Shabbat Parshat Terumah - 5763
“Speak to the Children of Israel and Let Them Take for Me an Uplifting Gift” (Shemot 25:2)

Parshat Terumah deals with the construction of the Mishkan, the portable Sanctuary that was built by the Jewish People at the beginning of their 40-year trek through the Wilderness. It was a symbol of the Shechina, the Divine Presence, that traveled with them. The Mishkan was the precursor of the “permanent” Temples, the First and the Second, situated in Jerusalem. Both those spiritual centers came to tragic ends, for reasons of moral failure by the Jewish People, described in the Bible and the Talmud.

Various activities were involved in the construction of the Mishkan, corresponding to the list of 39 “Avot Melachot,” Primary Categories of “Melacha,” creative, conscious and purposeful activity, that the Torah prohibits on Shabbat, as a “sign” and a “covenant” with G-d, to remember always that He created the universe in six “Days” and on the seventh “Day,” He “rested.” The Fourth Commandment says “You shall remember the Shabbat to keep it holy.” (Shemot 20:8) This has been explained by the Talmud as referring to the recitation of the “Kiddush,” that expresses the “holiness of the day,” the enjoyment of festive meals, and other pleasurable activities.

Last Shabbat came the terrible news that the Columbia Shuttle Spacecraft , carrying a crew of seven, six Americans (one of Indian descent) and one Israeli, Colonel Ilan Ramon, had disintegrated upon re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere, after a sixteen-day mission marked only by creative activity and success.

Col. Ramon, A”H, was a hero of the Jewish People. He demonstrated this during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the Lebanon Conflict in 1982. He also participated in 1981 in the destruction by the Israeli Air Force of the first Iraqi nuclear reactor, saving untold lives.

The New York Times described Col. Ramon as a “soft-spoken combat pilot conscious of the importance of symbols and history, and the role he played in both... The son and grandson of Holocaust survivors, Colonel Ramon, 48, was the first citizen of his country to go into space. The accomplishment, he said in an interview in mid-January, was not his alone. ‘Every time you are the first, it is meaningful. I am told my flight is meaningful to a lot of Jewish people around the world. Being the first Israeli astronaut, I feel I am representing all Jews and all Israelis.’ ”

“On the shuttle where he presided over an Israeli project to collect images of dust storms to gauge their impact on climate, Col. Ramon carried a special keepsake. It was a small Torah scroll used at the secret bar-mitzvah of the project’s principal investigator, Dr. Joachim Joseph, almost 60 years ago, while he was in a Nazi concentration camp. The elderly rabbi ... who died soon afterward in the camp, gave the Torah to the boy and told him to tell people what had happened there. Dr. Joseph said Col. Ramon saw the Torah when visiting his home and was so moved by the story that he asked to take it into space as a tribute.”

The Journal News wrote “he carried into space a small pencil drawing titled ‘Moon Landscape,’ that showed how the artist imagined the earth would look from the surface of the Moon, by Peter Ginz, a 14-year-old Jewish boy killed at Auschwitz.”

He asked that he be provided with kosher food, took a Kiddush Cup into space with some grape juice, and asked the Chief Rabbi of Israel how to observe Shabbat in space, since he would be experiencing a “week” more than twice every 24 hours, and was told to follow the calendar of Mission Control in Houston.

All in all, Col. Ilan Ramon’s words and deeds constituted a magnificent “Kiddush HaShem,” Sanctification of G-d’s Name!

Since we believe in “Hashgachah Pratit,” G-d’s supervision and control over all events, we might be justified in asking, “Why was this mission, so bright and promising, so pregnant with hope for humanity, having traversed the wilderness of space for sixteen days, not allowed to return to earth safely?” We must accept the answer that “As Heaven is above the earth, so are My ways greater than your ways, and My thoughts greater than your thoughts.” (Yeshayahu 55:9)

There was nearly a “family”-type relationship among the members of the crew, all courageous individuals who believed that people could work together in the effort to advance the cause of humanity as a whole. The Jerusalem Post quotes Ilan’s wife, Rona, as follows “that the one thought that comforts her is that her husband died at the height of his career, doing what he loved in the company of people he loved. ‘They enjoyed each other so much. They were a group of angels and they will remain that way.’ ”

Rabbi Pinchas Frankel

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