gathers his family around him in his home and invites the hungry to enter.

In Succot the Jew is putting himself in the virtual position of  being  hungry and homeless and giving the rest of mankind an opportunity to show its humanity by helping to give the Jew shelter.

On Passover and Pentecost Jews celebrate that they became a nation. On Tabernacles Jews celebrate their equality with other nations.

Universalism requires individualism. At Passover with the exodus from Egypt and at Pentecost, by receiving the law on Mt. Sinai the Jew became a clearly identifiable individual national entity. On Sukkot they became a part of the universal brotherhood of nations.

These events, namely, the Exodus from Egypt and the receiving of the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai, fixes the national character of the Jewish people.

Once they have a clear picture of who they are and know and are proud of their own national heritage then they can join the rest of the nations and live at harmony with them.

Succot symbolizes the identification by each nation of the distinctive characteristics of other nations. When a nation identifies and respects the customs and history of its neighbor then it can live in harmony with that nation.

As long as a nation exists on earth that thinks its way is the only right way and all other ways are wrong it will try to make war to bring other nations over to its way of thinking and we won't have peace.
Peace can only be achieved when we accept the differences of each other and not try to make everybody like ourselves or try to make ourselves like others.

We all live in the house of the Lord. The world is His house.

Only by love and acceptance of one another will His house be established.

Micah 4:5

Let all people walk everyone in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.


Friday, December 18, 2015

Cul de Sac by Roman Polanski. An interpretation by Leon Gork



Cul de Sac Dir: Roman Polanski 1966 seen at the Jerusalem Cinemateque on Tue 14th Dec 2016

The end of the road is the tragedy of the victor in man’s struggle for supremacy over a world of evil doers, who threaten to tumble him from the heights of his dominions, as in the children’s song “I’m the king of the castle and you’re the dirty rascal”, is that he’s left alone; the beautiful damsel, who was to be the prize of victory, has disappeared, his castle is in ruins, his loyal followers, having been chased away by him, have left him. He is all alone at the top of a sand heap, which was once his castle, and he’s happy, not being aware even of his tragic situation.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Knife in Water. My interpretation of a movie by Roman Polansky



Knife in the Water. "Nóz w wodzie" (original title) Dir: Roman Polanski 1962 Seen at the Jerusalem Cinemateque Mon 14th Dec. 2015

Most people live mundane, monotonous lives, consisting mostly of routine activities, so it’s not surprising to find that many people dream of exciting or romantic situations. When such a situation occurs, as in this film people may at first be hesitant to make the best of it, but as the situation develops it’s possibilities for a thrill become more apparent and people grab it with open arms.

The consequences of having a thrill for a moment can be disastrous, but amazingly the expected disaster is avoided and a big sigh of relief goes up from the audience.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Mein Land Dein Land (Heb title: קו הפרדה) Interpretation


Mein Land dein Land. Hebrew title קו הפרדה Dir: Alexander Dierbach Seen at the Jerusalem cinemateque 12th Dec 2015


As long as the war lasted many Germans avidly supported National Socialism, belonging to the party and participating in its orgies of persecution, while others were simply patriotic Germans.
After the war, however, with the Americans and the Russians controlling Germany, it became a matter of life and death to demonstrate that one had not supported National Socialism and even abhorred the Nazi philosophy.

The German who came under control of the Soviet Union, found that even this was not enough to satisfy the new regime, which built a wall separating Germany into East and West, ostensibly to keep out the corrupting influences of the decadent, capitalistic West.

East Germany was to be the new utopian society of the Soviets, cleansed of any taint of capitalism, National Socialism and aristocratic heritage.

The Germans of East Germany were now obliged to demonstrate support for Communistic ideals, which previously, under National Socialistic Germany of Hitler they had to reject and even detest. Changing loyalties, in order to survive, lead to crises in the community and the family.
The conclusion is that the the Germans and all the world learned that patriotism is not fixed in concrete. One can, nay, must, change ones patriotic feelings according to what is expedient for survival. Regimes care little or nothing for the well-being of the individual, and, in any case are constantly changing. This means that people must take care of themselves or else suffer the vagaries of constantly changing, irresponsible regimes.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Rocco and His Brothers. Directed by: Luchino Visconti.


Rocco and his brothers. Dir: Luchino Visconti 1960. From the 3rd Ear at the Jerusalem cinemateque. Sun 5th Dec. 2015

This wonderful movie focuses on the tragedy of farmers who are forced to migrate to the big city, because of circumstances, in a modern world, where the big cities offer the means of earning a living, no longer possible in agriculture.

