"I have this very special cup that I brought with me - see it is a cup for the Kiddush on Shabbat," said the late Col. Ilan Ramon last week during a televised interview from aboard the doomed Space Shuttle Columbia. It was the kind of silver kiddush cup we all have at home somewhere. Col. Ramon then let the cup go and it floated freely in the zero gravity of space, tumbling along, weightless, as he smiled.
I never met Col. Ramon, but like many of us we all felt like we knew him and in many ways we all wished we could be like him. For those of us in our forties who simultaneously grew up with the Apollo moon missions, Star Trek and Star Wars; The Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars and a strong sense of Zionism, Col. Ramon was the embodiment of an eclectic fusion of ideas, ideals and heroism that most of us could only aspire to and admire from afar.
The front page of Yediot Aharonot a little over two weeks ago showing the lift-off of Columbia with the headline, "Blue and White in Space" was thrilling for us American armchair Zionists and for Jews the world over who similarly read these headlines and saw these photos in a plethora of publications and on the web.
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| Ilan Ramon ZL, holds a Kiddush cup as he conducts a television interview from the Space Shuttle Columbia along with fellow astronauts. On one Shabbat evening Ilan said Kiddush as the Shuttle passed over Israel. (Photo: NASA) |
How incredibly crushing was the news yesterday, Shabbat morning when my rabbi announced the catastrophe from the pulpit (someone had told him about it). I dare say that most every eye was misty as we all grieved not only for Col. Ramon, but for the other six brave astronauts who perished with him. I rarely remember a time when I wanted Shabbat to end soon, so I could turn on CNN, Fox and the other news channels to see what I'd been hearing all day.
Col. Ramon was the personification of Herzl and Jabotinsky's "New Jew," while at the same time having a strong foundation in the heritage of our fathers. Vaporized over the skies of Palestine, Texas was a haversack containing so many symbols of the Jewish people. Col. Ramon made choices on the personal items he could bring with him and this list of space souvenirs showed the true measure of Col. Ramon's stature as the most worthy ambassador of the Jewish people on this historic voyage:
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| Col. Ilan Ramon carried with him a miniature Torah scroll which Dr. Joachim Joseph, a 71-year-old atmospheric physicist at Tel Aviv University, (who was overseeing an experiment aboard the space shuttle), lent to him. Dr. Joseph received the Torah from Rabbi Dasberg, (who was the Chief Rabbi of Holland at the time), while both were imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. When Joachim Joseph became 13 in 1944, Rabbi Dasberg secretly arranged a 4 a.m. bar mitzvah ceremony in the prisoners’ barracks using that Torah scroll, which he kept close to him at all times. Rabbi Dasburg was killed by the Nazis two months after Joachim Joseph’s bar mitzvah. “I brought with me items that express the religious-historic Jewish tradition,” Col. Ramon commented. "symbolizes more than anything the ability of the Jewish people to survive everything, including horrible periods, and go from the darkest days, to days of hope and faith in the future." (Photo: NASA) |
There is the kiddush cup from which he blessed the Sabbath with kosher wine from outer space (engendering all kinds of halachic shaylas about when Shabbat is, when you circle the earth every 45 minutes). There is the mezzuzah he affixed to one of the doorways inside the shuttle. The miniature Torah scroll he brought which survived Bergen-Belsen and the Torah on microfiche he was given by President Moshe Katzav. When Col. Ramon flew over Jerusalem, he told Prime Minister Sharon that he recited the Shma Yisrael.
He brought with him an Israeli flag and a copy of Israel's Declaration of Independence (a version of which hangs on my office wall). He also had a Yad, or silver pointer for reading the Torah and a copy of the Psalms. The pencil drawing of what the earth would look like from the moon, drawn in 1944 by a 14-year-old Peter Ginz who would meet his end in a German concentration camp and borrowed from Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum was a reflection of the hopes and imagination of a persecuted young Jew of 60 years ago who believed in a better world.
The son and grandson of Auschwitz survivors, Col. Ramon was the paradigm of Jewish redemption since those days. Dashing, handsome and heroic, Col. Ramon fought in the Yom Kippur and Lebanon wars and probably saved the whole world when he bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. Yet he was modest and self-effacing. He had four children and loved his extended family. He insisted on eating kosher food while in orbit, because he felt he represented the entire Jewish people and wanted to bring honor and kedusha to all of us.
A bright star has gone out in Zion. May we have the merit to be inspired by Col. Ramon's life and untimely death by reaching for the heavens in our own aspirations, by demonstrating bravery in our daily lives and by having Jewish pride in our hearts.
