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ALAN ABBEY:
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An Israeli journey to Jewishness

On the surface, Israel Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon was anything but the Israeli or Jewish Everyman. He was the elite of the elite, an Israeli "top gun," and on top of that, an astronaut who could hold his own with America’s best.

Similarly, there are so many descriptions of him as shy, unassuming, and modest to a fault that he certainly was unlike the stereotypical views held of Israelis and Jews. He was more the mythical American cowboy of novel and film than the macho Israeli fighter jock.

Steve Muller of Muller’s Ark Cottages in Bandera, Texas, where Ilan and his family once vacationed, has said: "He always had that subtle little smile. It reminded me of a cowboy’s aw-shucks sort of smile." Yet Ilan Ramon was the Israeli and Jewish Everyman, because of the circumstances of his life, the conscious efforts he took to mold himself as Everyman, and because of the tragedy of his death.

For being the Everyman who was also the best of us, Ilan Ramon is the Israeli of the year.

The circumstances of Ilan Ramon’s life are now well known: his childhood in Beersheba with parents who survived Nazi death camps and fought in the War of Independence, his early successes as a pilot in the Yom Kippur War. In 1981, he took a further step toward iconic status. Ilan became one of the eight fighter pilots chosen to eradicate the Iraqi nuclear reactor.

Like the hero from an American Western he resembled, Ilan quietly rode off into the sunset after that. He never traded on his status or played politics to get ahead. He never made general, people say, because he wasn’t pushy or political.

Yet he rose to the occasion when presented with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become Israel’s first astronaut. He had never imagined the possibility, but he quickly grasped the romance of space.

"All kinds of pictures were moving in my head — seeing earth from space, floating around — the stuff you see in the movies,‘ he told an interviewer in 2002. ’Of course, I didn’t know too much about the space program back then, because no one from Israel had done it."

It wasn’t long afterward that Ilan began realizing the impact of his trip would extend far beyond him and his family. He quickly felt the positive American Jewish reaction to his selection while training in America for his flight.

"They somehow appreciate this kind of event more than the Israelis,‘ he said to an American interviewer. ’In Israel, and I learned this only from being here, you don’t appreciate your freedom as a Jew the same way, because you’re within Israel. When you go out of Israel, you suddenly feel how important the State of Israel is for the Jewish communities of the world."

In fact, American Jews embraced Ilan more quickly than Israelis. When the announcement of an Israeli astronaut came from then-president Clinton in 1995, it was met here with jokes, sarcasm and indifference. We in Israel, perhaps preoccupied with the Palestinian war, and having preternaturally short attention spans, failed to see the significance of Ilan’s flight until Columbia neared takeoff.

But this emerging Jewish Everyman was beginning to understand the need for Jewish heroes and positive Jewish symbols in American and Israeli public life. His call for kosher food on a shuttle flight was the first, in contrast to the way American Jewish astronauts had downplayed or ignored such overt symbolism.

"This is symbolic,‘ Ilan said. ’I thought it would be nice to represent all kinds of Jews, including religious ones."

He even joked about affixing a mezuza to the shuttle’s door.

PERHAPS FEELING the sting of being ignored at home, Ilan also worked to interest Israelis in his flight. He began teasing the public with hints about the symbolic items he would carry into space: a book of Psalms on a microfiche, a sketch of the moon drawn by a 14-year-old boy in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, a kiddush cup with which he planned to note Shabbat in space, and a wallet-sized Torah smuggled out of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, among other items.

In a widely publicized conversation with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on the flight’s eve, Ramon said it was a great privilege to represent Israel.

"I’m going to carry special things and try to express something about the unity of the Israeli people and the Jewish community,‘ he told Sharon. ’I know my flight is very symbolic for the people of Israel, especially the Holocaust survivors. Because I was born in Israel, many people will see this as a dream that has come true."

Sharon, always sensitive to matters of Jewish and Israeli symbolism, caught the spirit.

"Col. Ramon’s flight and his mission into space are a source of honor to us all, and his success is yet another step in Israel’s integration into the space age," he said.

With such high-level prompting, Israelis finally picked up on the clues. The country virtually stopped to watch Columbia rise into space. The nation’s media praised Ilan to the skies — literally — with headlines and paeans to his courage and symbolism.

But some of us — shamefully — continued to deride Ilan’s flight while it was in space. An article in Haaretz spat on Ilan’s scientific efforts in space. Yet opinions like that were outside the mainstream. The vast majority of us soared with him in space, watched transfixed as his little kiddush cup floated gently in front of him, and shed a tear when he revealed the Holocaust-era Torah scroll that had reached its apotheosis in orbit.

In a video phone call to Sharon from space, Ramon said the little scroll symbolized "more than anything, the ability of the Jewish people to survive everything, including horrible periods, and go from the darkest days to days of hope and faith in the future."

Aware of Israel’s eyes on him, Ilan sprinkled his conversation with symbolic statements and gestures, and he also tried to raise our spirits.

"I think that the people of Israel, and the Jewish people as a whole, are a wonderful people,‘ Ramon said, ’and we have to maintain our Jewish heritage. I think it is very, very important to preserve our historical and religious traditions."

He continued to lecture us gently in the coming days.

"From space I could easily spot Jerusalem,‘ Ilan wrote to President Moshe Katsav in a space-to-earth e-mail, ’and while looking at Jerusalem our capital I prayed just one short prayer: ’Shma Yisrael, adonai eloheinu, adonai ehad.’" He asked Katsav to convey his appreciation to all of Israel.

"Let them know that I am honored to be their first representative ever in space," he wrote.

As the time for the landing approached, the nation and Jews worldwide held their collective breaths. And of course, we all know what happened.

By the tragic end to his flight, Ilan had completed his journey to becoming the Jewish Everyman. As we shatter a glass at our weddings to symbolize the sadness and destruction of the Temple, so the shattering of Columbia and the loss of Ilan Ramon reminds us of how our joy is never complete.

Six months after the destruction of Columbia, a group of asteroids riding in perpetual orbit between Mars and Jupiter received the names of the seven lost astronauts. We won’t call them fallen, because they will soar today and every day in the heavens. Ilan Ramon, Jewish Everyman and Israeli of the Year, surrounded forever by his comrades in flight.

The writer, executive editor-internet, is author of Journey of Hope: The Story of Ilan Ramon, Israel’s First Astronaut.