The Talmud asks why the Second Temple, a place where Jews practiced religious observance and acts of kindness, was destroyed.
But it is surely his own memory of "Charade," and of its period, that he is honoring, and without that act of observance the new movie makes no sense.
The following January, days before the surviving conspirators were executed, Parliament passed the Observance of 5th November Act, commonly known as the "Thanksgiving Act".
In January 1606, during the first sitting of Parliament since the plot, the Observance of 5th November Act 1605 was passed, making services and sermons commemorating the event an annual feature of English life; the act remained in force until 1859.
In the 1850s changing attitudes resulted in the toning down of much of the day's anti-Catholic rhetoric, and the Observance of 5th November Act was repealed in 1859.
Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London, and months later the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot's failure.
Holiness, he tells us, "is nothing but halakhic observance; the specific intentional acts dedicated to the service of God" (Judaism, 24, emphasis added).
This is a point of contention in Israel between non-Haredi and Haredi Jews, the latter's blatant non-observance viewed as an act of gross disrespect to both the victims and living survivors.
