I first met Ilan Ramon at an almost clandestine gathering in my hometown of Satellite Beach, Florida. NASA personnel and Israeli Security teams had taken extra security precautions to ensure that nothing would go wrong. Even the location had been kept secret until the very day of the meeting.
Shabbat in Space – The Legacy of Ilan Ramon
I first met Ilan Ramon at an almost clandestine gathering in my hometown of Satellite Beach, Florida. NASA personnel and Israeli Security teams had taken extra security precautions to ensure that nothing would go wrong. Even the location had been kept secret until the very day of the meeting.
Ilan addressed the assembled Jewish community leaders. After his speech approached me. He greeted me with a warm hug and presented me with his request: “Rabbi I need to talk with you. I want to keep Shabbat while in space but no one can tell me how to do it!”
And that was how our friendship began.
Ilan was a very special Jew. He often expressed the thought that he saw his trip to space as a mission. “I will represent the entire Jewish people,” he would say. As a representative of the Jewish people he wanted to do everything in the very best possible way Jewishly; including keeping Shabbat and eating only kosher food.
“Kosher food?” the NASA staff shrugged their shoulders at the Jewish astronaut’s strange request. Ilan was not one to give up easily and a solution was found. NASA contacted My Own Meals, a company in Deerfield, Ill. that sells certified kosher food in “thermo-stabilized” sealed pouches for campers.
