The Baal Shem Tov and the Cat

 

The world rests on the merit of 36 Righteous Men in each generation, from nearly the beginning of time and even now. The 36 are represented by the Hebrew letters Lamed (ל) and Vov (ו) and are referred to as the Lamedvovniks.

The Lamedvovniks live mostly hidden among us. They generally appear to be simple people, laborers toiling for their daily bread. When necessitated, they may be smugglers of holy books or of vast fortunes of precious stones or gold coins. Sometimes they were miracle workers. At times they would gather in secret places, clearings in deep forests or on mountain tops, forming minyans with prayer that moved mighty forces on Earth and even the Heavens. The world depends on the Lamedvovniks. 

Yisrael Ben Eliezer showed promise even as a child. He learned quickly. He brought joy to those he met along the way. As a young man, he taught small children. However, he didn't reveal the fullness of his powers until his 36th (לו - lamed vov) year. It was then he began to publicly perform miracles. This is when he became known as the Baal Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name, or the BeShT (בעש״ט).

The Lamedvovniks were dependent on the Baal Shem Tov, even as the world depended upon them. The BeShT taught and led those that secretly taught and guided the world. 

This new role that Yisrael took on as the guiding light and touchstone of the Lamedvovniks necessitated extensive traveling at a moment's notice over verst after verst of unmeasurable distances in all sorts of weather and often through days and nights beyond counting. The Baal Shem Tov needed a loyal driver. 

The Baal Shem Tov placed himself into the hands of a Wallachian peasant, a gentile by the name of Alexei who served as his wagon driver, on whom he was at times totally dependent. And, although Alexei would never admit it, he was very much dependent on a feline companion. 

This particular cat was usually called by the Polish names Mruczek (The One Who Purrs) or Puszko (Fluffy) by Alexei, even though Alexei’s Mother Tongue was Romanian. The Baal Shem Tov always called the feline Ketsl although the cat was certainly well past being a kitten. The cat, of course, answered to any name, especially if the person was offering a schtickle of herring. 

Diaspora in the Stars; The Planet Birobidzhan Story

This is the preface for

 The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan 

 

Tayere khaveyrim, dear friends,

The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan is a work of fiction. The setting for most of this book is very far away and in the distant future. Although this book is largely about Jews on other planets, one need not be a Yid (a Jew) or a luftmentsh (a spaceman) to read this story any more than one, for instance, would need to be a Hobbit or an Elf to read a book such as Lord of the Rings. 

This book is a future history. To gaze into the future, we will also need to gaze into the past.

Planet Birobidzhan was settled by exiles separated from the Home Planet for a long time. The exiles developed their own unique culture and speak primarily Yiddish. Some awareness of Yiddishkeit is certainly helpful to understand this tale. To make this story more accessible, I have included a glossary. 

This is a story of displacement, exile, and entrapment by fate. This is also the saga of the few that strive to break free from those entanglements. This story is told from various vantage points, with different voices. The tale spans hundreds of years.

Where to begin? Long before the Yidden came to the gallus in the stars, we lived on Planet Earth where we were also often displaced. But, that is not really the beginning, either. 

The very beginning is described in Bereshis, what others call Genesis. "When God began to create heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water - God said 'Let there be light' and there was light." 

All humanity, we are told, derived from one mother and a single spark. We even all had a single shprakh. What that language was, we do not know. 

Humanity dispersed globally. Each region developed a unique Mamaloshen, I suppose. Farsheteyt? I can't say that I really understand, but the shprakh of each of us became babbling in each other's ears. 

Our Father Abraham originated in Ur Kasdim. Abraham developed a personal relationship with God. Because of this, our bashert became distinct from the rest of the mentshen of Planet Earth. The relationship with the Creator is our inheritance, but that inheritance is not evenly distributed amongst the Children of Abraham. 

What we know of Abraham's immediate family, and those that follow, we learn from the Tanakh, the assemblage of texts that others call the Old Testament. 

Father Abraham's wife was barren. Mother Sarah, in her old age, offered her servant as a surrogate to bear children. The servant and Abraham's first son are left to fend for themselves in the wilderness because Sarah's reasoning was displaced with jealousy. 

I am quite uncertain about how it all ends. Our prophets offer veiled suggestions, but no conclusions. We have no scriptures describing an Apocalyptic End Times as those of other peoples. 

The middle is quite garbled. Most of our tale here is likely closer to the end than the beginning. Es tut mir layd for a lack of greater clarity. 

Our story seems to backtrack and twist in on itself, full of doubt and uncertainty. That rambling is, perhaps, a continuation on the trajectory that reaches back to the very earliest days of the Jewish People. Ikh vis nisht. 

