(wooshing) (orchestral music) RABBI JOSH BREINDEL: What makes space exploration inherently Jewish?

(violin playing) RABBI BEN-TZION SPITZ: Jews have a genius for adapting under the harshest conditions, whether it's imposed by people or whether it's imposed by nature.

Mark Twain called Jews the eternal people.

MARK TWAIN: All things are mortal but the Jew.

All other forces pass, but he remains.

What is the secret of his immortality?

ZACH WEINERSMITH: Jews in Space.

That's a Mel Brooks bit.

♪ We're Jews out in space!

JEFF HOFFMAN: Jews in Space reminded us Judaism is a traveling religion.

It always has been.

ZACH WEINERSMITH: Jews in Space, always ready to pick up and go somewhere else where they'll be safe.

♪ When goyim attack us (explosion) NEWS REPORTER: In the desert of southern Israel scientists have begun simulating what it might be like on Mars.

RABBI JOSH BREINDEL: Can Judaism ever be a religion that takes root on Mars?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: There's the Reform Jews, there's the Hassidic Jews, so that wouldn't be so weird, would it, to have a branch of Judaism, the Martians?

RABBI ZVI KONIKOV: The concern is Judaism is earthbound and obsessed with the way the earth functions.

You have the sun and the moon and the night and the day.

We put on our tefillin when the sun rises and we keep the Sabbath when the day is finished.

TYSON: Judaism is earth-based.

When I think of space, I think of Fiddler on the Roof.

For many people, it was their first exposure to many Jewish rituals.

But for me, the takeaway was, no matter what your traditions are, someone is going to break them.

I'm intrigued when people come up with a philosophy of life, be it a culture, be it religion, and then they think it's complete, But then something happens that says, "Wait a minute, this isn't, we've never seen this before.

What are we going to do?"

NASA ANNOUNCER: Ignition sequence start.

SPITZ: The 1969 moon landing was an earthshattering event for the Jewish Orthodox rabbinic community.

Before the moon landing, the heavens were inviolate.

It was God's domain.

With many people it created a crisis of faith.

(mysterious music) NEIL ARMSTRONG: That's one small step for a man.

One giant leap for mankind.

TYSON: The concern expressed by rabbinical authorities when we first stepped foot on the moon, "Oh my gosh, there's another world.

How are we going to reckon Judaic traditions?"

NASA ANNOUNCER: They've got the flag up now.

And you can see the Stars and Stripes.

SPITZ: There were Jewish newspapers writing, "This is not good" and "Man doesn't belong in space."

KONIKOV: They say, "Well, isn't there a verse in King David's book, the Psalms, 'Hashamayim shamayim laHashem,'" BREINDEL: The heavens, shamayim, those are for God, TOGETHER: "'Vha'aretz natan lifnei adam, KONIKOV: but man has to stick to earth.'"

BREINDEL: In Genesis, retold in paintings, movies, God crafted Adam.

Adem, from the adamah from the earth, from the ground itself.

We are literally earthlings.

So why would we leave?

Are we even allowed to leave?

KONIKOV: The Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Schneerson was asked in the 1960s by journalists, "Well, what does Judaism have to say?"

BREINDEL: It's our duty to go out and to learn and to probe and to explore.

Because when we do that, we come to a deeper understanding of God.

HOFFMAN: When NASA put out a call for applications to be a space shuttle astronaut my mother didn't like it at all.

My mother wanted me to be a doctor, like my two brothers and my father.

"You know, Jeff, some people have a Ph.D.

and an MD."

I said, "Mom, not going to happen."

I was selected as the first group of space shuttle astronauts, a group of 35, back in 1978.

Judaism is part of my culture, which is why I brought a lot of, Jewish ceremonial objects on flights with me.

My very first flight was during Passover, and the woman in charge of our food didn't know what matzah was.

She picked it up and she cracked it.

And, of course, crumbs all over the place.

Crumbs are a real problem in space because you can breathe them in.

She said, "This matzah isn't going anywhere near the space shuttle."

When we were fixing the Hubble Space Telescope, it was during Hanukkah.

So I actually was spinning a dreidel that I had brought up.

It was a special beautiful silver handmade dreidel by an artist in Jerusalem.

The next thing I knew, Mission Control called up.

MISSION CONTROL: Endeavor Houston for Jeff.

All of America would like to know what you've got and what you're doing with it.

HOFFMAN: Well um, (mysterious music) HOFFMAN: You'd need a new set of rules for zero gravity.

Things don't work the same as they do on the earth.