The dream of returning to an earlier, ideal world, where one was honored and life was beautiful, even though it was hard and they were poor, motivates the desire to be noble, despite the dishonorable temptations of the the city. This leads to making absurd sacrifices to achieve the the goal of attaining honor and nobility.

The hero becomes like a knight in shining armour, he is a veritable Don Quixote; he sacrifices the object he loves most in all the world, the woman he loves, and who he rescued from dishonor, and so allowing his immoral brother to have her, causing her, in her disappointment, to return to her original immoral situation.

Saturday, December 5, 2015

The Rest is Silence - Movie interpretation


The Rest is Silence. Dir: Nae Caranfil. Seen at the Jerusalem Cinemateque Thu 3rd Dec. 2015

One of the reasons why National leaders, especially dictators, love cinema is because cinema has the ability to perpetuate historic events, like great battles, that inspired the people to pride in their nation and their leader at the time when they happened. A film showing a great battle, for example, can be shown again and again and each time the people will be inspired as they had been at the time of the actual battle. This is the power of the cinema.

The director in this movie succeeds in demonstrating this power to the king of Romania and the cinema industry is set on its way to success. This is why my association with the title of this movie is with the phrase “and the rest is history”.

But it seems that I’m wrong and that its actually taken from the last words of Prince Hamlet in Shakespeare's play Hamlet. This is suitable for several reasons, but mostly because the theatre sees cinema as its death knoll. In fact the movie ends when the most ardent supporter of cinema, realizing the disaster that cinema, that he has ardently supported is going to bring an end to theatre, sets fire to the store of films, kept in a storeroom of the theatre, and inadvertently burns down the theater and the heroine, an aspiring actress burns to death in the conflagration. She is the sacrifice for the success of cinema.
O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Movie Interpretations Gallery


3-Iron Director: Ki-doc-kim 2004 from the 3rdear at the cinemateque Jerusalem seen Tue 2nd Dec.

Extraordinary people, no matter how good they are or how gentle they are towards others, even towards plants and the environment, must live according to the laws that govern society, however harsh these may be, or face the consequences. The law can even mete out cruel punishments to the criminal. The only way a person can live contrary to the the laws of society is by becoming invisible, which is possible as this wonderful movie shows.


All of Me "Llévate mis amores" (original title) Arturo Gonzales Vilaseñor 2014

This documentary is about the poor helping the very poor. Poor women, practically starving themselves prepare plastic bags filled with rice, stand at the side of railway tracks, where freight trains rumble past with starving migrants hanging from their sides and balancing on their roofs, and hold out the bags so that the starving migrants can reach out and grab them as the train passes by.


1.     Baran Director Majid Majidi 2001

This is a powerful movie that brings us into an atmosphere of suffering, like Dante’s inferno; the skeleton of a high level building with fires at each level. The laborers interminably push wheelbarrows and carry heavy bags of cement from one level to the other. At the same time they live in fear that labor inspectors will have them dismissed.  The film, by showing modern buildings and cars in the far distance, make a point that not everybody in Iran lives like this, only the outsiders, like the refugees from Afghanistan. The impossible happens and a beautiful, young girl enters this hell and a young man, falls in love with her and this feeling of love lifts him up to feelings of happiness, and he performs acts of heroism for his beloved. It doesn’t matter that she can’t requite his love, because his life is sustained by his feelings of happiness and love.


Children of Heaven Majid Majidi 1997
This movie is full of interesting and exciting scenes; they are really unforgettable, such as the opening scene of the cobbler repairing a girl’s pink shoe, which is the crux of the matter. Later the picture of the little girl, sitting like a Buddha, dressed in vivid red and yellow velvet, with a kind of crown on her head, looks like a princess. Later she proves worthy of such a title; she is kind, patient and determined. This is especially evident in a scene when she eventually catches up with the girl who wears her shoes. Then the scene of her chasing her brother’s sneaker, carried away by a stream of water is exciting and brings us to a feeling of relief and happiness. Throughout the movie we are kept in alternating suspense and relief. It’s like an emotional roller coaster and is great entertainment.