I suffer from a condition of nostalgia, a dissatisfaction with the present. I long for something better. This life of mine is an anachronism. Maybe that explains it. Ikh vis nisht.

A disjointed sense of time and place is not an exclusively Jewish condition. It may be a widespread human phenomenon. A condition of nostalgia and displacement does seem particularly pervasive amongst the Yidden. 

Questions of lineage fill our Tanakh with instances of displaced lines of inheritance, periods of exile, and separation trauma. 

Brothers fought within wombs for dominance. Birthrights were traded for bowls of soup. Children were conceived through subterfuge and seduction. Moshe was raised by Pharaoh's daughter. Hadassah married the King of Persia. 

These sorts of plot twists repeat throughout our Tanakh, reappearing amongst the Nations in barely camouflaged folk tales such as Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and Cinderella. The Roma fortune tellers use Tarot Cards to retool the Tanakh for those lacking a tradition of literacy. 

Family roots are taken very seriously by Yidden. Perhaps our historical obsession with assurances of ethnicity derives from the obvious lack of lineage purity. We are, after all, of many hues and physical types, mixed and blended. 

We mirror this concern with our dietary laws, obsessing on separations. We refrain, for instance, from mixing milk and meat. Nonetheless, the meals that we perceive as Jewish borrow heavily from our Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian neighbors, representing a confluence of cultures. 

We tend to blend our foods. Our kugel, gefilte fish, kneidelach, chopped liver, tzimmes, and cholent all reflect our tendency to bring some order out of chaos, imitating the act of Creation. Our foods are as mixed up as our bloodlines. 

Wherever we migrated, we carried our burdens and contradictions with us. We carried Eretz Yisrael with us into exile. We carry the habits, values, and customs absorbed in exile from one Diaspora to another. 

This was our fate on Planet Earth and continues to be so as we transit across galaxies. 

I hope that readers find this introduction and explanation of sorts to be of some use.

A hartsikn dank, a heartfelt thanks, for your indulgence. 

The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan is now available wherever books are sold! 

The novel can also be bought, at a discount, through this direct purchase link:

https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=6TtjgjBTrFtcK4tvxeCbUN4hTvy9rOoAq8aeNsNXURN

Zvi Baranoff has written both fiction and non fiction for decades and has had pieces published in several independent publications. The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan is his first published novel. He lives in rural southern Oregon, where he anticipates remaining for the foreseeable future. 

The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan

 

The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan is a work of speculative fiction, a future history of social and science fiction. This is a story of displacement, exile, and entrapment by fate. This is also the saga of the few that strive to break free from those entanglements.

Kabbalists have spoken of traveling great distances in a troika or on foot or in a meditative state through divine intervention. The Baal Shem Tov, for instance, was famous for such feats. So, the rabbis found the idea of folding space/time to be quite plausible. After all, isn't that exactly what the great sages of blessed memory had done? 

Wormholes were theorized for a very long time. The first time one was discovered was in the middle of the 21st Century. The scientists were blown away. The rabbis shrugged. 

The wormhole opened the option to settle new worlds. When the tenuous connection to the Home Planet was severed, those who had emigrated to Planet Birobidzhan were then on their own. 

The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan is now available for purchase worldwide, wherever books are sold! 

The retail price of this hardcover book is $24.95 but if you use this direct purchase link you can buy the book for ONLY $18. 

https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=6TtjgjBTrFtcK4tvxeCbUN4hTvy9rOoAq8aeNsNXURN

Vilna on Planet Shney, the Early Days

 

by Zvi Baranoff 

Nes promoted the project of building the Holy Shtot of Vilna as a great spiritual mission. He talked about it to anyone that would listen. The idea, at first, garnered precious little enthusiasm on Planet Shney. 

Most of the mentshen of Planet Shney considered the idea of building a shtot centered on a Grand Yeshiva in an uninhabited sector to be either foolhardy or an outright scam. Some suspected that Nes had slipped a gear. They began referring to him as Der Vilner Goen, the Genius of Vilna, in a most derogatory sarcastic manner, mostly behind his back. 

Planet Shney, after all, had no networks of rabbinic dynasties or structures of bureaucracies that would willingly foster and possibly benefit from institutions such as a yeshiva. The few rabbis, moyels, and sochets of Planet Shney barely had enough work for themselves. They had no incentive to encourage the training of more competition for their limited trade. 

For anyone paying attention, there was precious little physical evidence pointing to the emergence of a Grand Yeshiva. Reaching the valley that was destined to be Vilna was no easy matter at the time. It required a long shlep on a primitive route that could barely be considered a road. Hardly anyone other than a very few construction workers had even been to the future site of the Grand Yeshiva and Holy Shtot to be witnesses of the goings-on. Those few could verify that the Mikvah was completed, but unattended and that the hotel and casino stood empty and unused, surrounded otherwise by a vast uninhabited landscape. 