TYSON: These will be interesting challenges for rabbis of the future, or any holy leaders of the future, whose task it is to interpret revealed truth into realms and regimes that they never had to apply before.

KONIKOV: I am the Rabbi of the Chabad of the Space and Treasure Coasts in Brevard County, Florida.

We're just down the road from NASA, from Kennedy Space Center.

I love every launch, I go out it could be in the middle of the night.

We go out in our pajamas We have to see it.

Why?

I don't know, it's part of me.

Ilan Ramon was a colorful scientist, pilot and Israeli citizen who was awarded the spot to be part of the mission of Columbia by the American president, who was Clinton at the time.

BILL CLINTON: America and Israel will be taking our partnership to new heights, literally.

An Israeli astronaut and a payload of Israeli instruments will fly on a space shuttle mission next year.

LAUREL CLARK: To my right is our seventh crew member, Ilan Ramon from Israel.

ILAN RAMON: It's going to be my first flight.

Hopefully not the last flight.

NEWS REPORTER: What does it mean to you to be the first Israeli astronaut?

RAMON: It's meaningful for the people of Israel.

It's also meaningful for, a lot of, the Jewish community throughout the world.

KONIKOV: It was incredible.

Everybody was so excited.

When he first met me.

He gave me a big hug.

He's Israeli, and there's a lot of warmth even the first time.

And he asked me for a favor.

"How do I mark the Sabbath in space?"

BREINDEL: If you're buzzing around the planet really, really quickly, you have a sunrise and a sunset roughly every ninety minutes.

HOFFMAN: You're going around the world every ninety minutes.

So, you know, starting and finishing your ceremonies on the basis of sunrise and sunset no longer works.

BREINDEL: There's a classic joke where they send a rabbi into space for the first time.

Down they come, and the rabbi is accompanied by the astronauts, the astronauts are wonderful, they're hale, hearty, everything's great.

The rabbi is a mess.

He's a disaster, unshaven, and he's staggering.

They say, "Rabbi, what's wrong?"

And the rabbi goes, "Shacharit mincha maariv, shacharit mincha maariv."

"Morning prayers, afternoon prayers, evening prayers!

Morning prayers, afternoon prayers, evening prayers!

Morning prayers!

Afternoon prayers!

Evening prayers!!"

TYSON: All of our reckoning of time owes its foundations to astronomical observations that are earth-centered.

One should not be surprised at the challenge attempting to maintain religious observance, traditions, in places other than Earth.

KONIKOV: I was able to take this question to rabbis in many different countries.

HOFFMAN: The rabbis always have an answer where there's a will, there's a way.

BREINDEL: Where there is a rabbinic will, there's a halachic, or legal way.

KONIKOV: In Jewish law, we find a previous case that's similar.

HOFFMAN: What do you do if you go above the Arctic Circle and the sun never sets?

TYSON: Well it does but once it rises, it stays up for a long time.

BREINDEL: In World War Two, this question was actually asked, "What happens if you have a Jewish soldier who's stationed way, way, way, way, way up north, (ocean waves) and the Sabbath would only come once every few weeks?"

(howling wind) SPITZ: The rabbis at the time said, you go according to the closest habitable city.

If you're going to the North Pole, they follow the time of Anchorage, Alaska.

There's a small but vibrant Jewish community there.

In the case of Ilan Ramon, the nearest, closest operational Earth-like reality is Houston, which was managing the space shuttle at the time.

TYSON: That made a lot of sense to me, because what it does is it preserves the link between activities here on Earth and wherever you are in the universe.

KONIKOV: I knew that we had arrived at a maskana, a final conclusion as to what he needs to do.

(reporters yell questions in Hebrew) Set your watch according to the time here on Earth and that would be Jewish law.

That's what I told him.

The news broke that he's going to be keeping the Sabbath.

It went everywhere.

Everyone's going to be working and then this one guy's going to be doing nothing?

BREINDEL: The Shabbath requires us to rest, not to engage with technology.

And that's a problem if you're on a NASA mission.

NEWS REPORTER: The true observance would, of course, require you not to be working today.

Did you receive a special dispensation so you could be on the job and concentrating on your scientific duties?

KONIKOV: What is driving the Jew who's not religious and suddenly they're more Jewish than the rabbi?

I'm serious.

It's two words.

Pintele Yid.

Pintele means the pilot light of a Jew.

It's like a candle.

What does a candle do?

It flickers.

And sages say that it flickers because it feels its source.

It wants to do good.

"You're the astronaut you have to put on your spacesuit.

But now your job is not just for yourself.

