In space no one can hear you scream. But can they hear you kvetch?
I’m sitting in a movie theatre, watching the new Star Trek Movie. On screen, a group of Star Fleet recruits, including a Jewish actor or two, climb into a space shuttle and strap themselves in. My eyes wander from neck to neck, looking for anything dangling: Stars of David, St. Christopher medals, ankhs, anything tipping their religious leanings. Nothing.
As this new film turns our fantasies to a future time of warp speeds and alien co-workers, I have to ask: Where are the Jews in this future? Or, for that matter, religion?
Gene Roddenberry’s 1960s vision of a post-religious society challenges us to ask, as a people, whether we are space-worthy or Earthbound. Are there features of Judaism that make it adaptable to space and other planets?
Turns out we have been orbiting the space theme for quite some time. The future has long been contemplated by rabbis, Jewish writers and scientists, and so has the Jewish people’s ability to adapt to it.
Rabbis and academics — “exo-theologians” — already concern themselves with how Jews will live and thrive on other planets: how our concept of God might change, how we will celebrate Jewish holidays light years from home and when we should light the Shabbos candles on Mars.
As early as 1971, Rabbi Norman Lamm, now chancellor of Yeshiva University, began to grapple with Jewish exo-theology in his essay “The Religious Implications of Extraterrestrial Life.” If there is a “discovery of fellow intelligent creatures,” he concludes, it will “broaden our appreciation of the mysteries of the Creator and His creations.” We seem to be open to the idea of the cosmos: When we say in Hebrew, “Mazel tov,” literally we mean that an event is occurring under a “lucky star.” Science fiction, a genre with an abundance of Jewish writers and readers, has also dealt with the themes of Jewish life in space. Moreover, dispersion stories abound — humanity traveling far from home as a result of some cosmic calamity, as in the TV series “Battlestar Galactica.” With our history of expulsions and the Diaspora, it’s a story Jews know well.
The Talmud tells us that “God roams over 18,000 worlds,” and commentators speculate that He roams because there is life out there. But are there Jews? In “Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy,” the age-old question “Who is a Jew?” gets a new spin. William Tenn’s 1974 story “On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi!” recounts the tumult at the First Interstellar Neozionist Conference, when a group of creatures with gray spots and short tentacles arrive from Rigel IV and want to be included as Jews in the conference. Turns out they are Jews by descent whose alien environment has altered them over time.
So should we suit up? For an Earth religion to thrive extraterrestrially, it would need to be highly portable. Judaism, since the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, has had to teach itself to adapt to new environments, becoming more time centered than place specific.
All this exilic experience has brought us to space: the final frontier.
At least a minyan has made the trek, and several Jewish astronauts even took Judaica with them. In 1996, astronaut Jeffrey A. Hoffman truly made aliyah, by taking a Torah with him on the Space Shuttle Columbia. The first Jew to live in the International Space Station, Garrett Reisman, affixed a mezuza to his bunk.
The jump into space has taken its toll on the tribe. Judith Resnik, who died in the 1986 destruction of the Challenger, was the first American Jew to die in space, and Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who died in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle tragedy, had even sought rabbinic guidance as to when to celebrate the Sabbath in orbit.
The answer: He would follow Cape Canaveral time — that is, the point of lift-off, based on a principle in Jewish law that while living in a remote place, such as Earth orbit, one should observe Shabbat according to the times of the nearest city that has a large Jewish population.
Will the space minyan grow to a shtibl, maybe even a synagogue? If it does, consider me a lifetime wannabe member.
I grew up in Anaheim, Calif., not much more than a monorail ride away from Disneyland and its promise of “a great big beautiful tomorrow.” Years later, as an adult, I witnessed a launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base near California’s Central Coast. At dawn on an overcast day, standing about a mile away, I watched as an intense orange-red plume shook the air with a muffled roar.
