Columbia's Enigma

Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, aged 48, carried with him on Space Shuttle Columbia a tiny Torah Scroll (the first five books of the Bible). While he was in orbit Ramon asked his Rabbi to read in their synagogue a specific passage from the Torah. Ilan was also one of the F-16 Israeli jet pilots that blew up the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak in 1981.

What was the significance of this Torah reading?

During a televised conference aboard the Shuttle, Ilan Ramon held up the small Torah. Watching with emotion from a NASA control centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, was the Torah's owner, Joachim Joseph, a 71-year-old Holocaust survivor who sent the tiny Torah scroll into space with Israel's first astronaut, in this way fulfilling a promise he made 59 years ago. Joseph is an atmospheric physicist at Tel Aviv University who was 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. Joseph had just turned 13, and the rabbi secretly arranged a 4am bar mitzvah ceremony in the prisoners' barracks. After the ceremony, he said: "You take this scroll that you just read from, because I will not leave here alive. But you must promise me that if you get out, you'll tell the story," Joseph recalled. The rabbi was killed two months later. Joseph was freed from the Bergen-Belsen camp in a prisoner exchange in 1945.

Ramon, whose mother and grandmother survived the Auschwitz death camp, visited the scientist's home two years ago and saw the Torah. "He was deeply affected. He almost cried," Joseph said. The astronaut asked if he could take the Torah with him into space. "This represents more than anything the ability of the Jewish people to survive despite everything from horrible periods, black days, to reach periods of hope and belief in the future," Ramon told Sharon and other Israeli government officials in Jerusalem.

Joseph said: "I feel now that I finally was able to fulfil my promise to Rabbi Dasberg more than 50 years ago, and then on a grand scale, and I'm very grateful to Ilan for making it possible."

That tiny Torah that survived a concentration camp was destroyed in the explosion of space shuttle Columbia.

One of the last news items reported in Israel prior to the crash and well before the Columbia crew members had any inkling of the fate that awaited them, Col. Ilan Ramon sent a message to the rabbi of the congregation he attended in Houston. He asked that a certain verse be recited in the synagogue - and his wish was honoured. The verse was Deuteronomy 4:33:

"Has any nation ever heard the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have, and yet lived?"

What is the Biblical context of this verse?  God spoke to Moses from the burning bush and also came as fire to lead Israel out of Egypt. This passage of Scripture asks the Hebrews to remember how God dealt with them in their former days - and speaks of how God gave them the land by miraculous signs, testings, wonders and war and called them to a life of obedience. In Deut 4:27 God scatters the people from the land because of their sin - and in 4:29 the promise is given that as the people repent, God will remember his promises and out of their great distress bring them back to the land.

This brings us back to Deut 4:32-33:

“Ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened or has anything like it ever been heard of? "Has any nation ever heard the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have, and yet lived?"

This is the Scripture read at Ilan Ramon’s request while he was in space! The actual Tora that survived the cremation fires of the Holocaust was then destroyed in the fire of Columbia!

Another extraordinary fact of this disaster was the first reports of the Shuttle's explosion came on the Jewish Sabbath (Feb 1^st, 2003) from eye witnesses in a small town called Palestine, in Texas!

Is it just co-incidence that Space Shuttle blew up over this town in President Bush’s home state… at a time when the US was proposing the establishment of a Palestinian State in the Holy Land?

Ramon died on board the Columbia in the company of Christian astronauts Rick Husband and Michael Anderson. A video Husband recorded before his flight was played during the February 2nd service at Grace Community Church. In this video, Husband remarked:

“If I ended up at the end of my life having been an astronaut, but having sacrificed my family along the way or living my life in a way that didn’t glorify God, then I would look back on it with great regret... What really meant the most to me was to try and live my life the way God wanted me to and to try and be a good husband to Evelyn and to be a good father to my children.”

The fall out from the inferno of Columbia included:

Click here for more NASA info on Columbia, her origins and naming. Click here for more on the name Columbia.

What is the spiritual significance of these events? 

What is God saying in our day? Are there prophetic reminders in the Columbia tragedy? References:

Genesis 17:7-8

Zech. 12:1-3

Joel 3:1-2

Click here for a pocket history of Israel and the Land.

It has also been reported that Ilan Ramon became a Christian during training for the ill-fated mission. Commander Rick Husband apparently had the privilege of leading Ramon to the Lord, according to Husband's wife. We seek verification of this report.

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