It's for the whole universe to bring more light to the world."

TYSON: I witnessed only one shuttle launch in my life, and it was STS-107 Columbia.

NASA ANNOUNCER: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 We have booster ignition and liftoff.

Houston now controlling the flight of Columbia.

SPITZ: Ilan Ramon's Sabbath started Friday evening, according to Houston time.

And that's when he made his kiddush.

A blessing over wine to sanctify the Sabbath.

BREINDEL: He was taking his identity proudly as a Jew into space.

KONIKOV: He prepared that little bottle of grape juice with a straw.

Otherwise, zero gravity, the wine would get everywhere.

All his love for Judaism went into that that little straw, that little, mitzvah, that commandment that he did.

NASA ANNOUNCER: Solid rocket booster separation confirmed guidance now converging.

KONIKOV: It was a Saturday morning.

KONIKOV: The landing was supposed to take place at 9:16.

You could see that something's not right.

(conversation between the astronauts) KONIKOV: Others told me that it's not true.

It shakes.

It looks like this fire out there.

That's the typical thing when you go back into Earth's atmosphere.

(conversation between the astronauts) (conversation at Mission Control) BREINDEL: I was at temple and the news came through and we stopped.

KONIKOV: I think the first fifteen minutes it didn't register.

It didn't seep in.

NEW REPORTER: NASA lost communication with the space shuttle several minutes ago.

The first Israeli astronaut was aboard this flight.

GEORGE W. BUSH: At 9:00 this morning mission control in Houston lost contact with our Space Shuttle Columbia.

A short time later, debris was seen falling from the skies above Texas.

There are no survivors.

KONIKOV: Ilan and the crew, the seven members of Columbia passed away on Sabbath, on Saturday morning.

JESSICA MEIR: It was a tragedy, you know, beyond all proportions in in losing that crew for everybody.

And, you know, for Israel, it was their first and only flown astronaut at the time.

And, you know, I think that the one positive light on that if that tragedy had, you know, if you had to bring one positive thing out of that tragedy, it's that they did have their mission.

KONIKOV (archival): Last year, Ilan Ramon turned to me with a question, how does one mark the Sabbath in space?

Jerusalem, we have a problem.

KONIKOV: I always told people at that time I said, "What Ilan accomplished, a thousand rabbis couldn't accomplish."

SHEYNA GIFFORD: You have to make the way open for others behind you.

The story of our people is one of arrival, struggle, and survival.

NASA NARRATOR: If all goes as planned, the first Viking lander will separate from the orbiting command ship and descend to the Martian surface, landing at 9:40 p.m.

Eastern Daylight Time, July 4th.

GIFFORD: One of my earliest memories is a Viking landing on the surface of Mars and sending back a picture.

And I said to my father in Los Angeles, "Dad, that's another planet?

It looks an awful lot like the desert outside of LA."

He said, "Yes, that's another planet."

I said, "Can we go?"

And he said, "Why not?"

SPITZ: In the last few years, there's been greater excitement, discussion about manned missions to Mars, particularly for SpaceX.

HOFFMAN: Despite all of the hype Mars is not a very attractive place to live.

It's cold, doesn't have enough atmosphere to breathe.

ZACH WEINERSMITH: There are worldwide dust storms.

Usually, they don't blanket the entire sky in poisonous dust, but they do from time to time.

HOFFMAN: Things can't live on the surface of Mars.

But below the surface, who knows?

KELLY WEINERSMITH: There's a facility in Hawaii called HI-SEAS.

NEWS REPORTER: Next week, a team of six will enter the HI-SEAS facility in full Mars mode.

KELLY WEINERSMITH: It's a facility that's sort of out in a part of Hawaii that sort of looks Mars-like.

There's like lava tunnels you can explore and stuff.

And they've got, like, a cramped living space where they give you freeze-dried food and you have to live in these tiny little quarters.

They've done simulations that have lasted up to a year.

So you could just see how well do the people do when they have to live communally.

NEWS REPORTER: Sheyna Gifford is the chief medical officer on staff.

GIFFORD: Did we know what we were signing up for when we went in for a year, locked the door, missed every holiday and all kinds of important events?

Of course not.

I do think that the entire world got to experience it during Covid, that we were suddenly and unwillingly, all members of a space simulation.

KELLY WEINERSMITH: When you get to space, you're going to want to share as many things as possible, and you're not going to have enough space for everybody to have their own kitchen.

So you're going to need a communal kitchen, and you're probably not going to have everybody with their own sort of garden plots.

