|
Rabbi Karp's Sermons ... Ilan Ramon: Hero, Symbol and
Martyr Last Saturday morning, as I was readying myself to come to Temple for our weekly Talmud Study Group, I turned on the TV to one of the all-news networks. This is part of my typical morning routine - catching up on the news while getting dressed. I am sure that many of you do the same. Usually the news is - to be quite frank - boring. All news networks have this great need to fill air time. So they report all sorts of things that would never make the news otherwise. They also repeat and repeat and repeat. Therefore, one can usually listen to the news with a minimal investment of intellectual energy. But not so last Saturday. As I turned on the TV, they were broadcasting the news flash that NASA had lost contact with the shuttle Columbia as she flew over Texas in her landing approach. My attention was immediately riveted to the screen as this tragedy unfolded before the eyes of the nation, news bit by news bit, film clip by film clip. And we Americans once more became a people cast into mourning; mourning fallen heroes whose names, sad to say, had it not been for this tragedy, we probably would not have known - Dr. David M. Brown, Rick D. Husband, Dr. Laurel Blair Salton Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, William C. McCool, and Ilan Ramon. When you come to think of it, what an amazing country, and what an amazing people, we are. Only we and the Russians have seriously engaged in space exploration. Only we and the Russians have actually sent people into space. However, except when there has been a tragedy, we have become blasé about the entire enterprise. I remember as a young child running out with my family at night to watch Sputnik cross the sky. The newspapers announced the times of her passing. I remember, when I was in fifth grade, my teacher ushering us into a classroom filled with students and teachers - and a television, something not typically in classrooms in those days - so that we could watch Alan Shepherd’s historic 15 minute space flight. I remember struggling to make out the images on the television screen and straining to understand the words uttered by Neil Armstrong as he first stepped upon the surface of the moon - "One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind." But I also remember how no television station was interested in carrying Apollo 13's color broadcast from space. It took the drama of their near tragic flight to peak the public’s interest. And had it not been for the presence of Christie McAuliffe, the first teacher to go into space, and all the publicity she received, probably very few would have witnessed what became the disastrous takeoff of the Challenger. So it was with Columbia. Except, to a limited extent, among the Jews of the world. Except, to a great extent, among the Israelis. For us Jews, and of course for the Israelis, this flight was truly special. For among the crew was Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut. It is remarkable when you consider that Israel, only 55 years old, is one of the few, the elite, that could boast an astronaut. What a testimony to Israel’s progress, development, technology, and most important of all, to Israel’s commitment to the future. The future. That is what space exploration is all about. Not the immediate future but the long term future. The belief that what is today’s science fiction will become tomorrow’s science fact - but only if we strive to make it so; but only if we are willing and courageous enough to reach for the stars. While we Americans may have become blasé to NASA’s journeys into space, our disinterest in no way reduces the amount of risk involved in them; our apathy should in no way be considered a measure of the amount of courage it takes to be an astronaut. For no matter how we react, or fail to react, to the efforts of the space program, these people who venture out there are most certainly people of courage; people willing to take great risks, not for their own personal glory - we have seen to that - but rather for the betterment of all humanity. As Neil Armstrong said: "One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind." Make no mistake about it. Astronauts do not merely serve their country; they do not merely serve the United States, or Russia, or as in Ilan Ramon’s case, Israel. They serve all humanity. The goals of such exploration are not nationalistic. They are planetary. And one day, hopefully within our lifetimes, but I believe definitely within the lifetimes of our children, the time will come when all humanity will derive great and tangible benefits from our quest into space. It was toward that dream that these astronauts labored. It was for that dream that these astronauts gave up their lives. As citizens of planet Earth, we can be justifiably proud of those seven martyrs in the cause of human advancement. As Americans, we can be especially proud of those six countrymen and countrywomen whose tragic passing we mourn. As Jews, we can be profoundly proud of that one Israel who represented the State of Israel, and all Jews, in the exploration of space. While the memories of every one of the Columbia astronauts deserve our respect and recognition, still I wish to focus the remainder of these remarks upon one of them - Ilan Ramon, our fellow Jew. I do this not to diminish the significance of the others, for their significance can never be diminished, but rather because we are a community of Jews and the life of Ilan Ramon, as a Jew, carries certain special meaning for us. Notice, I said his life, and not his