Sabbath problem solved for Israeli Astronaut
When Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, rockets away aboard shuttle Columbia, he will take along the first kosher meals ever packed for space.
“For Israel and for the Jewish community, it’s a very symbolic event,” said Ramon.
That is why he decided to eat kosher food in orbit even though he is not particularly religious, and why he conferred with rabbis on a particularly tricky question:
How do you observe the Sabbath in orbit with sunset and sunrise occurring every 90 minutes?
The solution: observe the Sabbath on Houston time, since that is where Nasa’s astronaut centre and Mission Control are based.
“I’m secular in my background, but I’m going to respect all kinds of Jews all over the world,” said Ramon, 48, a colonel in the Israeli air force and the son of an Auschwitz death camp survivor.
Nevertheless, after Thursday’s launch, under unprecedented security, Ramon will work on the Sabbath during Columbia’s scientific research mission, just as he would on Earth.
He will spend much of the 16 day flight aiming cameras in an Israel Space Agency experiment to study how desert dust affects climate.
As a tribute to those who endured the Holocaust, Ramon will carry up a small pencil drawing titled Moon Landscape by Peter Ginz, a 14-year-old Jewish boy who was killed at Auschwitz.
The astronaut, who is married and has four children, also is taking up mezuzas, small cases that are hung on door frames of Jewish homes and contain inscriptions from the Bible.
Mezuzas have accompanied American Jews into space in years past, along with menorahs and even a dreidel. But as Ramon sees it, “being an Israeli is a step further than being a Jew flying to space.”
“The Jewish astronauts until today, they didn’t want to emphasise so much their religion. And I understand, because here in the United States, that’s the way it goes,” he said.
“But coming from my background, I can’t ignore it.”
