21st Century Bogatyr: March 2022

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

The Town of First Landing

by Zvi Baranoff

The town of First Landing is the third largest city on Planet Birobidzhan. It is a dreadful place.

First Landing sits at the approximate center of Planet Birobidzhan's most populous continent. It is a dusty and wind-blown industrial town. It is at the eternal crossroads. The horizon is flat and unimpressive in every direction.

Nearly every building was constructed from prefabricated materials that had arrived on board the various transit ships or made from the hulls and cannibalized innards of those ships. It exudes a sense of decay and projects an aura of disintegration.

Few people would consciously choose to live in such a place. There is very little reason to stay put in a place like First Landing, other than inertia. Of course, for some inertia is the primary force of their existence. That is really the best explanation for the continued habitation of First Landing after so many generations.

The intention of the Founders was for this place to be primarily a transit station. The spot was chosen because it was flat and central. These two factors made it the ideal landing spot for the ships coming from Earth. After landing and orientation, it was assumed that the Yidden would flow outward in all directions, filling the land.

Generations after the last transport from the Home Planet landed here, First Landing remains a transient location. There is an airport and a train station, being about halfway between New Jerusalem and New New York. The continent's two main highways cross here as well.

First Landing has the largest slaughterhouse and meat packing facility on the planet. The Currency Printing Press and what can roughly be called the Central Bank is located there.

There is a scattering of small Shuls. A distillery produces a balm for the tedium of existence. Birobidzhan's only zoo is in New Landing, a monument of sorts to the disjointed thinking of the Agency planners.

The original greenhouses are still functioning, growing winter fruits and vegetables. The planet's first vineyard and winery is situated nearby, on the outskirts of town.

For nearly eighteen years, the intergalactic starship the Hatikvah traveled through the void from the Home Planet. The trajectory was preprogrammed and automated.

For all those years the half dozen pilots on board had no responsibilities other than to wait for the starship to arrive at the coordinates of our new homeland.

When the place that would eventually be known as Planet Birobidzhan was reached and orbiting was set, only one pilot was required for the landing. Nonetheless, they all met on the flight deck.

The pilots worked closely together, scrutinizing charts and computer projections, in order to determine the best place on this planet to land. Wherever they put down would serve as the entrance point for all new arrivals for the foreseeable future.

When the Hatikvah was safely landed, the passengers were tasked with establishment of the infrastructure for the survivability of the new settlement.

The pilots focused on building and maintenance of the landing site and providing electronic guidance for the subsequent unpiloted transit ships.

It can be said that in this aspect, the planning by the Agency and the presumptions and projections of the Earth-bound were right on target. This aspect of the settlement worked out just fine. However, not much else worked according to plan.

On Earth, the public position expressed by the Agency was that the entire Earth Jewish population of twenty-five million would be transported in short order. Realistically, no one expected that to actually unfold but it was widely assumed that most of that population - perhaps as many as fifteen to twenty million would leave the Home Planet.

The optimists suggested that could be accomplished in ten years or less, not counting the actual transportation time, of course. The pessimistic position was that it would take twice as long.

No one projected that before the third year of active transports, the flights would grind to a halt with less than two million Yidden actually transported.

The skyport that the pilots had built and maintained is now the airport. Flights of a ten passenger plane between New Jerusalem and New New York operate five days a week with a short stop at First Landing.

The old observation tower and telescopes are used by amateur astronomers. Of course, a sighting of a ship from The Home Planet - or anywhere else - would be a huge event but no one realistically expects any outside contact these days.

The end of the immigration flights played havoc with the various presumptions of the Agency. Much was based on the idea that supplies and personnel for settlement were to arrive in conjunction with timely needs. For instance, it was presumed that schools would not be a big priority for the first five years so teachers and school supplies would arrive later. They, of course, never did arrive.

For the eighteen years of the Hatikvah's flight and for the first couple of months on the new planet, there were sufficient varied food supplies for everyone. The Founders had grown accustomed to the consistency of fresh food and the relative comfort of the living quarters on board that continued to provide shelter on this new planet.

The first of the void-transcending herring tins arrived just a couple of months after the Hatikva. There were 10,000 cryogenically preserved Yidden on board.

When the cryogenically stored loads of new immigrants began arriving by the tens of thousands, the capacity to feed everyone satisfactorily was thoroughly strained and housing for the new immigrants was sketchy.

