By Dr. Rabbi Moshe Dror
One of the most memorable narratives in the Bible about the life of Moses is when he sees the burning bush and hears the sacred name of God in Exodus.
Here we see how Ratner describes this. Moses is in a jogging suite. He is running to do the will of God., with a back pack on his back and his trusted staff in his hand.
At the feet of Moses we see a satellite that is taking the place of the Bush that was burning and was not consumed.
What is it that burns and is not consumed. Think about it for a moment and you can see that it is a Satellite that is in orbit around the earth and when it re-enters the atmosphere of the earth it burns and often is not consumed. Indeed there have been over a hundred shuttle flights that have safely gone into outer space and returned to earth through the consuming fires of re-entry.
This looks like the Russian orbit Sputnik that was sent into orbit by Russia on October 4, 1957. This is the beginning of space-race program.
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If there is anything that keeps us in our place it is gravity and we are only free of it when we can Lift Off with enough power to get out of the Grip of our gravitational pull.
Could Ratner be alluding to the quest for freedom from gravity as a model of the from slavery to freedom from Egypt?
The extensions from the satellite look like miniature antennas sending the message of a new human freedom all over the world.
Moses is not wearing any shoes, as it is stated in the Biblical narrative- Take your shoes off as you are standing on sacred ground
Could it be that it is our duty and opportunity to go into space??
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Could this be a foretelling of the Star Trek mythos.
Moses was preparing to get the Israelites to go on one of the most amazing journeys of human history- the Exodus- from slavery to freedom.
When I read the Passover Haggadah about the Exodus, there resounds in the back of my mind the basic theme that we are also on some special journey in our future.
The phrase said by Captain Kirk in most of the Star Trek episodes is:
Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise its five year mission : to explore strange new worlds…
That was for five years.
The Jewish mission has been going on for at about 3,500 years.
Indeed. Take a look at the verse in Bamidbar ( Numbers 13:21).
The Israelites left Mitzrayim ( Egypt) which is the based on the Hebrew word for narrow ( Tzar) into Rahav which means in Hebrew broad, open.. could it be an analogue for space.
It was Gene Roddenberry who wanted to tell more sophisticated stories using futuristic situations as analogies to current problems on earth and rectifying them through humanism and optimism.
The opening line To boldly go where no man has gone before was taken almost verbatim from a US White House booklet on space produced after the Sputnik flight in 1957.
