Have you ever looked up at the moon? Really, really looked. Look up tonight and be amazed. Once, exactly 50 years ago today, a man walked on the moon.
At services today, we had Oreo cookies, made just for this moment, and used a milk glass from that day when “the eagle has landed.” Many of us gathered today remember exactly where we were and with whom. One said it was the best family time they ever spent.
“One small step for mankind. One giant leap for mankind.”
What is our fascination with the moon? It is beautiful. It waxes and wanes. As Jews, our calendar is a modified lunar calendar. Women celebrated each Rosh Hodesh, the beginning of a new month when just a sliver becomes visible again. It brings with it hope and renewal. Many of our holidays are full moon holidays. Sukkot, Tu B’shevat, Purim, Passover, all begin when the moon is full.
“And God said: ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and the stars.And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.” (Genesis 1)
This is echoed in the piyut, “El Adon”, an alphabetical acrostic praising G-d for creation and employing many of our mystical terms. “He summoned the sun, and it shed its light
He set the cycle of the moon’s phases”
Yet, I find that the prayers don’t capture the thrilling feeling of seeing the moon in person. Whether it is rising over the city skyline or out in nature during a campfire, remember to look up.
President Kennedy must have felt similarly. He inspired a nation, a generation as he brought people together to work on what seemed impossible. Walk on the moon? It had never been done. He quoted Governor William Bradford from 1630 describing Plimouth Plantation: “William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage…We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
May there come a day again, where leadership is used to bring people together, to inspire and to work for the common good.
So tonight…before you go to sleep…look up at the moon and be inspired. And amazed. And awed. And remember all those who enabled that famous walk to happen 50 years ago today.
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