Upon defrosting on a strange planet, the new immigrants were housed in substandard dormitories and fed a diet consisting mainly of potatoes. Starvation was not an actual danger but there were shortages of everything with the exception of potatoes for the next three years.

According to the orientation before flight - and the master plan - a year's supply of kosher MRE would be sent with each cryogenic flight to assure that food supplies would last until the cultivation levels could sustain the population.

However, the first of those flights included perhaps an eight month bare minimum food supply and each subsequent ship held less than the one before it. The Agency seemed to have just presumed that the pioneering spirit would suffice if supplies dwindled.

The financial committee was certainly capable of getting the printing press up and running quickly and printing plenty of cash. However, there was no real way to determine the value of the money and virtually nothing to spend the money on. There was a need for devising a distribution system for necessities in short supply. Ration coupons were far more important to those immigrants than paper shekels.

On Earth, it had been determined that the currency of the new settlement would be called the Shekel and that its value was equivalent to the Dollar. All potential immigrants were given the opportunity to transfer dollars to the Agency in exchange for credit in shekels on arrival. That was the case for the passengers of the Hatikvah and the first of the subsequent flights.

As time elapsed, the Agency found a growing reluctance to make an exchange of hard cash for abstract promises. As an incentive, the rate of exchange increased. New immigrants thus arrived shekel-rich with their wealth duly noted in the ship computers. On arrival, they would receive stacks of nearly worthless cash.

The cash the Agency acquired, and spent, on Earth to purchase the ships and supplies for the next waves of immigration. The financial model was essentially similar to a pyramid or that of a ponzi scheme. The payoff for the immigrants was eighteen years away on a distant planet with no direct accountability for the plans made by pencil pushers and accountants on Earth.

It was presumed that a market economy would be developed. No one really had a clue how that would happen or how long that would take.

It was also presumed that at some point intergalactic trade would develop and that ships would be outfitted for return flights and flights to other settled planets. Generations later, those hopes have yet to be realized.

It was presumed, on Earth, that the large bison-like creatures that roam our planet were similar enough to cattle to be a source of kosher meat. This was a false hope.

After a few years, it was determined that the wild hog-like creatures that the rabbis first disdained are actually kosher. So, at that point meat became plentiful as the Yidden learned to appreciate the kosher ham, pork and bacon. For the first few critical years, meat was in very short supply.

When the first few flights arrived, they were greeted with excitement and hope by the earlier immigrants. New people and fresh supplies held promise. The feelings of hope and promise soon began to fade as an account of the situation became clearer.

Supplies were inadequate. No one could make sense of the decisions made on Earth as to what was needed here on Planet Birobidzhan. Perhaps the Agency was just clueless. Perhaps they were making purchases based on calculations that were beyond comprehension. Perhaps there was a payola factor.

The initial charter for the settlement provided no formula for governance. Very little that resembles a government has ever developed here. There is no military, secular courts, police, public schools, jails, taxes or welfare. Also, virtually no public planning. In the early days, a lot of decisions were temporarily put off until those with more expertise arrived. Of course, those experts never arrived.

We do have rabbis - lots of rabbis - and rabbinic courts. However, because of the plethora, none of them carry a whole lot of weight. They can each, for instance, rule concerning marriage and divorce, dogma and theology, even declare excommunication. They can also contradict each other. If one is unhappy with a ruling from a Beit Din, a different answer to the question at hand might be found at a shul literally within a stone's throw.

There are historical reasons for the relative weakness of rabbinic authority on Planet Birobidzhan. The rabbis that arrived on the Hatikvah had been transformed by their time in transit. By the time they had reached the new planet, they had all developed a fairly laissez-faire attitude about most matters.

When the subsequent flights arrived, the rabbis that came along were much younger than those from the Hatikvah, so were inclined to give their elders leeway, treat their decisions as precedence and follow the example of those that arrived earlier.

This is not to say that the rabbis did not have some real world matters to grapple with upon arrival. For those that traveled on the Hatikvah, ship time had been pinned to the Earth time of their departure point. Upon arrival, the clocks and calendar needed resetting.

The days of the week were certainly consistent. The daylight determined the time of the day.