Conrack. Director: Martin Ritt. 1974 from you tube. Seen: Thu 3rdNov 2015

Good teachers are rare breeds. Not only is it difficult to find people with the training and ability to be good teachers, there’s a more difficult problem to overcome in finding a good teacher and that is the resistance of communities to accept the change that good teachers bring about in society. They are scared of change because they see it as a threat to their livelihood, which in many communities depends on exploiting ignorant, uneducated people; they are forced by their uneducated situation to accept menial jobs and so aren’t a threat to their higher paid jobs. They are a threat to employers because the more educated they are the more they’d have to be paid. So teachers, who are trying to educate and so raise the poorer people to a higher level in society have a difficult job.


The Good Heart Director   2009 From the Third Ear at the Cinemateque. Seen Mon 1st Dec 2016

Mostly it seems that people exploit the good actions of kind hearted people toward them and this turns the kind hearted person into being bitter and not willing to perform any more acts of kindness. Notwithstanding, however, this movie shows that it’s always worthwhile to perform an act of kindness when the opportunity presents itself because the ultimate result can be surprisingly good as this excellent. This is a most entertaining movie 


The Gunman. Pierre Morel 2015

I’m amazed at how often I can feel tension and excitement looking at movies, showing the war between the forces of evil and the forces of justice. Even though I know that the forces of evil stand no chance of destroying the forces of good, represented by Shean Penn, especially considering that we get regular views of muscular physique, I’m still tense, because the forces of evil, this time are really powerful while the forces of good have the added burden of needing to protect a beautiful woman (that really proves that they are on the good side), our tension is also increased by the knowledge we receive from the doctor that our hero is suffering from a debilitating illness, so even while he’s on top we dread that the deadly illness will strike him down. Naturally this doesn’t happen, but this does cause us some concern. The pursuit takes us through Barcelona and Granada, with massive high power shooting, fast driving and amazing stunts, which end in the bullring of Granada, with a magnificent scene, worthy of the defeat of evil; the bull gores the evil leader. Shean Penn is amazing; he’s a regular one man army. This movie held my attention completely, but it might not for some viewers.


The Bedroom. Todd Field 2001
The mystery told in this excellent movie isn’t about who did it, which is expected and we know who it is, but the beauty of the movie lies in the eventual explanation about why things happened the way they did. This explanation may be obvious to some viewers right at the beginning of the movie but it came to me as a surprise and added immensely to my enjoyment ot the move, which also lay in the excellent acting.


Cure - The Life of another Director: Andrea Staka 2014 Cinemateque Jerusalem Wed 25th Nov 2015

Some societies have customs which perpetuate the memory of a loved one, making as if he or she is still alive, like the custom of showing pictures of the deceased or the custom, shown in this movie, of dressing up in clothes that the departed would enjoy, as the widow of a man killed in the war does. She dresses up in a beautiful white wedding dress that the deceased husband loved.

The idea of not accepting the fact of death, is quite foreign in Jewish society. Jews actually have customs that reinforce the idea that death is final; it is a Jewish custom for each mourner to place spadesful of earth on the coffin, all pictures of the deceased are hidden from view during the 7 days of morning, it is a custom that on seeing a grave one must put stones on it. All of these customs tend to reinforce the certainty of death.

This is why Jews might not easily understand why the family is so eager to transfer the identity of their daughter to her friend, who killed her during an argument and accidentally pushes her over the edge of a cliff over the raging sea. The friend is a foreign migrant to Croatia and is searching for a way to be accepted by the people in her new homeland. She readily adopts the identity of her dead friend that the family attach to her, without even being aware, for a while, that she is doing this.


London River a movie Directed By Rachid Bouchareb 2012 Cinemateque Jerusalem 24th Nov 2015 19:00

My friend Shaul sent me a link to a humorous page where John Cleese talks about how different countries classify terrorist alerts. Unfortunately I've lost my sense of humor about these things, especially after seeing a movie last night "London River". 

As if we didn't know, this movie demonstrates, or I should say that the events depicted in this movie (because they are true), show that the modern world is, more than ever, guided by religious aphorisms, which in my opinion screw up our sense of moral values. 

The movie is directed by Rachid Bouchareb. His biography only tells us that he was born in Algeria, but, judging from message in the movie, I presume he's a Moslem.It begins, naturally, as would befit the message, with Matthew (5:44) "love thine enemy". It seems terrorists, even though they may be Moslems, like this Christian doctrine, because it ensures their acceptance in a Christian world.