No, I didn’t see God, or the future of Jewish life written in the stars. But I did wonder when Jews would get up there as a people, and where we would go when we did. I dreamed of taking a trip to the moon and asking, amid those shining stars, “When is Havdalah?”
Edmon J. Rodman is a Los Angeles writer and designer.
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I'm not Jewish but I am also fascinated by the lack of religion in science fiction. It's almost as if writers and producers of science fiction think religion is much too primitive to be included in bright new future worlds. I cannot foresee a time when people will cease reaching out to their Maker: it is a part of our programming.
www.eloquentbooks/devolution.html www.myspace.com/dacairns
I refute the notion that there is a "lack of religion in science fiction".
As a life-long SF reader I can vouch for the fact that the memes of religion and faith and spirituality have been explored many times in science fiction.
Consider, for example:
Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer The Neanderthal Parallax trilogy (Hominids, Humans and Hybrids) by Robert J. Sawyer The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell Children of God by Mary Doria Russell A Case of Conscience by James Blish Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein Dune by Frank Herbert
to name just a few brilliant, thought-provoking, readable novels of science fiction.
There was a great academic piece written on the correlations between the "Vulcans" in the Star Trek Series (the blessing given upon departure, the particular hand position (likened to the Kohanim when they bless the congregation) the hyper-emphasis upon logic, etc. by Spock...and so on. I loved it, even though I am not a huge SF fan as a writing genre, as my colleagues will confirm. That said, as a Modern Orthodox (leaning Orthodox) Jewess, the concept of everything we have been taught via Torah and Rebbes, having to be revisited in context of space, is frankly amazing to me. I had never considered that a Jew in Space would have to suddenly retranslate everything. Death, Shabbos candles, indeed, the dates themselves..."fascinating" as Spock would say. It is something that I wish we had thought of for an issue of our international magazine, Carpe Articulum Literary Review! Well done, Edmon J. Rodman!
I was always intrigued that the actors who played Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Ensign Chekov and Sarek (Spock's father) were all Jewish.
Imagine my delight when I saw that in the new film, the actress who plays Spock's *mother* is Jewish!
The first Jew in space was Boris Valentinovich Volynov -
http://www.astronautix.com/astros/volynov.htm
His mother was Jewish. He was the Soviet Air Force officer
To the commenter above who identified him/herself as "me":
This was a forum on space science and science fiction. You should have kept to the subjects at hand. But since you didn't....
A "racist" is someone who believes stupid stereotypes about a group of people. By your statement, YOU are the racist.
A "sect" is a subdivision of a larger religious group. Judaism is not a a subdivision of anything.
"Genocide" is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. I have never killed anyone, nonetheless an entire ethnic or religious group, nor has anyone I know done so. I do know (and so do you) that Jews have been the TARGET of genocidal policies. Your statement above is nonsense and is apparently motivated by hatred; see the definition of "racist", above.
"Totalitarian"? You gotta be kidding. Totalitarianism is a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control. Wikipedia lists 33 political parties for Israel.
So I recommend you figure out the source of your racist hatred and free yourself of such thoughts and emotions. Every person deserves to be treated as an individual and every person deserves to be treated cordially.
And if you can't, and you continue spewing your nasty lies, than I dare you to identify yourself as more then just "me". Coward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_jLnrUXJNM
At least Jews in Space will have something to read. The National Yiddish Book Center has opened their Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library .
We live below, you want to know how to live above? It is written....Job 33 The Spirit of G-D made me, (flesh) the breath of the Almighty gives me life. (spirit life above)
We can all be given the breath of the Eternal King. For it is written...Jeremiah 10 But the LORD is the true G-D: He is the living G-D the eternal King.
Put sin out and G-D in and be lifted up, the ride is better than a space ship.
Like reading....read Ps. 51: those who are on the path to a new world and the kingdom of G-d while they live here on earth.
A most excellent article. Just FYI, I linked to it from May We Please have the Moon?