The moon was a whole other factor. That is, on Earth, the new month of the Jewish calendar begins with a new moon. On Planet Birobidzhan, there are two moons and the cycle of neither one is the same as the Earthly moon. Additionally, the seasons in this new land were significantly different from those of the Home Planet.

The rabbis had plenty to argue over concerning how to define time and the order for traditional celebrations under these totally new conditions. Of course, rabbinical arguments have a long tradition.

Not long after the two major cities of New New York and New Jerusalem were settled, a major Yeshiva (and multiple minor ones just to add to the confusion) was in each of these cities with each reflecting an opposition to the other on almost every issue. It took years to reach a general consensus on the issues surrounding the calendar.

The new immigrants that arrived after the Hatikvah were predominantly very young. The Agency, it seems, believed that what was needed were young men with strong backs and women of a breeding age. So, what the immigrants lacked in education, they compensated with inexperience.

Those that had arrived on the Hatikvah were more skilled, far better educated and much older than the fresh arrivals. It was their mission to try to motivate the growing number of youthful immigrants to take on the task of exploring and settling the vast and empty planet.

An initial analysis of the planet projected that it could optimally sustain a population of five to seven billion people. Even if all of Earth's Yidden had been delivered at once, the Planet Birobidzhan would be sparsely populated for a very long time. This may have been why the Agency chose to ship absolutely no type of birth control - no condoms, no diaphragms and no birth control pills - of any amounts on any of those ships.

Five major projects were seen as essential to those with any interest in planning.

The founding and development of the two major cities, New New York on the west coast of the continent and New Jerusalem on the east coast was deemed paramount. The location for these cities were chosen because of the deep natural harbors that could provide logical jumping off points for outward expansion to the rest of the planet.

The harvest of hardwood trees for lumber was considered essential for any advanced construction. In the southern part of the continent, the forest to sustain such an industry offered itself to developing.

Also to the south of First Landing were mineral deposits for potential mining.

The production of a wide variety of food to sustain the growing population required settlements in rural areas and the creation from scratch of an agricultural economy.

The piles of near worthless cash did not excite the new settlers. Ship load after ship load of immigrants arrived. The young people filled up First Landing waiting for inspiration and motivation. Other incentives besides illusory wealth were needed to encourage the youthful arrivals to take on such tasks.

Potatoes at every meal and nightmares of potatoes was the most compelling argument for carrying on the pioneering experiment. The potato has a rightful place in the history of Planet Birobidzhan. Probably, the tedium of potatoes was more significant motivation than all of the planning and tinkering of ideologues, the theorizing of theoreticians, the philosophies or theological positioning of rabbis and sages on the Home Planet or here.

Der mensch tracht un gott lacht. (Man plans and God laughs.)

This is not a Jewish story. It is, however, a story about Jews. One does not need to be Jewish to read this tale any more than one needs to be a Hobbit or an Elf to read Lord of the Rings.

This story is a work of fiction. The setting for this tale is in the distant future, on the far away Planet Birobidzhan. This planet was settled by Jewish exiles from Planet Earth.

The population of Planet Birobidzhan has been cut off from the Home Planet for a long time. They have developed their own unique culture, traditions and linguistics.

The language spoken on Planet Birobidzhan is primarily Yiddish. I have sprinkled a significant number of Yiddish words and phrases throughout the telling of the tale. I also refer to various Jewish religious and cultural touchstones.

To make this story more accessible, I have included a glossary of words and phrases in Yiddish and Hebrew that are used as well as some explanations of religious terms and holidays.

I hope that readers find this to be useful.

The link to the Glossary is here:

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-useful-guide-glossary-to-planet.html?m=1

פּלאַנעט ביראָבידזשאַן

Do you want to read more about Planet Birobidzhan? Here are all the posted installments so far, in the order that they were posted. Just click your way through the story!