It's about two people, coming together (that is very beautiful, like the lion lying down with the wolf) after their children were killed in a terrorist attack in London (that is very bad, like the apocalypse). The one is a Moslem, the father of the boy, a black moslem from somewhere in Africa, looking as if he had just jumped out of a tree, who lives in France and the other is an English lady from the isle of Guernsey. All the people who feature in the movie are Moslem, including the police, excepting the mother of the girl. 

The actual terrorist attack is pushed into the background, but cannot be pushed out of our minds. 

In my humble opinion. I think that my emotions are jerked into shock, disgust and anger by the juxtapositioning or a ghastly terror attack on the one hand and the pure, idealistic harmony of two human beings from different cultures coming together, on the other. Suggesting that there is good in the bad. 

The movie is telling us that something good comes from something bad. As if it was the will of Allah that caused the terror attack and the will of Allah to bring two good people together. The movie suggests that the boy was the suicide bomber, but that information is pushed aside. 


The Long Hot Summer. Director: Martin Ritt  1958 from the Third Ear at the Cinemateque Nov 2016

A good man will always come out on top and will eventually confound preconceived opinions, which lead to dangerous hot headedness. The movie proves to be a sharp criticism of the tendency of many ignorant people of jumping to conclusions about somebody’s character. A man’s character doesn’t necessarily match his reputation and we should be careful about pre-judging people on hearsay evidence. That only makes life very hot and uncomfortable as this excellent movie shows.




Meek’s Cut off Kelly Reichardt 2010A
family of high Biblical morals trekking through the desert on their way to their promised land, is wary of immorality, which they think is all around them in this barren wilderness and suspect their rough looking scout of misleading them into a trap. Hesitantly they put their trust in an Indian, who the scout wants to kill because he is convinced that he is the one who will lead them into a trap to kill and rob them.Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Poetry Chang Dong Lee 2010 available at the Third Ear Cinemateque Jerusalem Nov 2015
After seeing this movie I conclude that only a person who has deep feelings about his/her life experiences can write a good poem. The feeling can be about something simple like seeing an apple or a tree or a leaf or it can be about a terrible tragedy, such as a young girl commits suicide, because of suffering caused by our son and the grandmother commits an immoral act to get money to compensate the girl’s parents.

Poetry is the expression of deep feeling, brought on by events and experiences that happen to us, through no fault of ours. Everybody has deep feelings about these experiences, some people hide them while there are some (very few) who record them as poetry for all the world to share.

Why the world needs to remember catastrophes

Catastrophes happen suddenly, without warning;

The 17th century philosopher Pascal saw Nothingness as a possibility that lurked, so to speak, beneath our feet, a gulf and an abyss into which we might tumble at any moment. (irrational man p.116 Kindle)

one minute a group of people are shopping happily in a market, the next some lie dead and bleeding on the ground, their lives and the lives of people dependent on them changed forever because of an explosion which happened, indiscriminately, without warning.

Only yesterday I heard about a young man, walking vigorously to synagogue to pray - now he lies, unable to speak, because of brain damage caused by a bomb thrown casually in his path and blowing away half of his brain.

Unfortunately the suddeness of catastrophes is matched by the suddenness with which they are forgotten. Nobody, excepting the family and other loved ones spend time remembering the catastrophe and the people injured and killed by it.

This is natural, as the writer E.M. Forsteer points out in his masterpiece novel, A Passage to India:
"outbursts of grief could not be expected from them over a slight acquaintance. It’s only one’s own dead who matter. If for a moment the sense of communion in sorrow came to them, it passed. How indeed, is it possible for one human being to be sorry for all the sadness that meets him on the face of the earth, for the pain that is endured not only by men, but by animals and plants, and perhaps by the stones? The soul is tired in a moment, and in fear of losing the little she does understand, she retreats to the permanent lines which habit or chance have dictated, and suffers there."
It's true that catastrophes are recorded in the annals of history but human beings don't hold daily memorial services for the dead, even though there are annual memorial days commemorated by family members and, in the case of a national catastrophe, like the holocaust and an entire nation celebrates a memorial day.

Some nations, however, like the Jewish Nation has suffered a catastrophe so great that practically every day a memorial service is held. For example a service is held every day in the hall of memorial at Yad Vashem, Israel's national memorial to those who perished in the holocaust.

A memorial day brings all those who celebrate it into the warm comforting circle of the family. The catastrophe that struck some of us now becomes glue that sticks us together if we celebrate the memorial day.