On heroes and amazing connections

Usually I write about musical heroes. But last week, I heard an amazing story about two astronauts, two tiny sacred scrolls and the two physics professors who owned them -- one of them local. It was a story about courage and hope and stunning connections, and I just had to write about it. At the end, I'll tell you about my personal connection.

When we think of heroes, we might think about "the Greatest Generation," our parents who lived through World War II. But there are heroes among us today.

Last night, I attended (with a SRO crowd) the moving "Torah Homecoming" at the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education on the Hebrew Union College campus. We saw a beautiful video with NASA footage of Ilan Ramon and the crew of the Columbia space shuttle, all lost on Feb. 1, 2003, upon reentry. Ramon's widow, Rona Ramon, spoke movingly about him, her family and how she asked their close friend, Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean, to take the second Torah belonging to Henry Fenichel into space in their memory.

She said that Ilan quoted the words to the Beatles song, "Imagine," while in space: "You may say I'm a dreamer..."

Perhaps the most breathtaking moments came when astronaut MacLean spoke, as he showed amazing personal footage (never before seen) from his own Atlantis mission to the International Space Station in September. The idea was to show the journey that the little Torah took -- and illuminate us all on what astronauts really do.

Among his tasks -- 400 KM up in space -- was to help deploy a solar panel. We saw him literally hanging by his fingers out there on a truss in space, the Earth looming beyond, as he struggled to release the bolts that were stuck ("I wasn't going inside until I got them," he said). The idea, he said, was to make the Space Station safer for those who were up there for six months at a time.

Here's an understatement: "The first time you come out (of the space station) you really feel that you are high."

He spoke about his deep friendship with Ilan, and how they had trained together for more than four years, and how difficult it still was to see the video of him. "To me, it feels like it happened yesterday. We lived, breathed and ate space, and then we went home to our families. ... The bonding you develop is not just a space experience -- it's a human experience.

"Training as an astronaut is very tough -- both Ilan and I shared that. There's a tremendous sacrifice when you train for a mission like this."

He described what it was like, every 90 minutes, to see the sunrise and sunset when you orbit the earth, of seeing the planets "falling behind the Earth" in a row, each a small disc. Seeing such things evoked "virgin feelings of wonder and awe. You see such beauty, and you wonder as an astronaut, why do bad things happen down there?"

He spoke about how Ilan showed him a picture drawn by a child in the '40s in the Theresienstadt concentration camp by Petr Genz, showing Earth as seen from the moon. He said when he took the little Torah back into space for his friend, "I tried to transplant myself to the mind of the child who had the first Torah, who was really hanging onto hope."

The Canadian astronaut said there was another powerful message -- that "there are no borders in space." He said that looking down felt like "you're living a parallel adventure" between space and Earth.

When he presented the little Torah back to its owner, Holocaust survivor Henry Fenichel, he said it traveled 4.8 million miles, 187 orbits -- each orbit has 16 sunsets and 16 sunrises -- and about 12 days.

Prof. Fenichel also spoke eloquently, saying the two Torahs represent "the ability to rise from the anguish of the Holocaust and reach for the stars."

The little Torah will likely travel around the country now, in a traveling exhibit through the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education, that will continue to "tell the story."

All participants are on their way to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the Discovery liftoff as NASA guests tomorrow.

And my personal connection? My dad worked for NASA in the early days of the space shuttle -- indeed, going back to the earlier days of the space program when it was NACA. On my wall at home, is a tiny American flag taken up in Columbia STS-4 in thanks for his work on the shuttle, and for helping to launch "a new era in space."