1 On A Planet Safe for Yidden

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

2 Yenne Velt: A History of Planet Birobidzhan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/02/yenne-velt-history-of-planet-birobidzhan.html

3 Another Globe, Perhaps?

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/02/another-globe-perhaps.html

4 Bereshis: The Transport & Transformation of the Founders

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/03/bereshis-transport-transformation-of.html

5 The Town of First Landing

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-town-of-first-landing.html

6 A Personal History of an Early Settler on Planet Birobidzhan

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/05/a-personal-history-of-early-settler-on.html

7 Chickens, Jews Harps & Cronyism

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/07/cronyism.html

8 Dovid's Neshumeh

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/07/dovids-neshumeh.html

9 The Octogenarian and the Youngster

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-octogenarian-and-youngster.html

10 An Otherworldly Havdalah

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/08/an-otherworldly-havdalah.html

11 The Courtship & Marriage of Bathseba

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-courtship-marriage-of-bathseba.html

12 A Job, an Apartment & Two Honeymoons

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/08/a-job-apartment-two-honeymoons.html

13 The Pathway Into the Stars

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-pathway-into-stars.html

14 Abi Guzunt

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/08/abi-guzunt.html

15 A Dozen or So…

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/10/a-dozen-or-so.html

16 Tamar's Sketchbook

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/11/tamars-sketchbook.html?m=1

17 An Apologetic Interlude in the Galactic Tale

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/11/an-apologetic-interlude-in-galactic-tale.html?m=1

18 Tamar's Mushrooms

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/11/tamars-mushrooms.html?m=1

19 Intergalactic Travel Can Not Be Done on the Cheap

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/12/intergalactic-travel-can-not-be-done-on.html?m=1

20 Unauthorized Fire on Planet Birobidzhan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/12/unauthorized-fire-on-planet-birobidzhan.html?m=1

21 Tamar and the Klezmorim of Planet Birobidzhan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/12/tamar-and-klezmorim-of-planet.html

22 Heresy, Flimflam and Death

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/12/heresy-flimflam-and-death.html?m=1

23 On a Distant Planet, An Apartment in the City by the Sea

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/on-distant-planet-apartment-in-city-by.html?m=1

24 The Girl with a Fiddle on Planet Birobidzhan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-girl-with-fiddle-on-planet.html

25 Tamar and the Scholars of Planet Birobidzhan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/tamar-and-scholars-of-planet-birobidzhan.html

26 The Tropics of Planet Birobidzhan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-tropics-of-planet-birobidzhan.html

27 The Beaches and Coastal Shtetls of Planet Birobidzhan

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-beaches-and-coastal-shtetls-of.html

28 A Pre-launch Reunion

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-pre-launch-reunion.html

29 The Launch Was Imminent

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-launch-was-imminent.html

30 Liftoff Into the Unknown

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/liftoff-into-unknown.html

31 Across the Void, Down a Wormhole & Into the Snow

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/across-void-down-wormhole-into-snow.html

32 Flourishing on Planet Shney

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2023/01/flourishing-on-planet-shney.html

Sunday, March 6, 2022

Bereshis: The Transport & Transformation of the Founders

by Zvi Baranoff

It was the first of the starships with many more scheduled to follow. The ship was loaded with Jews headed to begin the settlement of a distant planet. The ship had been carefully built and the selection of passengers went through a vigorous vetting process.

Only around twelve hundred Yidden would travel on the first ship and a lot of responsibility was laid on their shoulders. The future of the Jewish People was contingent on the groundwork that would be done by the volunteers on the initial transport.

A second ship, with tens of thousands of passengers in a deep sleep would follow within a couple of months. Over the next few years, if all went well, most of Earth's twenty-five million Yidden would be transported in this manner.

The cryogenic technicians, other technical support teams and the spiritual leadership on the first ship needed to be in place when the subsequent transport vehicles began to arrive.

Great hope and expectations were held by all involved in this complicated enterprise. The ship had been named Hatikvah - The Hope. Bands played, banners waved and crowds of family, friends and well-wishers cheered as the volunteers walked to the ship that would be their home for the nearly eighteen years of the voyage.

Eighteen years is a very long time to be cooped up in even the most comfortable and spacious of ships. Eighteen years is long enough for cultural differences to bubble up into conflicts as well as for social interactions to result in significant shifting of attitudes.

The blending and altering of beliefs and practices that occurred amongst the passengers of the Hatikvah would have been astronomical to an outside observer, if such an observation had been possible. Surely, some of the passengers found the cultural shifting disorienting.

The changes, however, took place over nearly two decades in an organic manner, lives developing over time. These changes altered the perspectives of the passengers and the future course of life on Planet Birobidzhan.

The settlers that followed, arrived by the tens of thousands, cryogenically frozen, in ships packed like canned herring. The developing culture of the world where they were defrosted, made their heads spin. The way they got there was enough to make them feel disoriented without the additional digestion of the cultural oddities of those of the First Landing.

