Israeli Astronaut Takes Shmurah Matzah into Space

This morning, SpaceX successfully launched a new crew of four astronauts to orbit on the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft — a group that includes three customers who have reportedly paid millions for their seats. The four private flyers, riding to space with a commercial aerospace company called Axiom Space, are now en route to the International Space Station after launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

When they dock with the ISS tomorrow morning, they’ll become the first entirely private crew of astronauts to visit and live on the orbiting lab. The crew is slated to spend roughly eight days on the ISS, where they’ll conduct a total of 25 science experiments lasting a cumulative 100 hours.

Eating hand-made shmurah matzah in space during Pesach may sound like something out of a sci-fi film, but when the four astronauts lifted off today on the Axiom Space mission to the International Space Station, that is exactly what happened, given the mission’s timing around the start of Pesach.

Taking the matzah to space is Israeli astronaut Etyan Stibbe, 64. The former Israeli Air Force fighter pilot and philanthropist was given a box of hand made shmurah matzah as well as other provisions for pesach by Rabbi Zvi Konikov of Chabad of the Space & Treasure Coasts.

Not only is Stibbe taking a symbolic piece of Judaism with him to space, he will have the opportunity to fulfill the commandment of eating the matzah there as well, which, said Konikov, “is to me out of this world.”

That Stibbe wanted to have the matzah with him on the International Space Station, “sends a powerful message,” the rabbi continued. “If it’s important that an astronaut, with so much on his mind, just three days before the start of his mission is getting matzah, that sends a powerful message to every Jew wherever they are that they should also make sure they have everything they need for Pesach.”

Stibbe was friends with the first Israeli ever to go to space, astronaut Ilan Ramon who died tragically during a failed landing after a mission in space. Pages of a journal Ramon kept while in space were discovered after the crash and Stibbe will be carrying several of them with him into space, as previously reported on Matzav.com.

He noted that one of the mitzvos of the Pesach seder is to have four cups of wine, and so he is taking a wine glass with him. “But,” he joked, “I don’t think I’ll find any wine in the Space Station.”

Thanks to Konikov, though, he will have four small cartons of grape juice, though the glass will still be superfluous, as liquids need to be sipped, not poured at zero gravity. What will happen to the matzah crumbs, well, that remains to be seen.

With reporting by The Verge, Chabad.org, and Matzav.com

{Matzav.com}