Nes continued to solicit donations where he could. Some people donated, it seems, as a hedging of bets, so to speak. After all, a modest donation to a holy endeavor might secure some favors in the World to Come, should anything come of it. Nes spent the money raised as he will, whether it evidently promoted the project or not. 

In Moskve, Nes spent lavishly on cultural projects, hoping that would win back the favor of his wife. Moskve was certainly endowed by such spending although his public generosity had little effect on improving his relationship with his wife. The theater fulfilled Shprintza Freyda and she was no longer interested in whatever abstractions that her husband was selling. 

News of the theoretical inception of the project had not even reached Planet Birobidzhan. The Grand Yeshiva project was contingent on a massive influx of rabbinic authorities and students immigrating from that distant world. No one on Planet Shney could possibly know the response from that quarter of the universe until the dreidl had completed its spin.

Nes’ big gamble would take four years to play out. Assuming that those that he trusted on Planet Birobidzhan played their parts well, the Yeshiva needed to be ready when the rabbis and students arrived. There was no particular reason for rushing the construction. Any gelt raised for that project was available to be invested otherwise for three and a half years. This presented Nes with a healthy slush fund that grew exponentially. Eventually, money would need to be spent as promised but with the timing right that would be essentially the interest and not the principle. 

Rifka Leeba spent less and less time at home although she did bond with her father sometimes at the pool hall. Few people would suspect such a small child of cheating at cards, or using a loaded dreidl, or palming pieces in a friendly backgammon game. Rifka Leeba never lacked for pocket change, picking up what she wanted whenever she chose to at whichever game she joined in. When not eating meals with her gaggle of cousins, Rifka Leeba would grab a bite from one of the new cafés that had sprung up in Moskve, freer with money than most children her age. 

The building of the Yeshiva might have been on hold but the hotel and casino was standing ready for guests if there was only a comfortable way of getting guests to the casino. Nes began spending money on the construction of the railway to connect his envisioned shtot to the increasingly prosperous shtot of Moskve. The resulting railway line is the high speed elevated train that now connects Moskve with Vilna. 

The rail line terminus was the casino, the station being on the second floor of the building. All disembarking passengers walk past the card tables, roulette wheels, slot machines, and dreidl platforms as well as restaurants and shops before reaching the ground level and an exit to the rest of Vilna. In fact, when within the casino, one is essentially detached from the Holy Shtot. The casino is bright and airy with plenty of light, but there are no windows on those floors, no clocks or an acknowledgement of the time of day, and plenty of distractions to keep one engaged and disconnected from time and place. It is quite possible to travel to the Holy Shtot of Vilna and spend the entire visit within the casino until all one's gelt is spent or until obligations and commitments tug at one's conscience. 

The fare for transportation, of course, is gratis in perpetuity, thanks to an endowment established by Nes. The stated reason for establishing cost-free train service between Moskve and the Holy Shtot of Vilna was to offer universal access to the Mikvah and the Yeshiva and raise the spiritual level planet wide. The money that poured into the casino was a side effect. Nonetheless, there were certainly cynics, especially in those early days, that were audacious enough to suggest that encouraging the flow of gelt into the casino and then Nes’ personal coffers was the actual purpose of the train. 

Many years would pass before any sense of the spiritual significance of Vilna on Planet Shney began to shine through beyond the purely mercantile aspects of the shtot’s earliest incarnation. The distinction between kodesh l'chol, between the holy and the profane, that we recognize with Havdalah at the end of each Shabbos is not always so very clear. Nor is it self evident that holiness can arise from such a profane foundation as Nes had built. 

This story about the mentshn of Planet Birobidzhan and Planet Shney is the continuation of the tale that evolved into a novel, The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan. 

The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan is in print and available wherever books are sold! 