The traveling time for all the ships was the same. For those of the First Landing, eighteen years of traveling was experienced.

For those arriving afterwards, no real time had passed. When defrosted, they felt something similar to a hangover or perhaps a touch of the flu. Within a day or two, those symptoms passed. In their minds, they had been on Earth just yesterday.

The subsequent settlers arrived the same age as they were when they had left and with their attitudes and perspectives intact. Those that had preceded them on the Hatikvah had all been significantly altered by the trip.

The volunteers on the Hatikvah were chosen primarily for the specific skills that they would need on their arrival on the target planet.

The demographics of the Hatikvah were somewhat older, better educated, and among the more secular volunteers, a higher percentage male than all of the following flights.

The more religious adult volunteers were slightly older than future flights and made up of highly specialized experts and their wives. However, they also brought along their children. This was the only passage that included children because on all the rest of the ships the passengers were cryogenically preserved and it was determined that it wasn't safe to freeze those under the age of twelve.

One might reasonably have suspected that the primary cultural fault line aboard the Hatikvah was that which separates the most religious from the most secular. That presumption would be, quite frankly, wrong because of multiple reasons.

To begin with, the divisions that separate the various ultra religious factions are deep with a lot of historical animosity. The ideological conflicts and personal grudges that can be traced back to centuries of Earth history were carried aboard the Hatikvah.

The representatives of the various factions were on their best behavior and committed themselves to papering over their conflicts but that did not go so far as to result in a common agenda to establish a theocracy. The ultra religious were also, all told, a minority of these migratory pioneers.

The more secular of the volunteers lacked the philosophical and ideological passions binding themselves to fixed positions. There were no particular secular axes to grind.

The result of this mix was a strong influence of religious sentiment without coercion. Proselytizing for or against any of the sects was considered gauche and unacceptable.

One of the very few conflicts during that long trip from the Home Planet to the Planet Birobidzhan that actually came to blows - and injuries - did involve a Rabbi, but had nothing to do with religion or philosophical matters. The rabbi was caught cheating at chess.

A Language, A Jargon or Babel?

Finding a common language for the pioneers wasn't a simple matter. The overwhelming majority of those aboard this first flight were from the North American Federation.

English was the most widely spoken language from that region of Earth, but Spanish and French were also regional languages with representation aboard. There was a sizable contingent Hassidim from Québec, predominantly Montréal, that spoke French and Yiddish with strong French accents.

There were also some Europeans including a fair number of doctors from Germany. German was their primary language which made Yiddish fairly comprehensible for them.

There was a sizable number of Yiddishists that had studied and taught Yiddish in universities. They were committed to the ideal of making Yiddish a modern language of the new settlement. There were also those that were aboard, particularly the ultra religious, that grew up in homes that spoke Yiddish.

The university educated Yiddishists were highly critical of the colloquial Yiddish that was widely spoken. The academics derisively referred to the Yiddish in use as Yinglish. For instance, it was far more common to call a window a "vindow" than the more correct "fentster". As inclined as the Yiddishists were to try and educate on the matter, people spoke the language as they were used to.

Any hope for linguistic purity was delusional. What became the common language of the voyage, and eventually the common language of the settlement, was a hodgepodge. The language spoken was a reflection of the people. They found ways to communicate across the divisions that separated themselves from each other. That which grew organically developed into the forms of speech that we are now familiar with.

The Work At Hand

For the eighteen years of traveling time, there was little real work and nearly no responsibilities for these pioneers. The ship's course was set by computer. No piloting, or human intervention whatsoever, would be called for until the time came for landing on the new world. The larder was filled with a more than sufficient, although less than exciting, supply of Kosher MRE - Meals Ready to Eat. Those aboard the Hatikvah could just sit on their hands for eighteen years and fulfill their mission.

It would be incorrect to say that there was no work to be done and surely ongoing idleness is contrary to human nature. However, many were aboard with focussed skills that had no purpose whatsoever on the Hatikvah. The number of people with skills that were useful in transit constituted a workforce of many times more than required for the work at hand.

Perhaps the most redundant of those on the first flight was the financial committee. Their mission, upon arrival on the new planet, involved the printing of currency and the establishment of a market economy. Printing money would be the easy part for them. It took years, however, before those pieces of paper had any exchange value whatsoever. For eighteen years in flight, the committee met once a week…to play poker.

