(C) Copyright 2002. Artists For Israel International Sometimes classics are done in modern dress to get their point across in a fresh way. Here is a motion picture treatment with the following major characters: the Judas Iscariot figure (Yehudah), and John (Yochanan) and Yehoshua (Rebbe), and Caiaphas and Nikodemus and Peter (Kefa): The film is set in the Warsaw Ghetto of World War II. We begin on an island with an old Chassidic man, Yochanan, in slave labor under Nazi guard, telling about the Shoah ("Catastrophe," i.e. the Holocaust) and his youth and his Rebbe. Yochanan's voice-over narration continues as we see an establishing shot of the Polish ghetto where the story takes place, beginning in pre-World War II Warsaw, Poland. We see a much much younger Yochanan with the Rebbe. And the Rebbe is also speaking to some young Jewish men who are fish hawkers in the busy marketplace of the Jewish Quarter. They have a cart filled with fish which they have been pulling. Rebbe is holding a fish in his hand, saying "My Kehillah (Community, Congregation), it has a world-wide fishing expedition, but it will fish for men. It is Moshiach's Kehillah." The music swells as the credits begin and then becomes Chassidic Klesmer music. The puzzlement continues on the face of Yochanan. His voice, the voice of him as an old man continues the voice-over narration as we cut to a Chassidic wedding in progress in the Jewish Quarter of this Polish city. It is here that we are introduced to the first of Rebbe's miracles. The headwaiter whispers into the ear of young Yochanan and Yochanan whispers into the ear of Miryam and Miryam tells the Rebbe. When Rebbe walks outside the banquet hall, he has a flutter-cut vision of modern Eretz Yisroel as the Klezmer music swells. Then Yochanan comes out to Rebbe and Rebbe tells Yochanan to go back and have the servant girls draw water. Then great jubilation ensues as the miracle is acknowledged and the wine is lifted up and poured and embibed. A Roman Catholic priest, Father Nikodimski (the Nicodemus figure, John chp 3), is walking by and asks Rebbe what all the commotion is about and is informed by a chassid that a miracle has occurred. The priest says he wants to know more, asserting that his religion has something to do with their religion. Rebbe, says, "Of this you are certain?" A close up of Rebbe's face and then just Rebbe's piercing eyes in the shadows. Then our slow pull-back reveals that he is no longer outside the wedding hall but is now in a darkened genizah (storage room for old Torah scrolls) of a shul (synagogue). Here Rebbe is continuing his conversation with Father Nikodimski. Rebbe is standing on a step ladder placing an old frayed torah scroll into the storage rack and explaining to the priest the necessity of hitkhadshut (spiritual renewal, regeneration, new birth), which the priest doesn't seem to understand. See Yn.8.12 OJBC. In the next scene we are with Father Nikodimski in the office of Father Kayafenski (Caiaphas figure) in the Catholic Church in the Jewish Quarter. The senior priest, Father Kayafenski, is quizzing Father Nikodimski on why he was late to mass yesterday and is displeased about the fraternization with the Rebbe. Father Nikodimski says something to the effect of Yn 7:51 OJBC and Mt.25:40 OJBC. Then they are informed by a nun that Yehudah (the Judas Iscariot figure), who is a Polish Jewish policeman and recent Catholic convert, has come to see Father Kayafenski. The next scene is Yehudah in the confessional booth and he is confessing to Father Kayafenski his guilt in leaving Judaism and embracing the Blessed Mother, the Queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 44:19-22). Before he leaves the church, Yehudah puts his Chassidic kaftan and other clothes back on, and furtively slips back out into the Jewish Quarter, blending into the Chassidic crowds walking past the Catholic Church. In the next scene it is early morning, the street is deserted, and Rebbe, dressed in black kaftan and Chassidic garb, is sitting by a courtyard fountain where a jet of water is flowing. A Polish gentile woman approaches to fill her bucket. He asks her why she is carrying water on Shabbos. She says she is not Jewish. After he begins the conversation with her, at a certain point when Rebbe is talking about the Makor Chayyim (Fount of Life), then, with a flutter-cut of insight, Rebbe sees the gentil woman in a vision, as well as her lovers, and she is going from lover to lover, as these are standing in a circle around the fountain, not looking at each other but staring outward, and she, like the second hand of a clock, is sweeping around in a clockwise direction, touching the face of each man, then looking up into the face of Rebbe with a look of fearful surprise, seeing that she has been caught in her shame. The lovers disappear, the Rebbe's talmidim arrive, and the woman departs, shaken, looking back at Rebbe, not knowing what has happened to her. This is Yn chp 4 OJBC. Then, a man born blind is healed by Rebbe and a large crowd gathers. Other older Chassidic rabbis along with the elderly Czerniakow character (the Jewish Council president) appear and the older Chassidic rabbis take Rebbe to task for not being Shomer Shabbos in irreligiously performing his healing work of mofetim (miracles) on Shabbos. Yn chps 5 and 8 and 7:15-38 in OJBC. In the next scene Rebbe is with his talmidim riding in a Warsaw streetcar. The Polish anti-Semites are throwing debris at the windows of the streetcar and shouting, "You killed our