Spirit and Story Archive
Welcome to Spirit and Story, where you can find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the contours of our contemporary spiritual journeys.
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As for the Heavens
By Janet R. Kirchheimer
I took the death of Ilan Ramon very hard. I neither met nor knew him, but, nevertheless, felt as if I had lost a friend.
I had read about him before he made his first and final flight into space. I was so excited that an Israeli astronaut had been chosen by NASA, and my Israeli cousins and I spoke about him often. Ramon was front page news almost every day in the Israeli newspapers. He gave hope to Israelis in a time when many of them were finding it difficult to remain hopeful.
While I mourned the death of all the astronauts and felt for all the families who were grieving, there was something about Ilan Ramon that especially resonated in my heart.
As a Jew, I felt a particular connection to him. For me, Ramon became a representative of all Jews. He seemed to carry the hopes of Jews around the world into space with him.
I also felt a connection because I'm a poet. Ramon's descriptions of how our planet looked from outer space, and the way he spoke about his hopes for peace not only for the Middle East but for the world, were both eloquent and poetic.
But I felt the greatest resonance because I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Reading the articles about how Ramon made special efforts to bring objects that had been rescued during the Holocaust into space made me cry each time I read and reread the articles.
Ramon understood that being the first Israeli astronaut to go into space was something historic. Even if he did nothing else, just being the first Israeli astronaut would have been enough. But he wanted to do more. No matter how each individual expresses his or her Jewishness, Ramon wanted to bring each of us along on his mission.
He took up an Israeli flag, a tee shirt from an Israeli citizen's action group, a microfiche credit card size bible, and the Israeli air force flag with the Star of David in the middle. Competitions were held in high school science classes throughout Israel to design an experiment for the mission, with the winning experiment to be conducted on board by Ramon. Though he didn't keep kosher, Ramon requested kosher food from NASA for the mission. During a televised conference from space, Ramon displayed a small Torah scroll. The Torah belonged to Joachim Joseph, who had his bar mitzvah in Bergen Belsen in 1942. Rabbi Dasberg, a fellow prisoner, had presided over the 4:00 am secret ceremony, and told Joseph that he must take the Torah out with him if he survived and tell the story of what happened in the concentration camps. The rabbi was killed and Joseph survived and immigrated to Israel.
Years later, Joseph became the atmospheric physicist who would oversee an experiment aboard Ramon’s shuttle flight. When Joseph showed the Torah to Ramon, he was deeply affected and asked if he could take it with him into space. Saying yes to this request, Joachim Joseph said that he felt he was fulfilling the promise he had made to Rabbi Dasberg more than 50 years before. Interviewed after the shuttle exploded, he said, “Even though the Torah scroll has been destroyed, it still survives.” Long a symbol of survival to the Jewish people, the Torah has now become a symbol of Jewish survival to the world.
The objects that Ramon brought into space were intended to represent the totality of the Jewish people. But all these objects are ash now, except for the Star of David from the Israeli air force flag found in the debris scattered over the southern United States.
I planted trees in Israel in memory of Ilan Ramon, whose first name in Hebrew means tree. As the space shuttle flew over Israel, he asked that 13 to14 million trees be planted in Israel by the time of the first anniversary of his flight. Unfortunately, it will now have to be by the anniversary of his death. Hopefully, this goal will be reached.
Israel will build a memorial to the seven Columbia astronauts in American Independence Park in Jerusalem. The Israeli space program will continue. The data from the experiments Ramon was working on about dust storms in the Middle East will enhance scientific knowledge. Even though he did not return to earth, Ramon has become a symbol of Jewish survival.
I've heard people say that we should not send astronauts into space, that "as for the heavens, the heavens are God's, but God has given the earth to mankind." (Psalms 115:16). I read the verse in another way. God gave the earth to mankind to develop, to build using Torah as the tool. We are supposed to “reach for the stars.” Columbia’s last flight was a scientific mission, and the data from the experiments will enhance mankind’s knowledge of the earth God gave us.
On Shabbat, while aboard the shuttle, Ramon read from Deuteronomy (4:32) – in which Moses addresses the children of Israel – “Please inquire about the days that came before you, ever since God created man on earth, from one end of heaven to the other: has anything as grand as this ever happened, or has its like ever been known?”
The rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud commenting on this verse discuss what types of inquiry are permissible (Chagiga 11b). The consensus is that one cannot inquire about what happened before creation, but one can inquire about everything that has happened since creation from one end of heavens to the other.
The seven astronauts of the shuttle Columbia are part of the heavens now, and their legacy of accomplishment belongs to mankind. With the same intrepid spirit, we must continue our individual journeys of inquiry from one end of the heavens to the other.
To view other articles by Janet Kirchheimer, click here.