The novel can also be bought, at a discount, through this direct purchase link:

https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=6TtjgjBTrFtcK4tvxeCbUN4hTvy9rOoAq8aeNsNXURN

Here are the links to the rest of the story as it evolves and posted so far in the blog:

1 - The Miracle of Vilna on Planet Shney 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-miracle-of-vilna-on-planet-shney.htm

2 - Nes and Shprintza Freyda Spin the Dreidl on Planet Birobidzhan 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/01/nes-and-shprintza-freyda-spin-dreidl-on.html?m=1

3 - From Shloflozikayt to the Vision of a Marvelous Shtot 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/02/from-shloflozikayt-to-vision-of.html

4 - A Strategy for the Yeshiva Takes Shape and Nes Opens a Pool Hall on Planet Shney 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-strategy-for-yeshiva-takes-shape-and.html

5 - With the Best Intentions, On a New World

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/02/with-best-intentions-on-new-world.html

6 - The Shliach's Flight to the Home Planet

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-shliachs-flight-to-home-planet.html

7 - Moskve on Planet Shney Grows Wealthy and Cosmopolitan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/04/moskve-on-planet-shney-grows-wealthy.html?m=1

8 - Vilna on Planet Shney, the Early Days

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/06/vilna-on-planet-shney-early-days.html

Moskve on Planet Shney Grows Wealthy and Cosmopolitan

by Zvi Baranoff 

Rifka Leeba loved everything about Moskve and Planet Shney. Planet Shney was the only world that she had ever known. Rifka Leeba was a newborn when her parents carried her onto the shuttle. She had no recollection of the planet of her birth. The first two years of her life were aboard that cramped ship. Planet Shney had given her the space to stretch her legs. Moskve had provided her the opportunity to grow into her own person. The school was the perfect incubator for her intellectual and social development. The school also freed Rifka Leeba from her parents. 

When Rifka Leeba began attending school, her father walked with her, holding her little hand. Before very long she began rising on her own very early in the morning, before daylight, the sounds of crowing roosters serving as her wake-up call. Rifka Leeba would dress and feed herself breakfast and then slip out of the house unsupervised. She didn't depend on either of her parents, because they often were not really there for her. Her mother often slept late in the morning. Her father sometimes didn't make it back home before first light. 

Shprintza Freyda, it could be said, had grown into herself on Planet Shney. She had, after all, barely reached maturity when she had met Nes. The ensuing romance was a whirlwind. She had entered into marriage of her own free will and with her eyes wide open but in truth she was a meydl from a tiny shtetl at the time. She became pregnant shortly afterwards. When transported from the world of her birth to a distant planet, though married and a mother by then, she was still, in many ways, a country girl. So, for her, Moskve was the height of cosmopolitanism.

As the weeks, months, and years unfolded, Shprintza Freyda found more and more ways to spend her time that had nothing to do with being a wife or mother. Her involvement in theater was amateur and peripheral to begin with but she learned quickly and also endeared herself to the actors, playwrights, and audiences of Planet Shney. Before long, she was performing impressive roles in the small but vibrant theaters of Moskve. Shprintza Freyda’s afternoons were spent in rehearsals. Plays were performed in the evenings and afterwards the casts would socialize late into the night. 

It may be hard to think of Moskve at that time as being anything other than a backwater of all the inhabited places in the cosmos but it really did have a cultural presence and was on its way to becoming truly cosmopolitan. Both Shprintza Freyda and Nes played significantly in the evolution of Moskve on Planet Shney. 

Sufficient resources and leisure time are the perquisites of artistic development. Moskve had become a shtot awash in gelt. Every day, gold, pelts, and various minerals were brought from Sibir into the shtot by the miners, trappers, and traders. 

With the arrival of each shuttle from Planet Birobidzhan, new menschen arrived that contributed to the wealth of Moskve. The new arrivals paid for accommodations and sustenance. The men would then spend their nest eggs on supplies and head off to Sibir, where they would join those that had preceded them in the never-ending process of funneling wealth to Moskve. The trickling arrival of the wives that followed their husbands to Planet Shney also contributed to the economic prosperity of Moskve as many of them opened shops in town. 

Some on Planet Shney may have had suspicions that Nes didn’t sleep at all. That belief contributed to rumors of his possible sainthood. That particular imagined miracle was not exactly true, though he certainly didn't sleep much. Nes was often restlessly wandering the streets of Moskve late into the night but he would eventually climb into bed and sleep for an hour or two sometime around dawn. In the afternoon, he would sometimes doze in his office. Besides those few hours of rest and the obsessive nocturnal wanderings, Nes dedicated his life to the accumulation of wealth, operating several successful enterprises at once in a manner as one might spin several drydls at the same time. 

The pool hall had grown into a true gambling den. The operation largely functioned without much hands-on guidance from Nes. He would sit in on a card game from time to time and he played pool occasionally mostly for exercise. The day to day business was mostly handled by the young acolytes that he hired. 

Nes acquired a building adjacent to the pool hall for his shtrayml business. Nes retained his monopoly on the fur trade with Planet Birobidzhan. The trade there was handled by his trusted proxies and he certainly trusted that they acted generally in his interests with a minimal amount of skimming. He had come to realize, however, that the operation would be far more profitable if he were to take a more proactive role in the Planet Shney end of the operation. 