You're going to have a greenhouse where everyone's working together.

So it sort of makes sense to start this off as a communal movement.

Kibbutzim will be important for learning how to do that.

(upbeat Israeli folk song) ZACH WEINERSMITH: Kibbutzim are a communal movement, started by Jews, early 20th century.

They're still kind of a fixture of Israeli life.

(splash) People share everything, dining halls, housing, tools, all resources.

Childcare is a big one.

And in space, efficiency is key.

There's pretty robust evidence that it helps to be religious on a commune.

KELLY WEINERSMITH: So like maybe you believe in the value of communal living, but if you're also doing it because you think it's the, right thing to do for religious purposes, then it means even more to you.

GIFFORD: We broke up cooking for every day of the week, and I thought, (clap) I may as well go on Friday and actually make challah bread (laughs) for the first time in my life.

My mother said she used to do that every Friday.

Oh, that would be a nice thing to do.

HI-SEAS MEMBER: Is she wearing the LCG?

SPITZ: How does Jewish law apply to a Jew finding themselves on Mars?

GIFFORD: When do you celebrate the Sabbath?

When do you celebrate the High Holidays?

TYSON: You don't even have the moon as your time reckoning.

Mars has these two wimpy moons, the Phobos and Deimos, and you don't even care what phase they're in.

They're just, they're lame-ass moons, okay?

They're like a dozen miles across.

BREINDEL: On Mars, you've got a day night cycle that's 24 hours and roughly 40 minutes.

It is so close to Earth, and yet just slightly off enough so that sooner or later you're going to go out of sync with the Jewish community on Earth.

TYSON: It kind of matters that everybody's doing the same thing at the same time.

When you look at the five times a day of Muslim prayer, Catholics attending mass, the beginning of the Sabbath.

There's a unifying force that that represents.

That seems to matter.

And if that's the case, why not let it continue to matter?

SPITZ: My proposal was every month or two, to subtract a day from the Martian-Hebrew month, and that way the holidays over the course of the year will generally be within 24 hours, of each other.

(gravel footsteps) GIFFORD: I observed Yom Kippur.

It felt good because I was doing something that millions of people on earth were doing too.

Millions and millions of people were fasting that day, and we were in solidarity that way.

There was something lovely about that.

ASTRONAUTS: 3, 2, 1.

GIFFORD: HI-SEAS Mission Four was the longest space simulation in U.S.

history.

It definitely strengthened my spirituality in at least one way.

My mother was a convert to Judiasm.

So throughout my life, it became this running theme, I'm not really Jewish, or I'm not Jewish enough.

Being the only Jew on Mars, suddenly, I got to be able to say with authority, I am a Jewish person.

But also my husband makes the challah now that I'm back home.

MEIR: I became an astronaut in 2013.

I was born in a small town called Caribou.

Most of the people there haven't been exposed to other things.

I said it yesterday and I'll say it also in Russia today, (speaking in Russian) They haven't met anybody that's different.

There was a neighboring town called Presque, which is about eleven miles away.

That's where I had my bat mitzvah.

My father was born in Baghdad in 1925.

When a lot of the antisemitism was kind of starting in the region, they all left for Israel.

That's really where my father grew up.

(uplifting music) NEWS REPORTER: Looks like NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, the first-time flier saying hello to some of her fellow crewmates already on board, making her first flight to the station.

MEIR: I was on the space station for 205 days, almost seven months.

I was fortunate enough to participate in the first all-female spacewalk with Christina Koch.

NASA COMMENTATOR: Seeing Jessica Meir make her first float out of the hatch there.

MEIR (archival): Okay, and copy.

NASA COMMENTATOR: And we're getting our first look here from the helmet cameras.

DONALD TRUMP: Station, this is President Donald Trump.

Do you hear me?

MEIR (archival): Yes, we can hear you.

TRUMP: That's great.

That's great.

I was starting to get worried about you.

You're in an interesting place.

MEIR: But my most liked social media post was my menorah socks.

That picture, a stupid picture, you know, that I took of my feet.

I never would have thought that would have been the post that received more attention than anything else.

Looking out through one of the windows of the International Space Station, people might ask, what does that mean to look at as a Jew?

(contemplative music) One of the most powerful things for me, as I looked out at the earth, is that you see how connected everything is.

All the land masses are connected.

You don't see all of those borders dividing all the countries.

Once we start settling other planets, maybe the Jewish experience will change.

Hopefully we can evolve beyond this history of persecution, of people being singled out for being different.

Of all of these types of things that have plagued us as humans, at least here on this planet.