Israeli Astronaut Shows Torah Aboard Shuttle
Israel’s first astronaut held up a tiny Torah scroll aboard space shuttle Columbia, fulfilling a promise by the scroll’s owner to tell the story of the Holocaust.
Astronaut Ilan Ramon showed the Torah to Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon, during a televised conference.
Watching with emotion from a NASA control center in Greenbelt, Md., was the Torah’s owner, Joachim Joseph, a 71-year-old atmospheric physicist at Tel Aviv University who is overseeing an Israeli experiment aboard the shuttle.
The scientist received the Torah from a rabbi while both were imprisoned at a Nazi concentration camp in Germany in 1944.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
