Miraculous space pulp

October 8, 2008 - 1:24 PM by Harry · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, General, History and Culture, Technology

A page written by Ilan Ramon in space Curators at the Israel Museum have worked in conjunction with Israel’s State Archives to sort through millions of archived documents and are now presenting a special exhibition entitled “Blue and White Pages: Documenting the History of Israel,” opening two days from now and closing February 7, 2009.

In celebration of Israel’s 60th anniversary, most of the documents on display at the exhibit are available for viewing by the general public for the first time ever. Some of the highlights include the blood-stained copy of “A Song to Peace” lyrics found in Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s pocket on the night of his assassination, Israel’s original Declaration of Independence and peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan.

But perhaps the piece de resistance is two pages restored from the remains of a journal kept by Ilan Ramon while in space. Israel’s first-ever astronaut, Ramon and his co-crew members died when the Columbia fell apart while attempting to land on earth on February 1, 2003. Remains of his diary, which fell several miles to the ground, were found two months later in a field in Palestine, Texas. Years of restoration by the Museum’s Paper Conservation Laboratory yielded 37 rescued pages, most of which are being kept private as per the requests of Ramon’s family.

The Jerusalem Post has this to add:

A little over two months after the shuttle explosion, NASA searchers found 37 pages from Ramon’s diary, wet and crumpled, in a field just outside the US town of Palestine, Texas. The diary survived extreme heat in the explosion, extreme atmospheric cold, and then “was attacked by microorganisms and insects” in the field where it fell, said museum curator Yigal Zalmona.

“It’s almost a miracle that it survived it’s incredible,” Zalmona said. There is “no rational explanation” for how it was recovered when most of the shuttle was not, he said.

According to a statement released by the Museum’s spokespeople, the two pages on display “include Ramon’s description of the experience of life in space and a handwritten copy of the Kiddush, the Jewish blessing over wine, intended for use in live transmission while on board the Columbia spacecraft.” Read more

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Tags: astronaut, Blue and White Pages, Columbia, Curator, Declaration of Independence, diary, documents, History, Ilan Ramon, israel museum, journal, Kiddush, NASA, Paper Conservation Laboratory, peace agreement, space, State Archives, treaty, wine, Yigal Zalmona, Yitzhak Rabin

Marketing ritual as family values

July 29, 2008 - 1:52 PM by Harry · 3 Comments
Filed under: General

Kiddush with the family In Israel, Fridays are similar to European and North American Sundays in many ways, a key one being the extra-thick newspaper. When Israel Israeli sits down to watch soccer on TV and spit sunflower seeds into his Turkish coffee regs, nothing makes for better reading material than a multi-kilo pile of not-quite-dry ink on super-thin paper containing hyper-local news tidbits, the following week’s TV highlights, in-depth feature articles illustrated with full-page photos, a circular outlining the latest cosmetics on sale at SuperPharm and fliers selling religious ritual to the presumably uninitiated.

Statistics have been said to indicate that the Passover Seder is Judaism’s most popular ritual (I know, it does seem odd that it would beat out henna parties, the Fast of Gedalia and upsheirin), so it makes sense that on the Friday preceding Passover, an advertising-laden Hagadah gets included in the pile. But this week, the Yediot tabloid included a Shabbat Kiddush flier insert that not only touted the sanctity of the Friday night family meal but also included the relevant liturgical text.

It’s not clear what kind of market research went into this initiative, nor what religiously coercive organizations were secretly involved (a comment on the flier here notes that Yediot publisher Nachi Dankner’s Supersol supermarkets are currently engaged in a stiff competition with Shefa Shuk, a chain which has made some enemies in the ultra-Orthodox world), but the sales pitch angle is an interesting one.

The flier doesn’t focus on man’s ritual obligations to his Maker, nor on the mystical attributes of the seventh day. Rather, what’s being sold here is happy, wholesome family time. In Israel, even for the secular, Shabbat (and the Friday night dinner that ushers it in) is a time when we surround ourselves with the people and tasks that really matter: taking it easy with the immediate clan. The smiling mother, children and wine goblet-wielding father sit at a table that’s in a “reserved” parking space, and the headline reads “Friday [night] is reserved for family.” It’s not easy for one’s heart to remain unwarmed.

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