The timing of the first moonwalk could not have been better. It was 1969, patriotism was at an all-time low; the Vietnam War was raging, the bombing of Cambodia was underway, the anti-establishment movement was at full force. And then, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” stopped everyone in their tracks. For a moment, Americans united over their shared awe and pride.

Back then, going to the moon was not about scientific research or creating a way station to help humans get to planet Mars. John F. Kennedy understood that the American people needed inspiration; they needed something to galvanize the country in its struggle against communism and self-destruction. That’s what he conveyed in one of his most famous speeches, a talk he gave seven years earlier: “We choose to go to the moon 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.”

I have been thinking about that speech and that moonwalk recently. No, not because of the recent launch of Artemis, but because of a book I read this past week, called Out of the Sky by Matti Friedman. It’s a short book that details the lives of a famous group of Jewish parachutists who infiltrated occupied Europe during the Holocaust. These were kibbutznikim, recruited by the British, but they were also working for what would eventually become known as the Mossad. The most famous of these parachutists was Chana Sennesh. There are 41 streets in Israel named after her. There is a Kibbutz, a national forest, and a city square, all named Chana Sennesh.

You know what Chana accomplished? Absolutely nothing.

She was sent by the British to help rescue Allied pilots. She was sent by the Mossad to help organize resistance against the Nazis and save Hungarian Jews from deportation to Auschwitz. To accomplish all this she was armed with… a radio. Though there are some historians who suggest that she was involved in numerous missions, Matti Friedman makes a compelling argument that she, and her fellow Israeli parachutists, did not do much of anything.

A few years ago, there was an Israeli satire show that made the following skit: A tough Jewish militia commander faces a briefing room. He barks to his audience: “Defeat the Nazi enemy!” And then the camera turns and the room has only one person in it – Chana Sennesh.

“Excuse me, sir,” she says. “How will we defeat the Nazis?”

“By parachuting into the Nazi front and defeating them.”

“But how?” she asks. And the skit ends.

It makes no sense. It never made any sense. But that was precisely the point.

Chana landed in Yugoslavia, she was supposed to enter Hungary a few days later, only that the day after she landed, Hungary was captured by the Nazis. She was told to abort her mission by the British. She was encouraged to not go to Hungary by her fellow Israeli parachutists. It was too dangerous. But she persisted. Why?

In her own words: “Even if they catch me – the Jews will be notified. They will know that at least one person tried to reach them.”

As Matti Friedman explains: “The parachutists aren’t commandos. They’re storytellers. They’ve been sent to write, with their lives, a Zionist story about the war – a story that will lead others not to despair but to action. In this story, Jews will not be victims but heroes. This won’t change the war, but it will change how people remember the war and therefore change the future. When faced with tragedy, those who know the parachutists’ story won’t pull the covers over their heads, or bemoan the cruelty of fate, or wait for someone else to do something. They will look out into the night, grip the sides of the door, and jump.”

Like the man who walked on the moon, this woman who jumped from the sky, galvanized the Jewish People. Her poems were put to song and were sung by new recruits to the IDF. Her name emblazoned on ships of refugees making their way out of Europe. Her story is taught to every Israeli schoolchild. Though she was brutally executed by the Nazis, her mission was a complete success. She reminded the Jewish People to fight, to act, to do whatever they could, even in the face of the impossible.

Though Ben Gurion described this mentality as the mentality of the New Jew; the Jew who would no longer go to the gas chamber like sheep to the slaughter, this was not a new Jewish mentality, it was a very old one.

As the Jewish People gathered at the Yam Suf, scared and uncertain of their future, Nachshon ben Aminadav, fearlessly walked into the water. Did it make sense? Of course not. But this was to be a nation of dreamers who would do the impossible. He was followed by the rest of the Jewish People.

The story goes back even earlier. Thirty years before Moshe came on the scene, there was a group from the tribe of Ephraim that dreamt of leaving Egypt and going to the Holy Land. They armed themselves and successfully got past the Egyptian border patrols. Tragically, they were massacred by the Philistines.

Every Pesach, we read a famous Haftorah, a prophecy shared with Yechezkel Hanavi, foreshadowing the end of days. Yechezkel is taken to a valley of dry bones, and miraculously, those bones are brought to life. The prophecy is meant to represent the actual resurrection of the dead which will take place in the times of Mashiach, but more broadly, it is meant to represent the resurrection of our people; how our people will be like a lifeless pile of bones, but Hashem will give us life. It’s a prophecy that many invoked when the State of Israel was born out of the ashes of the Holocaust.

The Gemara tells us that the bones in Yechezkel’s prophecy, a prophecy that took place 1500 years after the Exodus, were the bones of those men from the tribe of Ephraim. They tried to leave, they tried to bring about the exodus, they tried to enter the Holy Land, and for thousands of years, we thought their actions were meaningless. Rabbi Moshe Trani, the Mabit, explains, that G-d deliberately used those bones to teach us a timeless truth: sacred dreams may be delayed, but they are never lost. Their actions inspire us every year to know that there will be a Messianic era, that the lifeless can be imbued with vitality once more, that our actions, even though they may seem to fail, they matter, they make a difference.

We need not look that far for modern inspiration. To me, every Jew who makes Aliyah, who chooses to live in Israel right now, is a Nachshon ben Aminadav, a Chana Senesh, a member of the tribe of Ephraim. Though it’s easier to make Aliyah today than almost ever, it still takes a leap of faith:

Will my parachute work? Will my job in Israel allow me to care for my family?

Will I land in the right place? Will I be able to create a new social circle?

Will I land smoothly? What damage will I, and my family, deal with, because of this move?

These are serious questions that need to be addressed in a thoughtful fashion. It’s important to be very practical when making big life decisions. Aliyah is not simple, especially for those blessed with children. But it’s worth remembering that almost no one ever made Aliyah on purely practical grounds; it’s a country made up of storytellers and dreamers. Whereas Judaism in America is lived in prose, Judaism in Israel is lived in poetry.

I think of my grandfather who after the Holocaust was given a choice to emigrate to America or Israel and chose Israel. He suffered greatly – the indignity of his lowly employment after the Holocaust and the terrible tragedy of losing a son to war, and yet, he told us, he never regretted his decision. That doesn’t make sense; it’s not logical. But living in Israel was never about logic; it’s about taking a small human step forward in a national and cosmic dream. It’s about a grand drama that each of us can play a role in. Not a starring role; for most, it’s professionally and materially a setback. But neither of those are the magnet pulling so many to the Holy Land. It’s the opportunity to be a part of unfolding history, to be a footnote of a footnote of the story of our people.

At this time of unrest and uncertainty, many Americans are looking up to the skies to be inspired. For us Jews, we should also look up to the sky, not to the spaceships, but to the many airplanes flying our fellow Jews to their new homes in Israel.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)