G-d!" On the other hand, Rebbe is teaching the material in Yn chp 10 OJBC even while the streetcar is running and his talmidim are sitting all around him. In the next scene Rebbe is in the Jewish cemetery with Marta and Miryam the sister of Rebbe's dead friend, who had died four days before. When Rebbe raises him from the dead, the cemetery is suddenly filled with Chassidim. They surround the Rebbe and begin to cry out and sing a Yiddish Shabbos table song, as they follow him in a great procession out of the cemetery. When they get to the gate of the cemetery, the elderly Czerniakow character and the other older Chassidic rabbis, who had taken issue earlier with Rebbe for healing on Shabbos, are watching the procession, and they are not pleased. At this point the invasion of Poland by the Nazis begins and a series of short scenes with ominous and sad music depict the occupation of the city and the sealing off of the Jewish Quarter which now becomes the Warsaw Ghetto. Now the Nazis lock the Jewish Quarter and force the Czerniakow character to come to them and cut a deal to get the key, which he does by appointing Yehudah as the head of the Jewish police who will co-operate with the Polish police and the German occupation authorities. The last maamar (Chassidic version of Last Supper Yn 13-17 OJBC) of Rebbe (who is now wearing a Star of David armband, as are the rest of Rebbe's talmidim) comes as a reply to Shimon the Zealot. Shimon the Zealot speaks in the upper room to all the Rebbe's talmidim (disciples) in an impassioned manner about the boxcars leading to a death camp and the need for underground resistance fighters. When the other Shimon (Kefa or Peter) vows his part in protecting the Rebbe (Yn 13:37 OJBC), Rebbe goes to the window and looks out. With a revelatory flutter-cut Rebbe sees the tarnegol (rooster) in the wooden crate cage in the back of the passing truck, and Rebbe announces prophetically the coming betrayal. Yehudah, wearing his Chassidic garb, departs into the Warsaw night. In the next scene Shimon Kefa and Rebbe pass the security point where Yehudah is able to flag them through, checking their passes, which are "work permits" allowing them to leave the Jewish Ghetto. Yehudah gives Rebbe a kiss on the cheek. The Polish police at the checkpoint see this and look at each other knowingly. Shimon Kefa accompanies Rebbe to a Cathedral and waits outside while Rebbe goes up to the door to knock. Inside the Cathedral, a Catholic S.S. officer is leaving the confessional booth where he has been confessing to Father Kayafenski. Father Nikodimski follows him out and ushers Rebbe into the vestibule of the Roman Catholic church to have a meeting with Father Kayafenski. Since it is Pesach season, Father Nikodimski hopes that the senior priest will use his ecumenical influence with a Catholic S.S. officer to have the food rations increased for the Jewish people in the Ghetto. Father Nikodimski leaves Rebbe alone in the vestibule with Father Kayafenski. In this scene between Rebbe and Father Kayafenski, Rebbe is invited to enter the sanctuary, but he refuses because of the tzelamim (idols, images, any physical object or statue worshiped as deity). The scene that unfolds is similar in some respects to the Grand Inquisitor scene in the Brothers Karamazov. Finally, Father Kayafenski becomes angry and exits the vestibule, going outside through the front door. Rebbe begins to tear down the tzelamim, using a tall white metal candelabrum to shatter the images including that of a San Gennaro statue with the money fastened all over it). Then the Catholic S.S. Officer and Father Kayafenski burst into the sanctuary with other soldiers and police and Rebbe is bound and taken out of the Catholic church. On the steps outside a Nazi soldier seizes Shimon Kefa, shouting, "You were with him!" Shimon Kefa curses Rebbe, and just then a truck goes by with a tarnegol (rooster) in the wooden crate cage in the back of the passing truck. Then Kefa stares at Rebbe in shock and remorse. At the railroad terminal, in front of several empty boxcars, the Nazi soldiers cut Rebbe's payos with their bayonets and beat him up, shouting, "You killed our G-d, we kill you." They force Rebbe to put on a striped Holocaust death camp prison uniform, then take him to the top of a gallows, then pierce his wrists and feet with their bayonets and put him on a gallows with two other Jews in stripped Holocaust death camp prison uniforms where they leave him hanging in the middle. As a shot of Warsaw reveals the horrific evil going on throughout the city, the body of Rebbe is tossed in the boxcar with the other two Jews. We see the boxcar slowly going into the dusk of the approaching night toward the death camps. Then, in their death camp uniforms, the talmidim (minus Yehudah as in Yn chp 21 OJBC) awaken in a boat near the shore in Lake Galilee to find themselves amazingly no longer in the Polish ghetto but now in modern Eretz Yisroel (previewed in the wedding vision earlier). The talmidim have a sense of the presence of the Moshiach. As they see Rebbe in his kaftan with his Star of David armband, standing on the seashore, they follow his instructions and throw out their net. The fish we saw at the beginning are seen again, symbolizing the world-wide fishing expedition (fishing for lost unredeemed men) of Moshiach's Kehillah. For the camera pulls up from the fish in the giant net in an aerial shot which becomes a satellite shot of Israel and then a space station shot of the whole world as the music swells.