3 min read
ByDaniel Sugarman, Daniel Sugarman
Daniel Sugarman has his head in the stars
April 17, 2019 15:20By the time you read this, Seder night will be looming. After weeks of preparation, after at least one trip to Kosher Kingdom which will have done absolutely nothing beneficial for your blood pressure, after unlocking the Chamber of Secrets to take out all the Pesach crockery, you have finally arrived at the Promised Land. Stop, weary traveller and rest awhile. You have earned it.
I could use the rest of this column to talk about Pesach. But why? You’ll be spending the whole night discussing it. My talented colleagues on this very page are discussing it. So let’s talk about something else.
Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Israeli lunar lander Beresheet. Or at least, they were until last week, when the craft named for the first Hebrew word of the Torah, meaning “in the beginning”, sadly met its end.
Predictably, the sense of humour from Israelis was more than up to the occasion. Comments I saw on social media included: “The craft crashed — typical Israeli driving”, “We’re so busy stopping rockets from falling that we forgot how to let them land” and, in reference to the recent general election, “Netanyahu wins and we promptly bomb the moon?!”
But leaving aside the jokes, we should take a moment to appreciate just how remarkable this is. Israel is a country which in many arenas is punching so far above its level that it’s almost playing a different sport. The only countries and organisations to have previously flown a craft into lunar orbit are America, the USSR, China, Japan, India and the European Space Agency. Now a country a fraction of the size, with a tiny percentage of the population, and an economy minuscule in comparison, has joined that elite group. It’s hard not to be impressed.
I could rhapsodise about “the start up nation”, as Israel is often called these days. The technological initiatives currently being undertaken are staggering, ranging from the highest of hi-tech to that most basic need of humanity, water.
But I want to focus on the character trait which is a key factor in invention: tenacity.
Although it received significant funding from donors, the Beresheet mission was not a vanity project spurred on by fans of the “Jews in Space” segment of Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part 1. It was a multi-year project, initially an entrant for the Google X Lunar Prize contest to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. When the contest ended without a winner because no teams launched their craft before the deadline, SpaceIL, the organisation behind Beresheet, carried on anyway.
Yes, this particular mission may have been unsuccessful. But that is not stopping those behind it. On the contrary, Morris Khan, president of SpaceIL, confirmed this week that efforts have begun to find a new group of donors to help sponsor another effort.
In a statement, he said: “This is part of my message to the younger generation. Even if you do not succeed, you get up again and try.”
Space has sometimes been the scene of tragedy, both for the world and for the Jewish people. In 1986, millions watched in horror as the Challenger space shuttle exploded moments after lift-off, its seven-strong crew including a Jewish astronaut, Judith Resnick. In 2003, the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated while re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, again killing seven crew members including Ilan Ramon, an Israeli air force colonel.
But there have been other moments. In 1996, astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman brought a Sefer Torah aboard the Columbia, performing the first space leining. Colonel Ramon also took a small Torah with him, which had survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In 2006, an astronaut took a “sister-Torah” — another miniature scroll which had survived that camp — to space aboard the Atlantis, to honour his memory.
In every generation, we have experienced setbacks. Starting with slavery in Egypt, the Jewish people have undergone countless trials and tribulations. But we have survived them all. When we have fallen, we have got up again, time after time. Our ancestors, toiling under the Egyptian lash, could never in their wildest dreams have imagined that one day, a thousand lifetimes later, their descendants would be sending crafts into the sky to discover the mysteries of the heavens.
The team behind Beresheet will be back. And next time, their mission will hopefully be successful.
For us — next year in Jerusalem. For Beresheet — next year on the moon.
