Jewish Calendar Monday, 29 Shevat, 5783 February 20, 2023
Jewish Calendar Monday, 29 Shevat, 5783 February 20, 2023
On the morning of February 1, 2003, the Columbia Space Shuttle, returning from its STS-107 mission, was destroyed upon re-entry, 16 minutes before its scheduled landing. All its crew members perished, including Ilan Ramon, a combat pilot in the Israeli Air Force, who was the first Israeli astronaut. Prior to his departing to space on Space Shuttle Columbia, where his mission included the manning of a multispectral camera for recording desert aeroso, he arranged to take kosher food as well as a Kiddush cup, a Torah Scroll, and a dollar from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of righteous memory.
Links: Pride, Pain and the Suddenness of Life; Remembering Ilan Ramon
The original emblem of the Jewish people was not a star, but the seven-branched Menorah that stood in the inner chamber of the Tabernacle and the Temple.
Why the Menorah? Because the Menorah embodied two opposite qualities of our nation: diversity and unity.
On the one hand, the Menorah had seven branches, just as there are seven general sorts of Jews, and within those seven, countless more branches upon branches, each with their own particular light to shine, their own customs, unique purpose, and distinct meaning in life.
On the other hand, these branches, like all Jews, were all forged of a single ingot of gold.
This is the Jewish people, a magnificent paradox: We are one who shine as many.
And what do we shine?
That, one day, all of humanity will also be one who shine as many.
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