Marking the first anniversary of the fatal explosion of the Columbia spacecraft, in which Israeli astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon and six others were killed, a memorial ceremony was held today in Moshav Nahalal in the Galilee.
Preliminary contacts have already begun to send a second Israeli astronaut into space. Israel's Ambassador to the U.S., Daniel Ayalon, was scheduled to meet NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe on this topic during a memorial ceremony in the U.S. "I wouldn't rule out the possibility," Ayalon said last week, "that an Israeli astronaut will land on the moon, as part of U.S. efforts to establish a permanent base there."
Ramon said before his ill-fated trip that though he was not a religious Jew, he planned to represent all streams of Jewry in space. "He was a source of pride for all the Jewish communities here," wrote Arutz-7's Los Angeles correspondent Eli Sechbach after the explosion.
When he circled over Jerusalem, Ramon emailed President Moshe Katzav that he recited the Shma Yisrael prayer. Eight months before the trip, he and the other astronauts were asked to make a list of personal items they would like to take into space. Ramon took along several items of Jewish interest, including a drawing of Earth as it might look from the moon, drawn by a boy who died in Auschwitz shortly before the end of the war. As a representative of the State of Israel, he also took along a Presidential pennant, as well as flags of the Israel Air Force, the two cities in which he lived - Be'er Sheva and Ramat Gan - and the high school in which he studied. He hung a mezuzah on one of the doors in the spacecraft; he took a silver 'hand' used for reading from the Torah; the world saw him proudly wave his Kiddush cup used on the Sabbath; and in his bag was a Book of Psalms. He often said at press conferences, "I am an emissary of Zionism and the Jewish People."
In addition, during a televised videoconference from space with Prime Minister Sharon and other Israeli officials midway through the trip, Col. Ramon showed Israeli viewers the miniature Torah Scroll he took along with him. Holland's Chief Rabbi Dasberg had brought the scroll with him during the Holocaust to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. There he met a boy, Yosef Yehoyachin, to whom he gave Bar Mitzvah lessons using that very Torah scroll - and then charged him with the mission of surviving and telling the story. Yehoyachin lived, arrived in Israel - and became the Israeli scientist who initiated the main experiment Col. Ramon carried out in space. He also gave Ramon that same miniature Torah Scroll to take with him into space - so that the story Rabbi Dasberg had left with him could be told around the world.
Preliminary contacts have already begun to send a second Israeli astronaut into space. Israel's Ambassador to the U.S., Daniel Ayalon, was scheduled to meet NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe on this topic during a memorial ceremony in the U.S. "I wouldn't rule out the possibility," Ayalon said last week, "that an Israeli astronaut will land on the moon, as part of U.S. efforts to establish a permanent base there."
Ramon said before his ill-fated trip that though he was not a religious Jew, he planned to represent all streams of Jewry in space. "He was a source of pride for all the Jewish communities here," wrote Arutz-7's Los Angeles correspondent Eli Sechbach after the explosion.
When he circled over Jerusalem, Ramon emailed President Moshe Katzav that he recited the Shma Yisrael prayer. Eight months before the trip, he and the other astronauts were asked to make a list of personal items they would like to take into space. Ramon took along several items of Jewish interest, including a drawing of Earth as it might look from the moon, drawn by a boy who died in Auschwitz shortly before the end of the war. As a representative of the State of Israel, he also took along a Presidential pennant, as well as flags of the Israel Air Force, the two cities in which he lived - Be'er Sheva and Ramat Gan - and the high school in which he studied. He hung a mezuzah on one of the doors in the spacecraft; he took a silver 'hand' used for reading from the Torah; the world saw him proudly wave his Kiddush cup used on the Sabbath; and in his bag was a Book of Psalms. He often said at press conferences, "I am an emissary of Zionism and the Jewish People."
In addition, during a televised videoconference from space with Prime Minister Sharon and other Israeli officials midway through the trip, Col. Ramon showed Israeli viewers the miniature Torah Scroll he took along with him. Holland's Chief Rabbi Dasberg had brought the scroll with him during the Holocaust to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. There he met a boy, Yosef Yehoyachin, to whom he gave Bar Mitzvah lessons using that very Torah scroll - and then charged him with the mission of surviving and telling the story. Yehoyachin lived, arrived in Israel - and became the Israeli scientist who initiated the main experiment Col. Ramon carried out in space. He also gave Ramon that same miniature Torah Scroll to take with him into space - so that the story Rabbi Dasberg had left with him could be told around the world.