Star Trek Voyager – Going Home

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
June 8, 2001

 

I am a devotee of the original Star Trek series with William Shatner, Leonard Nemoy – Captain Kirk and Spock and the whole crew. Though I can't recite the script of any particular show, I must have seen nearly all of them when they were originally shown on television or in syndication. We also used to show them in Camp Ramah on rainy days in the 16 mm version. My recollection of them was that they were akin to the old English morality tales. They had a plot with characters, yet quite visible was embedded a moral teaching. By current standards they perhaps seem so simplistic and naïve. In my mind, the messages of the original series are timeless and eternal. Their simplicity shows the clarity of the moral values, which are self-evident. Each show could be used in a classroom to explore the moral dimensions of human relations.

With the demise of the original Star Trek years later came several spin-off series. Star Trek – The Next Generation with Captain Pekard, with his phrase "Make it So," Deep Space Nine and lastly, Star Trek Voyager with Captain Janeway. Because of their viewing hours and my schedule I was never really able to follow their multiple plots and characters. The newer series were not created to have the moral dimension of the original series. Perhaps I just longed for Kirk, Spock and Vulcan – really Priestly Benediction hand signal, and Bones. But I did give in and my scheduled enabled me to see a few of the Voyager shows and especially the last one. In a casually midrashic manner I would like to look at a few of the dynamics of Voyager and apply them to ourselves.

Our galaxy is identified as the alpha quadrant. In the beginning of the series Voyager is caught in a spatial storm, whatever that is, and is displaced out of this quadrant into the delta quadrant. The underlying theme of the rest of the series is to find the way home. There are some deductions and lessons to be learned from this.

There is something in the meaning and the connotations of the word home that has lasting power. No matter how old we are and no matter how far away we move, we can always identify that place which we call "Our home." Though I was not quite eight when we moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey, I remember so many things with such clarity about 691 Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights that my mother says to me "You remember that?" Years ago I had the chance and like a homing pigeon drove back to see "my home." For over forty-two years my family has lived at 25 Wilber Street in Belleville, New Jersey. I have mowed and raked every square inch of the yards front and back, and remember the original wallpaper in the living room. We can all do that. Each of our children can identify their "home." But home is also a dynamic. Home is where people live, where events happen more than just an address and a past memory. Home evokes memories of events, which shape us and create us, which inspire us and motivate us. Home is a powerful force in our lives. Home is our roots and our rooting. For this reason Ruby and I have brought our children to see my grandparent's apartment building in Boro Park, where my mother and aunt grew up, so that they could see the American beginning of my family's journey.

For these reasons, the home has always been the center of Judaism and the Jewish people and not the synagogue. Home has mezuzot on the door, sefarim – Jewish religious books, on the shelves, licht – Shabbat and Yom Tov Candlesticks, kiddush cups, challah board with knife and cover on the table, Havdalah set for the end of Shabbat. But more than artifacts in a museum, Home is were Candles are blessed, Kiddush and HaMotzi are recited, the children blessed, zemirot – the music of Shabbat and Yom Tov sung, and Birkat HaMazon recited. The Home is a Jewish dynamic around whose table Torah is discussed, even argued; where generations – even if only two, intertwine. The Jewish Home is supposed to be so powerful that it can do two things: first, that no matter how far away the children go, from coast to coast, it has the magnetic power to call them back. And secondly, it has the nuclear power to be recreated. Even as Voyager sought to "go home," Voyager became home. As I was typing these sentences at the computer I realized that even here there is a button labeled home which we combined with the control key brings me back to the very beginning of the document or by itself brings me back to the beginning of the line– ah ah – beginning - Bereshit – Torah – there is even the connection of Home and Torah on our computers! That is why Voyager had to go home! Home was the cradle, birthplace of existence, which gave existence meaning and purpose. Our Jewish home gives us the substance and meaning of our Jewish existence. We can always go home, even must go home, Jewishly. We must, like Voyager, be at home.

Of the many roles on Voyager I was fascinated by 7 of 9 who was a Borg. [Don't ask me to explain any of that.] This character struggled for independence from the Borg because it was a collective consciousness. Every member of the Borg was integrally connected. They were inseparable from each other. No member could decide to disconnect and break free from the collectivity of the Borg. Embedded in this character is the concept of the relationship of the individual to their group. Any group is an association of individuals that decide or are forced to cohere to one another. Either they will stay together because they believe in the same thing, want to do the same thing, or have the same goals. Or they will stay together because they are forced to stay together by outside pressures. While a member of the Borg 7 of 9 was forced to be part of the collective, when she was detached, she chose to be part of the collective consciousness of Voyager.

We replace the Star Trek word "Borg" with the Hebrew Klal Yisrael – the collective consciousness of the Jewish people. While previously we might have been forced, like the Borg, to be part of the Jewish people - 'we couldn't get out because they wouldn't let us in," there was always the core dynamic: we believed in ourselves, we believed in our faith. It was the perpetuation of the faith that was the reason for our existence. We maintained the existence of klal yisrael, the Jewish faith community, stretching backwards through history and laterally to all Jews in all places at any time, not because we were forced to, but like 7 of 9 once she was on Voyager, because we wanted to!! In our world we has such a stress on individuality and disconnectedness, the Jewish reflection of Star Trek Voyager is the purposeful, intentional and chosen connectedness of the Jew to Judaism and to other Jews, in synagogue, in our community, and in the world. Our connection to the State of Israel is not philanthropic. That only derives from our being part of our Jewish collective conscious including, connecting both parts of this sermon, to the home from where we began. Israel the country and Israel the people and Jews throughout the world and of every age must chose to be part of the collectivity – the klal - of the Jewish people. Once we do, like 7 of 9, then the www of our existence connects us in every direction and charges us with meaning and purpose. 7 of 9 was a good Jewish girl, even if she began as a Borg.

I will contain my analysis of Star Trek Voyager as it has taken its place in the syndicated quadrant where it will exist in the ethereal realm of TV reruns for a long time. I think, that like its original, it is embedded with meaning, here specifically Jewish meaning. That singular place that bore us and perpetuated us Jewishly was the home. It must be vibrant and evoke our passions and loyalty. And in the freedom of democracy, each one of us must chose to be part of the collective Jewish consciousness because we believe in our faith and as a group want to live it ourselves and then transmit it to our children.

In the words of the immortal Spock, may we "live long and prosper."

Amen.