Jews On the Moon

Between 1969 and 1972, 12 men walked on the moon. Although there are no Jewish footprints on the moon’s surface as of yet, more than ten Jews have lunar craters named after them.

Lunar craters are caused by meteorites and asteroids colliding with the lunar surface. There are 5,185 lunar craters that are more than 12 miles (20 km) in diameter, approximately one million craters larger than half a mile (1 km) in diameter and more than half a billion that are larger than 11 yards (10 meters).

In 1651, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, an Italian Jesuit professor of astronomy and philosophy, prepared a comprehensive work on astronomy with a complete map of the moon. Riccioli named the lunar craters after the outstanding astronomers of the Middle Ages; four of them were named after rabbis. Since 1919, the assignment of the craters’ names is regulated by the International Astronomical Union.

Here are six craters and the Jews for whom they are named.

Rabbi Levi

Crater Levi is named after 14^th century French-born Rabbi Levi ben Gershom (also known as the Ralbag and Gersonides), known for his important contributions in Jewish philosophy, mathematics, navigation and astronomy. He invented the Jacob’s Staff, also known as the cross-staff, an instrument used to measure the angular distance between two heavenly objects. This tool was used by sailing ships to navigate by the stars.

He lived in a time when terrible tragedies befell the once great Jewish communities of France. At that time, the cruel King Phillip the 4^th was busy waging war on his neighbors. As a result, his treasury became empty and he decreed that all Jews be expelled from France and their possessions be given to him. Rabbi Levi escaped most of the trouble because he lived in a small city in southern France which belonged to the Pope. Rabbi Levi devoted his entire life to spreading the light of knowledge among fellow Jews and to the promotion of science and tolerance in the world at large.

He showed his extraordinary capabilities at an early age. He mastered the Talmud, and by the age of 30 he was an accomplished physician. He wrote commentaries on the Torah, the Prophets, and Writings. He also wrote a commentary on the Mishna. He wrote many poems, especially dirges, in which he bewailed the terrible persecution suffered by his brethren in France. He died in 1344 at the age of 56.

Abenezra

The crater Abenezra is named after the Sephardic sage, poet, biblical commentator and astrologer Spanish-born Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092-1167). His adventurous life began in Tudela, Spain. He spent the first half of his life in various cities in the Arabic part of Spain. He was always in financial straits. The generosity of his admirers made his life somewhat easier. They appreciated the elegance and stylishness of his poetry and other writings. He wrote books on various subjects, including philosophy, calendar mathematics, medicine, chess and astronomy.  His religious poems, prayers and writings are permeated with warmth and deep feeling, and his boundless faith and trust in God.

The second half of his life he traveled from country to country, studying people and countries, cultures and languages. He even visited the Holy Land where he learned Kabbalah from sages in Safed and Tiberias.

Zagut

The 52-mile (84 km) in diameter moon crater Zagut is named after Rabbi Abraham Zacuto (his Hebrew name was Zechut). Rabbi Zacuto was born in Spain in 1452. He was a mathematician, historian, doctor, navigator, rabbi, and astronomer. When he was 20, he started working on Almanach, which calculates geographical coordinates. He improved the astrolabe, an instrument invented by the ancient Greeks in 225 B.C.E. which was used to make planetary measurements, typically of the altitudes of celestial bodies and in navigation for calculating latitude.

Without his personal guidance, knowledge, and inventions, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama may have failed in their quests. Rabbi Zacuto knew that such contributions to science by a Jew, and particularly a rabbi, created a favorable impression upon his non-Jewish peers.

After being expelled from Spain, he moved to Portugal. After the expulsion from Portugal he moved to Tunis where he wrote the majority of his Book of Lineage which recorded the first 1,500 years of Jewish history. Apparently, he wrote this encyclopedic work with only one tractate of Talmud and hardly any other reference books except for those few that the expelled Jews brought with them.

Cori on the Moon

Jewish Nobel Prize winner, Gerty Theresa Cori (maiden name Radnitz) was born in Prague on August 15, 1896, to an upper-middle-class sophisticated family. She attended medical school in Prague where she met Carl Cori. His family felt that her being Jewish would stifle Carl Cori’s advancement. She converted to Catholicism so that they could be married in a church. Gerty was unsuccessful in assuaging their fears.

Their eventual decision to leave Europe was fueled primarily by rampant antisemitism. Carl Cori was offered a position in the US and Gerty followed half a year later.

In 1947 she became the first American woman—the third woman ever – to win the Nobel Prize. Planetary study was not what made her a scientific star. She and Carl received it together in recognition for their life’s work on carbohydrate metabolism, which expanded understanding of how muscles make and store energy and the role of enzymes, with implications for the treatment of diabetes, among other diseases. In her honor, both the moon and Venus have a Cori Crater named after her.

Sylvester

James Joseph Sylvester was born in 1814 and was the first observant Jew to hold a professorship in Britain. He excelled in math at Cambridge, attaining second place in his year, but was refused a degree or a prize because he was Jewish.

In 1838 he became professor of natural philosophy at University College London and published 15 papers on fluid dynamics and algebraic equations. After spending some time in America, he returned to England where he became an actuary and math tutor. Florence Nightingale was one of his students.

In 1855 he became professor at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and was the second president of the London Mathematical Society. He retired at the age of 55, in 1870, due to army rules, and in 1877 he went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He founded the American Journal of Mathematics, the first American mathematical journal.  In 1883, he became professor of Geometry at Oxford, finally retiring in 1892, at the age of 78. He died in 1897. A 36-mile (58 km) crater located near the north pole of the Moon was named after him.

Resnik

Pilot, software engineer, electrical engineer and NASA astronaut Judith Resnik (1949-1986) grew up in a religious Jewish home in Akron, Ohio. At first she planned to become a concert pianist, but turned down Juilliard School of Music in order to study mathematics.

In 1978, at the age of 29, Dr. Resnik became a NASA astronaut. She was the fourth woman, the second American woman, and the first Jewish woman of any nationality to fly in space. She logged 145 hours in orbit.

She was briefly marred to engineer Michael Oldak. They divorced in 1975, but remained in touch. In August 1984 Dr. Resnik invited her former husband to Cape Canaveral, Florida to watch her blast off and become the second American woman to orbit the earth.

Dr. Resnik’s first flight took place in 1984 aboard the Discovery space shuttle. It was also the maiden voyage for the spacecraft. On January 26, 1986, she participated in the ill-fated space shuttle Challenger. It broke up 73 seconds into launch killing all seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated 46,000 feet (14 km) above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral. The Resnik crater was named in her memory.