- 03:56 BST - Sunday morning, 20th July 1969 Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon.
- I was watching as a baby (so I'm told)
- 50 years ago today
- Podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon (BBC World Service) - what happened was miraculous - flying man to the moon and bringing him back. It was fraught with danger and could have resulted in a tragedy.
Jews have long association with the Moon.
Our first mitzvah as a nation is to create a calendar based on the cycles of the Moon.
(2) This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.
The Midrash (Mechilta) explains:
“G‑d showed Moses the moon in its renewal and said to him, ‘When the moon renews itself, you will have a new month.’ ”
Each month we celebrate Rosh Chodesh - the moon is at the centre of our religion to the extent that each month, between the 3rd and middle day, some people say Kiddush Levanah (p602 Green Singers Siddur)
(מד) כְּשֵׁם שֶׁאֲנִי רוֹקֵד כְּנֶגְדֵּךְ
(מה) וְאֵינִי יָכוֹל לִנְגֽוֹעַ בָּךְ
(מו) כַּךְ לֹא יוּכְ֒לוּ כָּל אוֹיְ֒בַי
(מז) לִנְגֽוֹעַ בִּי לְרָעָה:
Recite three times:
(44) Just as I leap toward you
(45) but cannot touch you,
(46) so may all my enemies be unable
(47) to touch me with evil intent.
In this week's Parasha, we see that the King Balak hires the evil Bilaam to curse the Jews and says:
"As I see them from the mountain tops, Gaze on them from the heights, There is a people that dwells apart, Not reckoned among the nations."
And tonight, we will be starting the period of the Three weeks, which culminates in Tisha Be'Av, the saddest day in the Jewish year where, time after time, our enemies tried to destroy us.
Yet....
כְּשֵׁם שֶׁאֲנִי רוֹקֵד כְּנֶגְדֵּךְ וְאֵינִי יָכוֹל לִנְגֽוֹעַ בָּךְ כַּךְ לֹא יוּכְ֒לוּ כָּל אוֹיְ֒בַי לִנְגֽוֹעַ בִּי לְרָעָה:
Recite three times:
Just as I leap toward you but cannot touch you, so may all my enemies be unable to touch me with evil intent.
50 years ago today, mankind did touch the moon and we, the Jews are still here.
In fact, we are compared to the moon
The Talmud writes that the Jews are compared to the moon
- Take the moon’s luminous glow in the night sky. The moon has no source of light of its own; instead, its beautiful glow is a reflection of the sun’s brilliance. So too with the Jewish people: like the moon, we reflect an important source of light - God and His Torah. Reflecting this dazzling light is an honour: like the moon, we receive beauty and then send it back into the world through our actions and our very being.
- And the moon’s waxing and waning reminds us that like the moon, even when it seems diminished and nearly invisible, we are confident that it will re-emerge, growing brilliant and full once more. So too with the Jewish people: even in our darkest times, we have relied on God’s promise that the Jews will never disappear and that one day we will be restored to our dazzling fullness.
We survived Bilaam, the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Inquisition, Cossacks, Nazi's and Soviets.
50 years after the moon landing....
Just as I leap toward you but cannot touch you, so may all my enemies be unable to touch me with evil intent.
The Jubilee of the Moon landings is a great feat for us all to celebrate, it showed how much we can achieve when we work together, people in harmony.
As Bilaam also said - the verse that we recite when we enter our shuls around the world:
(5) How fair are your tents, O Jacob, Your dwellings, O Israel!
When our tents, our abodes, our shuls are harmonious, then just as man can land on the moon, so, no-one can ever touch us with evil intent.
As we enter the period of the Three Weeks, let us work together to celebrate our achievements as Jews and citizens of this beautiful blue planet, so that we, just like the moon that we are compared with, can shine Gd's light onto the rest of the world.
Shabbat Shalom.