Tonight I had the honor of attending a special event at the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education at HUC-JIR Cincinnati. You may recall that a few years ago Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon died when the Space Shuttle Columbia burned up on its return to Earth. Col. Ramon had taken with him into space a tiny Torah that had survived the Holocaust. This year his friend Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean took a similar miniature Torah into space and brought it home. Tonight, Dr. MacLean and Rona Ramon (Ilan’s widow) formally returned the Torah (which had traveled 4.8 million miles through space) to its owner, local Holocaust survivor Dr. Henry Fenichel.

I’m proud to say that I’m personally acquainted with Professor Fenichel as he is a past president of my synagogue. Here is the Cincinnati Enquirer article and the Photo Gallery.

This is the little Dutch boy who wore the yellow star that the man he became holds above:

What’s the point? We Jews survive and keep telling our story to the world.