There were enough medical professionals for a small hospital. They were tasked with setting up such a facility on their arrival. On board, there was little to do. The passengers had been pre-screened for physical, mental and emotional health. The medics provided annual health checkups, bandaged an occasional bruising and staffed a twenty-four hour clinic without anyone working more than a couple of hours a week.

The ship was designed with hydroponic growing in mind. The idea was that some food could be grown enroute and the shipboard system would be up and running planetside while greenhouses were being set up.

The farmers, greenhouse and hydroponics experts were all antsy to do something - and everyone was quickly bored with the pre-packaged space food - so lots of fruits and vegetables were soon growing and meals were greatly improved.

The Agency had provided carefully preserved fertilized chicken eggs with the presumption that they would be activated on arrival. However, some of the eggs were hatched and the Hatikvah may have been the only intergalactic flight ever to include free range chickens.

Even with all of these gardening activities, however, there were ten times the number of experts on board than were needed on the ship for that purpose.

There were six pilots aboard. One would be required to land the vessel which would mean a couple of hours work at the end of the trip. Once planetside, however, those six went on to establish the homing beams and landing fields for all of the rest of the landings.

They later formed the Birobidzhan Pilots' Association. They amused children with model airplanes, built some planes big enough to fly a few passengers, and eventually established somewhat regularly scheduled flights between New Jerusalem and New New York. Most everyone referred to this as the Birobidzhan Air Farce, somewhat cynically.

There were design and construction experts on board that clearly had nothing to do before arrival. In truth, they wouldn't have a whole lot to do once there either. The ship was packed with prefabricated parts for all the primary construction. The pieces snapped together like children's building blocks.

Concerning the religious experts, the shochets had nothing to do until there were enough chickens to allow for an occasional culling. The birthrate was high enough to call for a couple of mohels, perhaps. Both of these professions were overrepresented. There was virtually no need for kashrut inspection but there was a full crew of hechsher authorities.

Of course, for the Rabbis, life on the ship was probably very similar to what their lives were like back on Earth. They studied Holy Books and prayed. They bickered with each other over minor theological differences. They paid attention to the holidays and gave advice to those who would seek it out. The Rebbetzins also lived much as they had before. They had babies, raised children, and maintained households.

The Rebbetzins, perhaps unexpectedly, stepped up to fill a void when the hydroponic gardens began producing. The wives of the various Rabbis established and oversaw the kitchens and feeding stations that freed everyone from the tedium of MRE.

The Rebbetzins worked together in a way that transcended the ideological and cultural differences of the various sects that their husbands represented. The selfless service of these women was recognized by all aboard the Hatikvah.

Traditions, Faith & Families

As far as the Rabbis keeping track of the various holidays and other aspects of Jewish rituals that are time sensitive, space travel raised some serious concerns resulting in some interesting solutions.

On Earth there are observable determinants that ceased to be accessible on an intergalactic flight. According to Biblical law and millennia of tradition, Shabbos begins Friday evening at sunset. Shabbos candles need to be lit before the sun actually sets.

For the purpose of determining when Shabbos begins, time is a very localized matter which differs according to longitude and latitude, as well as seasonal shifting. For instance, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Miami are all in the same time zone but for Yidden in each of those cities candles were lit at different times from one another.

Likewise, Shabbos ends after sunset on Saturday evening. The viewing of three stars in the sky is how Earth-bound Yidden determined that the holy day has passed.

The Earth-bound Jewish calendar is lunar, with an elaborate periodic adjustment to bring the lunar calendar in line with the solar for seasonal consistency. A new moon determines the beginning of a new month.

Beyond the Earth, the Earth's moon serves no value for measuring passing time. On an intergalactic flight, there is no sunset. Beyond the solar system, the sun of the Home Planet cannot be seen whatsoever. Likewise, stars are always visible from the observation deck. On the Hatikvah, another system was needed for maintaining traditions.

The solution agreed to before the Hatikvah launched was that the ship would maintain New York City time for the entirety of the voyage.

The entire ship was designated as Shomer Shabbos. Of course, much of the daily operations of the ship were fully automated. Those aspects were uninterrupted, reminiscent of the old Kosher hotels on Earth that had elevators that stopped on each floor so no one would need to push any buttons on Shabbos.