When Nes began to handle the purchasing of pelts directly from the trappers, he gained a level of quality control. Nes understood furs better than anyone on either Planet Shney or Planet Birobidzhan. Almost any fur can be used to keep warm. On Planet Shney it is common to use furs to line cribs and widely used even for insulation. However, only the highest quality furs could be made into shtraymlekh that were up to Nes’ exacting standards. There was no reason to ship lower quality stuff across the void to Planet Birobidzhan. Nes began paying the trappers more in order to receive the materials that would earn him more. Everyone ended up with more gelt in their pocket. Of course, a fair amount of the money earned by the trappers was gambled away at Nes’ joint next door. 

Before long, Nes hired more youth and trained them in the sorting and processing of furs. Then, he taught them to make shtraymlekh as well. Still, few people on Planet Shney actually wore a shtrayml but the finished product was shipped to Planet Birobidzhan along with the pelts. A shtrayml crafted on Planet Shney was valued highly on Planet Birobidzhan. It was perceived as having a more direct connection to Nes.

Nes’ restlessness, nonetheless, was relentless. He began making periodic fundraising tours of the tiny outposts scattered about Sabir, seeking donations for the charitable organization to fund the transportation of potential brides to Planet Shney. He spoke passionately to the miners and trappers about turning the outposts into true shtetls which would only happen with the arrival of women. The men of Sibir donated generously to the cause. Nes was able to spend these funds liberally, as he saw fit. 

With the money that was pouring in, the development of Vilna became possible. The first construction was the Mikvah, fed by the water from the hot spring The Mikvah is the spiritual center of the Holy Shtot of Vilna. The completion of the ritual bath was quickly followed by the Nes Gadol Hotel and Casino. After all, those utilizing the Mikvah certainly need a place to stay in Vilna. The luxurious swimming pool at the hotel was also fed by the water from the hot spring. It was widely believed that the water from the hot spring had a miraculous curative effect. 

In Moskve Nes contracted the construction of a theater of monumentally galactic proportions to promote the arts and as a reconciliation gesture to Shprintza Freyda. In spite of all of his financial success, Nes felt spurned by his wife. Shprintza Freyda excelled on the stage. She truly appreciated the generosity of her husband. However, the relationship between the two remained awkward and strained. 

This story about the mentshn of Planet Birobidzhan and Planet Shney is the continuation of the tale that evolved into a novel, The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan. 

The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan is in print and available wherever books are sold! 

The novel can also be bought, at a discount, through this direct purchase link:

https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=6TtjgjBTrFtcK4tvxeCbUN4hTvy9rOoAq8aeNsNXURN

Here are the links to the rest of the story as it evolves and posted so far in the blog:

1 - The Miracle of Vilna on Planet Shney 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-miracle-of-vilna-on-planet-shney.html

2 - Nes and Shprintza Freyda Spin the Dreidl on Planet Birobidzhan 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/01/nes-and-shprintza-freyda-spin-dreidl-on.html?m=1

3 - From Shloflozikayt to the Vision of a Marvelous Shtot 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/02/from-shloflozikayt-to-vision-of.html

4 - A Strategy for the Yeshiva Takes Shape and Nes Opens a Pool Hall on Planet Shney 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-strategy-for-yeshiva-takes-shape-and.html

5 - With the Best Intentions, On a New World

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/02/with-best-intentions-on-new-world.html

6 - The Shliach's Flight to the Home Planet

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com

7 - Moskve on Planet Shney Grows Wealthy and Cosmopolitan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/04/moskve-on-planet-shney-grows-wealthy.html

The Shliach's Flight to the Home Planet

 

by Zvi Baranoff 

The first Yidden that arrived on Planet Birobidzhan from Planet Earth so very long ago traveled on board the optimistically named Hatikvah. They came with high hopes and great expectations. The ship was designed for one way transit and it served the founders well. 

The voyage of the founders of Planet Birobidzhan aboard the Hatikvah took close to two decades. The Hatikvah was a huge, lumbering vessel. The Hatikvah was designed for the relative comfort of passengers on a very long voyage, intending to settle a new world. It was not built for speed. 

Those that followed in cryogenic suspension and packed like herring, were generally speaking, less optimistic on arrival. Those ships that carried the emigrants from the Home Planet were crowded. When “defrosted” the passengers felt somewhat sick akin to a hangover and then experienced significant social disorientation. Each ship brought less supplies than the preceding one. Accommodations for the new arrivals were minimal and substandard. Life on Planet Birobidzhan in the early days was difficult and bleak. Soon, the time between arrival of each transit ship stretched out until the fateful day when the last one landed and no further word from the Home Planet was heard. The Yidden on Planet Birobidzhan had been left to fend for themselves. 