death. For in death, they all were equal. Ilan Ramon was indeed a sabra, having been born on June 20, 1954, in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, and having been raised in the Negev Desert, in Beersheba. In 1972, immediately upon graduating high school, he entered the military, as is typical of Israeli youth. He fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and in 1974 he graduated from combat fighter pilot school. In 1980 Ilan was one of the members of Israel’s first F-16 fighter squadron, and from 1981 to 1983 he served as Deputy Squadron Commander. It was in that capacity that he was among those leading the 1981 Israeli attack upon the Iraqi nuclear facility. At that time, the world, including the United States, soundly condemned Israel for its aggression against a sovereign state. However, during the Gulf War, the United States and the rest of its allies understood that Israel, through this action, may very well have saved the entire world from a nuclear confrontation. Indeed, Ilan Ramon was a hero of international proportions. But he was more than that. Ilan was a devoted family man. His wife, Rona, and his four children, Assaf, Tal, Yiftach, and Noa were the center of his life. His rabbi in Texas, one of my colleagues, Rabbi Stuart Federow, tells of the extent of his family devotion. Yes, Ilan Ramon, while living in the United States belonged to a Reform congregation. In fact, he sent his children to one of the UAHC camps, the Greene Camp. According to Rabbi Federow, it was not uncommon that Ilan, while attending NASA briefings and being deep in discussion about the coming mission, would receive phone calls from his children. At those times, it was NASA which was put on hold, and not his children. As important as was the work of an astronaut, he never lost his sense of priorities. In my book, in this society, that may very well be as much an act of heroism as bombing the Iraqi nuclear power plant. As a Jew, Ilan Ramon stood for everything that is positive about Reform Judaism. For he was a Reform Jew and he was a devout Jew. He stood as a shining example that you do not have to be Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox to be a committed, practicing Jew. He was not the first Jew in space, but he was the first Jew in space who was truly concerned about practicing his Judaism there. He was concerned about kashrut; he kept kosher. He was concerned about observing Shabbat. In fact, in one of the video clips of the Columbia astronauts in space that have now been widely broadcasted on the TV, there is a shot of Ilan Ramon showing to the camera a Kiddush cup and explaining what it was and that he brought it in order to observe Shabbat. He recited the "Shema" as the shuttle orbited over Jerusalem. Aside from bringing an Israeli flag into space, he also honored his mother, who is a Holocaust survivor, by bringing both a mini Torah from Bergen Belsen and a "pencil sketch drawn in Auschwitz by a 14-year-old boy named Peter Ginz; a sketch of the Earth as Peter, from inside the camp’s fences, imagined it would look from the moon." Yes, Ilan Ramon represented with pride the name of Jew. While we here in the United States hardly gave the Columbia’s mission a passing thought, it was quite another matter in Israel. The Israelis were absolutely mesmerized by the mission. And with good reason. These last two years have been brutal on Israeli moral. With every passing day, the news has been bad news. It has been news of terrorist attacks and the deaths of innocent civilians - the young and the old not excluded. It has been news of war and bloodshed; of the flower of Israeli youth daily risking their lives in military service. Israel has become a land where people leave their homes in the morning to go to work or school or what have you, and they have no idea whether or not they will ever survive to see their loved ones again. Nearly gone are the stories of Israel’s great achievements; of all those things of which Israelis were justifiably proud. Covered in the shadow and the cloud of terrorism. Yet into this darkened world, the news of Ilan Ramon’s flight was for the Israelis a beacon of light. It was a wondrous reminder of all that is good and worthy about the people and the State of Israel. For Israelis, Ilan Ramon represented all that Israel can be; all that Israel should be; all that Israel will be once again, should she ever successfully work her way out of this current Palestinian quagmire. For all these reasons and more, we Jews mourn the passing of this exceptional man, Ilan Ramon. He stands for the best in all of us. He stands for the hope of the future. It is a Jewish tradition to honor the memory of the deceased by performing acts of tzedakah on their behalf. It is a good tradition. Ilan Ramon wished to better the world. In his memory, we who mourn him should strive toward that goal. With sad irony, less than one week prior to the shuttle disaster, the Jewish National Fund set out on a campaign inspired by Ilan Ramon. Ilan had informed them that he wanted to see "13 to 14 million new trees planted in Israel exactly one year from now, on the anniversary of the (Columbia) launching," the anniversary of the launching of the first Israeli into space. Today, the JNF is pursuing that vision, in his memory. I have contacted them and am awaiting the details of the project, so I cannot give them to you now. But when they arrive, I will be calling upon each of our congregants to join my family in furthering this memorial. I know that I will be able to count on each and every one of you. AMEN |
