This Passover, we’re all thinking about space. Artemis II is on the first space mission to the moon in decades, launching into space on April 1, the day of the first night of Passover.
While the mission’s commander, Reid Wiseman, might not be Jewish (though he has shared pictures of Israel from space and attended Space Week in the state as a guest astronaut), Jews have gone to space during Passover before — most notably, the second Jewish American NASA astronaut, Jeffrey Hoffman, whose first mission to space in 1985 coincided with the Jewish holiday.
Hoffman even tried to bring matzah onto Space Shuttle Discovery but unfortunately, the flight’s food coordinator, unfamiliar with the Jewish bread of affliction, vetoed that particular Jewish space mission. She cracked the matzah and saw the sheer number of crumbs it produced and simply told Hoffman, “That matzah is not making it to space.” While matzah crumbs are the bane of our existence during Passover, with endless sweeping and vacuuming, turns out they can be literally deadly to astronauts in zero gravity, where inhaling crumbs can cause some real damage.
But fear not — over his five space missions, Hoffman did manage to bring lots of Judaica to space, including several mezuzahs, atarot (the inscription on the collar of a tallit), a miniature Torah scroll, a yad, a menorah, a tallit and perhaps most famously, a silver dreidel made in Jerusalem that he spun for Houston and all to see:
Hoffman isn’t the only Jewish astronaut who has celebrated Hanukkah in space. Jessica Meir marked the Festival of Lights aboard the Soyuz-15 with fun Hanukkah socks (and also participated in the first all-women space walk with Artemis II’s Christina Cook). Jasmin Moghbeli, who isn’t Jewish, brought a felt menorah her Jewish kids made on her mission, along with a dreidel as a special tribute to her kids, her Jewish husband and their interfaith family.
The late Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli to make it to space, also famously brought a Kiddush cup to space and inquired with many rabbis about how to observe Shabbat while in orbit, according to the documentary “Fiddler on the Moon.” Tragically, just like Judith Resnik, the first Jewish NASA astronaut, he never made it back to earth alive. But pages from his diary, including one with the words of the Kiddush prayer, were returned to his widow in Israel.
While there are no Jews aboard Artemis II, it’s likely that there will be many more Jewish celebrations in space in the future — unfortunately, they’ll all have to be matzah-free (though perhaps some dehydrated matzah brei?).
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