It was nearly three centuries after contact with the Home Planet had been lost, before the Yidden of Planet Birobidzhan attempted to reestablish contact by sending a ship across the void back to the Home Planet. Three centuries, by any measurement, is a very long time. 

The voyage on the ship named Shliach - The Emissary - toward the Home Planet was a long time in the planning. Such a voyage was even longer in the imaginations and dreams of menschen on Planet Birobidzhan. By the best guesstimate of the engineers that designed and built the Shliach, the “return” flight voyage would be around nine to twelve years - half the time of the founders excursion. 

The Shliach had the advantages of upgraded design, advanced metallics, the technological utilization of Dovid's Slingshot and pellet beams, new fuels, and a streamlined body. Therefore, the Shliach was a much faster ship than the Hatikvah. Nonetheless, the distance was still vast and the time to transpire such a distance was still enormous. 

The Shliach was a much smaller ship than the lumbering Hatikvah of the founders. Far fewer passengers were destined to travel from Planet Birobidzhan to the Home Planet. This was meant as a diplomatic and trade mission rather than a settlement project. 

It was determined that the passengers were all to be unmarried men, to simplify the social dynamics and eliminate the concerns of pregnancy, birthing, and children. Most of the men were widowed, although some were divorced. Nes ben Dovid was the youngest of the passengers originally on the roster, and the only one that had never been married. However, he met and fell in love with Shprintza Freyda. He chose to marry and emigrated to Planet Shney, giving up his berth on the Shliach. 

It was decided that eighteen was the optimal number of passengers. The evident reason that eighteen were chosen is because of the relationship of the number with the letters chet and yud, the word chai meaning life, making eighteen the number of mazel. However, the underlying, unspoken rationale was determined by statisticians in the service of halakhah. Ten men are required to form a minyan for daily prayer, particularly the reading of the Toyre and recital of Kadish. Because of the long flight and the advanced age of several of the passengers, odds were that some deaths might occur before reaching the Home Planet. Eighteen were sent to assure that ten would survive. 

The Shiluchim, the eighteen men that were chosen to travel on board the Shliach needed to represent the diverse people of Planet Birobidzhan and likely the common interests of the Yidden of the Home Planet as well, in any interactions with the powers-that-be (whatever they might turn out to be) of Planet Earth. They were all well educated and most were also wealthy. Each had to finance their own share of the expedition or be sponsored by those whose interest they represented on Planet Birobidzhan. Several of the men were linguists, fluent in multiple languages that were widely spoken on Planet Earth, at least at the time of our last contact with the Home Planet. 

They were presented with a complex outreach mission. We knew nothing about what had transpired on the Home Planet over the past centuries. No one knew what to expect from reestablishing contact with Earth, or if reestablishing contact was even possible. The Shiluchim needed a flexible attitude, prepared to navigate and negotiate complexities. If conditions on the Home Planet had continued to worsen, perhaps the Yidden of the Home Planet would need ransoming and rescuing. On the other hand, if conditions there were significantly improved, there may be an opportunity for a return to our world of origin. Alternatively, trade could be established between the distant planets. 

The ship's cargo hold was packed with gold bars and coins from Planet Shney. With as much uncertainty that enveloped this mission, there was a sense that gold could come in handy. Gold, it was presumed, was still the universal language. Gold would serve as a commodity for trade, a means perhaps to grease palms to facilitate negotiations, or may be needed for pidyon shevuyim, the ransoming of the Yidden of the Home Planet. The Shiluchim needed to be prepared for whatever circumstances that encountered. 

Also packed into the hold of the ship were the emergency food rations. The passengers of the Shilach had an adequate, if somewhat tedious, supply of ready-made kosher food for their long voyage to Planet Earth. It was reasonably assumed that food could be found on arrival, even if they would need to resort to a diet of lentils like Daniel had in Babylon. However, if chas v'chalila, the Shiluchim determined that even approaching the Home Planet was unsafe, they had the option to abort the approach and return to Planet Birobidzhan, surviving with the bare-bone emergency rations. That was certainly a bleak option, but an option nonetheless. 

We intuitively understand that time is a flexible, pliable concept. We accept by faith that the Ineffable One created the Heavens and the Earth in six days and nonetheless understand that millions of years unfolded within those six days. We believe that God rested on the seventh day while still knowing that rest is neither necessary nor possible for the Supreme Being. We celebrate and honor the Shabbos every week, following the example set by our Creator, as documented in the Tanakh. We enhance the Divine each week by stretching Shabbos at both ends. We usher the Shekhinah in when we light our candles eighteen minutes before sunset on Freytag. We stretch the holiness with the Havdalah ceremony after the stars appear in our sky. We entice the Holy Spirit to linger with us for just a little while longer even as Shabbos fades into the beginning of the work week. 