Nonetheless, everyone was aware of when Shabbos began each week and there were real changes in patterns of activities for all aboard. Movies were shown six afternoons and evenings a week. There were no films Friday evening or Saturday afternoon. The public areas were generally used for playing cards, Scrabble, backgammon, chess and similar activities. Those did not take place in public on Shabbos. All the public Beep-Beep Cookers were disabled from just before "sunset" Friday and would not operate until after "sunset" the next day.

Of course, the activities in private were not subject to public mores. What one did in one's private space - or a private meeting space with the blinds pulled down and the door closed - was a private matter.

The Hatikvah did not have a dress code, per se. A consensus for such would have been impossible to reach. Some of the biggest divides between the various religious factions had to do with types of clothing, hats, scarves and other variants.

The one common agreement that could be reached was a general commitment to public modesty. Of course, the more devout dressed far more conservatively, with each of the sects having their own standards.

Many of the secular women adopted aspects of the religious dress standards, in public settings. Some discovered and appreciated that a skirt was easier to lift or slip out of than removing trousers. A skirt simplified casual liaisons. That was certainly an unintended consequence of the rabbinical meddling.

As already stated, the most religious pioneers were married couples raising hoards of children. There were also some married medical professionals and farming couples.

The unattached were disproportionately male, at a ratio of nearly three to one. Some singles formed committed relationships and sealed that under the chuppah.

Women that were so inclined wielded quite a bit of freedom to exercise choice. They were highly educated, independent women with healthy libidos and lots of free time on their hands. Over the years, some settled into relationships that were certainly marriage-like, with two or three men if that fit their temperament.

The various holidays that dot the calendar helped to provide relief from the ongoing sameness of daily life of long distance interstellar travel. The Rabbis coordinated the ritualistic aspects. Even the least observant aboard grew to appreciate an excuse for a celebration.

On Earth, the High Holidays were generally acknowledged by most Yidden. Passover and Hanukkah were also widely adopted by even those with only a tenuous attachment to ritual and religious structures.

Everyone kvelled with pleasure when the first potato latkes were served on the first shipboard Hanukkah. Of course, this was long before the food shortages on Planet Birobidzhan.

In the early days after landing - for the first couple of years - as one ship after another arrived, it seemed that all there was to eat was potatoes. At the time, some wisenheimers suggested that the Bulbes Song should be made the official National Anthem of the Planet…as if!

Anyway, on this flight, as the years dragged on, even the holidays that were considered inconsequential on Earth gained importance.

For instance, the holiday of Purim became very popular. The cross dressing and the drunkenness of Purim that was exhibited by the otherwise staid rabbis reminded some of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Soon, Purim became a social highlight for everyone on the flight.

After a couple of years, the influence of Mardi Gras seeped into the shipboard Purim celebrations. Nudity, with the cover of masks and body paint, was accepted with little notice and no conflict by the time of the third Purim celebration on the Hatikvah.

By the time of the landing on Planet Birobidzhan, a certain level of exhibitionism and debauchery had become a standard part of the Purim festivities. No matter how the Rabbis that arrived on the subsequent flights felt about it, on Planet Birobidzhan, unfettered celebration of Purim had become traditional.

The birth rate of the religious women of this transport contributed directly to unforeseen cultural shifts aboard the Hatikvah.

Back on the Home Planet, the overall birth rate had dropped significantly over the century before the first flight. The average birth rate on Earth was just a bit over one child per mother. For the Haredi and Hasidic women, six, eight or ten per mother was the norm.

On Earth, the births were fairly evenly divided between male and female. Because of a space anomaly, the number of female births aboard the Hatikvah outnumbered the male children.

For the children aboard, marriages were often arranged at a fairly young age, with the traditional Shidduch. The increased number of female births, however, complicated the matchmaking process.

Over the years of drifting through the void, however, there were also drifting social changes.

Some of the doctors and farmers that had little inclination towards religious observations at the beginning of the voyage had drifted into the rabbinic circles as the years dragged on. Formerly secular men began attending regular minyans, donning tefillin, and wearing fringes. These men in their forties grew long beards and wore black hats and then stood under the chuppah with very young brides.

On the shoulders of these early pioneers, the culture of our new homeland, Planet Birobidzhan, was built.