William Shatner, the actor who portrayed Captain James T. Kirk on the original “Star Trek” TV series and its film adaptations, launched into space at 10 a.m. EDT on Oct. 13, 2021, aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spacecraft. Liftoff was from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas with Shatner and three others aboard. Mr. Shatner’s trip on the rocket, developed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, lasted about 10 minutes.

Those aboard got to experience a short period of weightlessness as they climbed to a maximum altitude just above 60 miles. From there they were able to see the curvature of the Earth through the capsule’s big windows.

Mr. Shatner was joined on the flight by Audrey Powers, a Blue Origin vice president; Chris Boshuizen, who co-founded the Earth-imaging satellite company Planet; and Glen de Vries, an executive with the French healthcare software corporation Dassault Systèmes.

When the capsule touched down in the Texas desert, it was quickly surrounded by ground teams. Mr. Bezos himself opened the hatch to check that everyone inside was OK. After the immediate celebrations with family and friends, the crew lined up to receive their Blue Origin astronaut pins.

“What you have given me is the most profound experience. I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened,” Mr. Shatner said through tears.

Blue Origin photo

Jews who have ‘boldly gone’ into space

• Boris Volynov: aboard Soyuz 5 in 1969, one of the original Russian cosmonauts
• Judith Resnik: first Jewish American person and second American woman, 1984 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery, tragically killed aboard her second flight on the Challenger in 1986 when the shuttle combusted seconds after takeoff.
• Jeffrey A. Hoffman: during his mission on Discovery in 1985, first American astronaut to make a contingency spacewalk, when he tried to repair a satellite. In December 1993, he celebrated Hanukkah on board the Endeavor with a dreidel and a small traveling menorah he had brought with him.
• Ellen S. Baker: her first mission in 1989, her team deployed the Galileo probe to study Jupiter. On her last mission in 1995, the Atlantis became the first American space shuttle to dock at Mir, the Russian station.
• David Wolf: participated in 4 space flights, including a 128-day mission to Mir. He carried with him a mezuzah, a yad, a small menorah and a dreidel, which sparked a debate with Jeffrey Hoffman about whose dreidel spun the longest. Wolf said his went for 1-1/2 hours, until it got sucked into an air intake.
• Mark L. Polansky: participated in three space missions. On his second mission in 2006, he took a replica of an artifact from the U.S. Holocaust Museum that had been donated by a survivor, and later donated it back to the museum.
• Ilan Ramon: the only Israeli astronaut, died tragically in 2003 with six other crew members when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into the atmosphere.
• Jessica Meir: spent 200 days in space in 2019 as part of Expedition 61/62. She took with her an Israeli flag, a postcard from Yad Vashem, and a pair of novelty Hanukkah socks.
• Jared Isaacman: commander of SpaceX’s Inspiration4, the first space flight comprised of private citizens to orbit Earth.

The White House has tapped an Orthodox Jewish man who had served as President Barack Obama’s Jewish liaison during his last year in office to fill that role again in the Biden administration.

Chanan Weissman, 37, currently director for technology and democracy for the National Security Council, will pick up his old job. Weissman has worked for the State Department for most of his career, most recently for the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

Jewish groups had asked the White House to name a Jewish liaison in light of growing antisemitism. Recently, the Biden administration chose Deborah Lipstadt, a noted Holocaust historian and Emory University professor, as its special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. That position, located at the State Department, is intended to advance U.S. foreign policy on antisemitism. Weissman’s job as Jewish liaison is more U.S. and community-relations based. The position is intended to serve as a bridge between American Jews and the White House.

Ian Kinsler and Danny Valencia, two former major league baseball players, joined the Long Island Ducks on July 2 for a one-week warmup before signing on with Team Israel for exhibition games before the official start of baseball in the summer Olympic Games, being held this year in Japan.

During Kinsler’s 14-year career in the majors, he played for the Rangers, Tigers, Padres, Angels and Red Sox, where he won a World Series ring in 2018. Starting at second base for the Ducks, Kinsler, whose father is Jewish, told Long Island Newsday, “Right now, this is probably the easiest way to catch up with the speed of the game and get prepared for the Olympics.”

Danny Valencia played nine seasons in the majors, mostly at third base, with the Twins, Orioles, A’s, Blue Jays, Royals, Mariners and Red Sox. Valencia was born to a Jewish mother and Cuban father, who converted to Judaism. “My heritage is Jewish, my baseball background is probably more Cuban. It’s a perfect combination,” Valencia said.

According to a report in The New York Times (and every major newspaper in the world), the long reign of Benjamin Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli politician of the past generation, officially ended on June 13, when the country’s Parliament gave its vote of confidence to a “precarious coalition government stitched together by widely disparate anti-Netanyahu forces,” the Times said.

Naftali Bennett, a 49-year-old former aide to Mr. Netanyahu replaced him as prime minister after winning by just a single vote. Yair Lapid, a centrist leader and the new foreign minister, is set to take Mr. Bennett’s place after two years.

They lead a “fragile eight-party alliance,” the Times said,  ranging from far left to hard right, from secular to religious that many consider both the “embodiment of the rich diversity of Israeli society but also the essence of its political disarray.”

From Moment Magazine, “In Israel, the era of Benjamin Netanyahu, the nation’s longest-serving prime minister, ended with an unruly Knesset session. Israel’s transition from 12 years of Netanyahu dominating the political scene to a never-before-tested coalition cobbled together from differing, and at times diametrically opposed, ideological backgrounds, was accompanied by a soundtrack of constant interruption, heckling and boos.

“Naftali Bennett, Israel’s new prime minister, barely had a chance to deliver the most important speech of his life. In between the shouts from Likud and right-wing parties’ benches accusing him of being a liar and a traitor, Bennett tried to convey a message of polite pragmatism, coupled with a call for national unity — the very thing that was so lacking at that moment in the Israeli parliament.

“The unpleasant tone did not obscure the dramatic effect of the moment: For the first time in more than a decade, a person whose name is not Benjamin Netanyahu has taken the oath of office.”

President Joe Biden has named Tom Nides, a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, to be his ambassador to Israel.

Nides, a banker, whose responsibilities focused on management and resources, served in the State Department from 2011 to 2013, and developed a reputation of good relations with Israeli diplomats. Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, in his book Ally, which chronicles his ambassadorship, described Nides as “irreverent, hard-working, highly intelligent and warm.” Oren said Nides quickly earned his “affection and trust.”

Following the announcement that longtime Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski will retire at the end of next season, Jon Scheyer, the team’s associate head coach and a former Maccabi Tel Aviv shooting guard, was named the next head coach of the Blue Devils. Scheyer has coached for the Blue Devils since 2014, and served as head coach earlier this year in the absence of Krzyzewski, leading Duke to a suspenseful 83-82 victory over Boston College.

Scheyer grew up in a heavily Jewish suburb of Chicago and celebrated a basketball-themed bar mitzvah. As a teenager playing for Glenbrook North High School’s basketball team, Scheyer earned the nickname “Jewish Jordan.” He has been honored  twice by the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. From 2006-2010, Scheyer played for Duke University, twice serving as captain and leading the team to its 2010 national championship.