Shabbos slips away, each week, much too quickly. Each Suntag, it is a long work week until the next Shabbos. When we were children, we could hardly wait until our birthday and it always felt forever away. Now that we are older, time seems to somehow speed up as one birthday follows another in rapid succession. None of these thoughts about the relativity of time come even close to understanding how time might be perceived on an intergalactic journey. 

Likewise, distance is also understood relatively. It is, for instance, a long walk to the market when hungry or tired, even if it is only a few blocks. A far greater distance separates the major cities of Planet Birobidzhan. Even by plane it is a long way from Niu Niu Yark to New Yerushalaim, with First Landing an obligatory stop around the halfway point between the two. Traveling by cargo ship or ferry from one continent to another is an even bigger shlep. No long trip on Planet Birobidzhan compares to an intergalactic voyage between Planet Birobidzhan and the Home Planet. 

For the first couple of years, the Shliach's receivers picked up radio broadcasting from Planet Birobidzhan and those broadcasts provided the passengers a thread of attachment to their world. As the Shliach plodded forward into the void, the delays increased and the signal weakened until the thread broke. 

The tedious sameness then became overwhelming. There were no outside sounds or sights. There was no breeze. No sunsets or sunrises. There were no children shouting and running about and no women gossiping in the nonexistent market. In the public areas of the ship, one encountered the same few men and engaged in the well-worn same repetitive pastimes such as study and playing chess. 

The monotony was expected to continue until the Shliach reached the wormhole. The best estimates suggested that the ship would be in the vicinity of the wormhole about seven years after the launch from Planet Birobidzhan. 

The founders that transited the wormhole in the other direction so many years ago were the only emigrants that had done so fully awake and aware. The description of that crossing was enshrined in their journals. The ship's medical records also chronicled the discomfort experienced and recorded the injuries including spontaneous abortions. No one was particularly looking forward to transiting the wormhole although they all understood that to be absolutely necessary. It surely promised to be a most distressing experience. 

Beyond the wormhole, the Shliach would likely be within listening range of Earth broadcasting, assuming that there were broadcasts from the Home Planet and also assuming that the on-board receivers were compatible with those possible broadcasts. This was what these men had to look forward to. 

This story about the mentshn of Planet Birobidzhan and Planet Shney is the continuation of the tale that evolved into a novel, The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan. 

The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan is in print and available wherever books are sold! 

The novel can also be bought, at a discount, through this direct purchase link:

https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=6TtjgjBTrFtcK4tvxeCbUN4hTvy9rOoAq8aeNsNXURN

Here are the links to the rest of the story as it evolves and posted so far in the blog:

1 - The Miracle of Vilna on Planet Shney 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-miracle-of-vilna-on-planet-shney.html

2 - Nes and Shprintza Freyda Spin the Dreidl on Planet Birobidzhan 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/01/nes-and-shprintza-freyda-spin-dreidl-on.html?m=1

3 - From Shloflozikayt to the Vision of a Marvelous Shtot 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/02/from-shloflozikayt-to-vision-of.html

4 - A Strategy for the Yeshiva Takes Shape and Nes Opens a Pool Hall on Planet Shney 

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-strategy-for-yeshiva-takes-shape-and.html

5 - With the Best Intentions, On a New World

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/02/with-best-intentions-on-new-world.html

6 - The Shliach's Flight to the Home Planet

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-shliachs-flight-to-home-planet.html

7 - Moskve on Planet Shney Grows Wealthy and Cosmopolitan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/04/moskve-on-planet-shney-grows-wealthy.html

8 - Vilna on Planet Shney, the Early Days

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2025/06/vilna-on-planet-shney-early-days.html

The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan

Back in February, 2022 I wrote what I thought of as a short story entitled A Planet Safe for Yidden and posted it to my blog. 

Soon, though, that story burrowed into my skull and wouldn't let go. I began to wonder how it came about that there is a planet far from Earth inhabited by Jews, so I began to explore the “history” of these people and posted the snippets on my blog as well. Then, I wanted to know what would become of the little boy, Dovid, in my original story so I chronicled his personal voyage from childhood to adulthood. 

One thing led to another and around thirty of these pieces - which I began referring to as the Planet Birobidzhan story - were eventually posted. These posts evolved into a novel, after some editing and restructuring, which is entitled The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan. The novel is not yet in print but the original posts are still accessible via the blog. 

This is the link to A Planet Safe for Yidden and the subsequent links can be found there.

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/02/on-planet-safe-for-yidden.html

Below is the introduction to The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan, accessible for the first time. Enjoy.

A Preface

Tayere khaveyrim, dear friends,

The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan is a work of fiction. The setting for most of this book is very far away and in the distant future. Although this book is largely about Jews on other planets, one need not be a Yid (a Jew) or a luftmentsh (a spaceman) to read this story any more than one, for instance, would need to be a Hobbit or an Elf to read a book such as Lord of the Rings. 

This book is a future history. To gaze into the future, we will also need to gaze into the past.

Planet Birobidzhan was settled by exiles separated from the Home Planet for a long time. The exiles developed their own unique culture and speak primarily Yiddish. Some awareness of Yiddishkeit is certainly helpful to understand this tale. To make this story more accessible, I have included a glossary. 

This is a story of displacement, exile, and entrapment by fate. This is also the saga of the few that strive to break free from those entanglements. This story is told from various vantage points, with different voices. The tale spans hundreds of years.

Where to begin? Long before the Yidden came to the gallus in the stars, we lived on Planet Earth where we were also often displaced. But, that is not really the beginning, either. 

The very beginning is described in Bereshis, what others call Genesis. "When God began to create heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water - God said 'Let there be light' and there was light." 

All humanity, we are told, derived from one mother and a single spark. We even all had a single shprakh. What that language was, we do not know. 

Humanity dispersed globally. Each region developed a unique Mamaloshen, I suppose. Farsheteyt? I can't say that I really understand, but the shprakh of each of us became babbling in each other's ears. 

Our Father Abraham originated in Ur Kasdim. Abraham developed a personal relationship with God. Because of this, our bashert became distinct from the rest of the mentshen of Planet Earth. The relationship with the Creator is our inheritance, but that inheritance is not evenly distributed amongst the Children of Abraham. 

What we know of Abraham's immediate family, and those that follow, we learn from the Tanakh, the assemblage of texts that others call the Old Testament. 

Father Abraham's wife was barren. Mother Sarah, in her old age, offered her servant as a surrogate to bear children. The servant and Abraham's first son are left to fend for themselves in the wilderness because Sarah's reasoning was displaced with jealousy. 

I am quite uncertain about how it all ends. Our prophets offer veiled suggestions, but no conclusions. We have no scriptures describing an Apocalyptic End Times as those of other peoples. 

The middle is quite garbled. Most of our tale here is likely closer to the end than the beginning. Es tut mir layd for a lack of greater clarity. 

Our story seems to backtrack and twist in on itself, full of doubt and uncertainty. That rambling is, perhaps, a continuation on the trajectory that reaches back to the very earliest days of the Jewish People. Ikh vis nisht. 

I suffer from a condition of nostalgia, a dissatisfaction with the present. I long for something better. This life of mine is an anachronism. Maybe that explains it. Ikh vis nisht.

A disjointed sense of time and place is not an exclusively Jewish condition. It may be a widespread human phenomenon. A condition of nostalgia and displacement does seem particularly pervasive amongst the Yidden. 

Questions of lineage fill our Tanakh with instances of displaced lines of inheritance, periods of exile, and separation trauma. 

Brothers fought within wombs for dominance. Birthrights were traded for bowls of soup. Children were conceived through subterfuge and seduction. Moshe was raised by Pharaoh's daughter. Hadassah married the King of Persia. 

These sorts of plot twists repeat throughout our Tanakh, reappearing amongst the Nations in barely camouflaged folk tales such as Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and Cinderella. The Roma fortune tellers use Tarot Cards to retool the Tanakh for those lacking a tradition of literacy. 

Family roots are taken very seriously by Yidden. Perhaps our historical obsession with assurances of ethnicity derives from the obvious lack of lineage purity. We are, after all, of many hues and physical types, mixed and blended. 

We mirror this concern with our dietary laws, obsessing on separations. We refrain, for instance, from mixing milk and meat. Nonetheless, the meals that we perceive as Jewish borrow heavily from our Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian neighbors, representing a confluence of cultures. 

We tend to blend our foods. Our kugel, gefilte fish, kneidelach, chopped liver, tzimmes, and cholent all reflect our tendency to bring some order out of chaos, imitating the act of Creation. Our foods are as mixed up as our bloodlines. 

Wherever we migrated, we carried our burdens and contradictions with us. We carried Eretz Yisrael with us into exile. We carry the habits, values, and customs absorbed in exile from one Diaspora to another. 

This was our fate on Planet Earth and continues to be so as we transit across galaxies. 

I hope that readers find this introduction and explanation of sorts to be of some use.

A hartsikn dank, a heartfelt thanks, for your indulgence.