Our Space Astronauts On the Enterprise That Are Jewish

 Nadene Goldfoot                                        

As it turns out, we had three astronauts on the Enterprise that were Jewish.    Three Jewish men were prowling around the very non-ethnic spaceship, 211 years into the future.  No one on the ship belonged to any specific ethnic group.  Star Trek showed that all parties in the world had long since become one.  It was the 1st interracial space ship from Earth. 

The Enterprise had been Gene Roddenberry's creation. That gives us hope.  Anti-Semitism should be finished by 200 years from now. People will be hired for their skills, not for the religion or political party they belong to.                                         

Born  22 March 1931, Bar Mitzvahed in Montreal, Canada 78 years ago, member of Star Trek from 1966 to 1969.  He did find out while speaking to his shipmates on the bridge of the Starship, Enterprise that he wasn't the only Jewish member.  Another was Spock  who was not shy about it.  The third was Chekov.  

One member of the Star Trek team, who was born 211 years in the future,  boldly explored a multitude of strange new worlds and civilizations before landing in Portland, Oregon to speak before a Jewish gathering at the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland's Benefit for the Future  on November 14th, 2015.  That was the well-known William Shatner, who hadn't spoken much about being Jewish, himself, but he told us that Leonard Nimoy did.  They knew each other from a previous movie they had made.  

  Russians still had accents, though as the one on the Enterprise still had his.  Walter Koenig played the part of  Pavel Andreievich Chekov  who was born in 2245 and is a young and naïve ensign who first appears on-screen in the original series' second season as the Enterprise's navigator. According to Roddenberry, he is "an extraordinarily capable young man—almost Spock's equal in some areas. "We badly need a young man aboard the Enterprise—we need youthful attitudes and perspectives. Chekov can be used potently here". In actuality, Koenig is only five years younger than co-stars Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner.Roddenberry asked him to "ham up" his Russian accent to add a note of comic relief to the series. Chekov's accent has been criticized as inauthentic, in particular Koenig's substituting the "w" sound in place of a "v" sound (e.g., "wodka" for "vodka"); Koenig has said the accent was inspired by his father, who had the same difficulty with the "v" sound.

Koenig's parents were Russian Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union; his family had been living in Lithuania when they emigrated, and they shortened their surname from "Königsberg" to "Koenig."  Koenig's father was a communist then who was investigated by the FBI during the McCarthy era. 

Of course, William Shatner used his Star Trek name  and rank, Captain James T. Kirk, and according to the official Star Trek history, James Kirk was born in Riverside, Iowa on March 22, 2233, and at age 34 became the youngest captain in Starfleet history.

 He had come from a Conservative Jewish household. His parents were Ann (née Garmaise), and Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacturer. He is the middle child of three siblings: he has an older sister, Joy Rutenberg (1928–) and a younger sister, Farla Cohen (1940–?). His patrilineal family name was Schattner—it was his grandfather, Wolf Schattner, who anglicized it. All four of Shatner's grandparents were Jewish immigrants: they came from settlements that are currently in Ukraine and Lithuania, but which were then under the rule of Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire. 

How did he get on the Enterprise?

He was a movie star. In 1964, he appeared in an episode of the CBS drama The Reporter, "He Stuck in His Thumb", and co-starred with Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Paul Newman, and Edward G. Robinson in the Western feature film The Outrage. 1964 also saw Shatner cast in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. that featured Leonard Nimoy, later to be his co-star in Star Trek.

Leonard Simon Nimoy was also born in 1931.  He was born on March 26, 1931, in the West End^[ of Boston, Massachusetts, to Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, Ukraine.  His parents left Iziaslav separately, his father first walking over the border into Poland while his mother and grandmother were smuggled out of the Soviet Union in a horse-drawn wagon by hiding under bales of hay. They reunited after arriving in the United States. His mother, Dora (née Spinner; 1904–1987), was a homemaker, and his father, Max Nimoy (1901–1987), owned a barbershop in the Mattapan section of Boston. He had an elder brother, Melvin. He also had a cousin, Jeff Nimoy, a writer and actor.  Leonard died on February 27, 2015, at 83.                                

  Spock's using the sign of the Cohen for his life on the Enterprise. 

As Spock, The half-Vulcan/half-human Spock was born on January 6, 2230. After graduating from Starfleet Academy, he was commissioned as a Starfleet Officer, and Ensign Spock was assigned to the U.S.S. Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike in 2250.

Nimoy's portrayal of Spock made a significant cultural impact and earned him three Emmy Award nominations. His public profile as Spock was so strong that both his autobiographies, I Am Not Spock (1975) and I Am Spock (1995), were written from the viewpoint of sharing his existence with the character. In 2015, Nimoy died after a long battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). His death became international news and was met with expressions of shock and grief by fans, Star Trek co-stars, scientists, celebrities, and the media. An asteroid was named 4864 Nimoy in his honor. The documentaries For the Love of Spock (2016) and Remembering Leonard Nimoy (2017) were produced by his son and daughter respectively; the first covers his life and career, and the second covers his illness.

His first major role was at 17, as Ralphie in an amateur production of Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing!, which dealt with the struggles of a matriarchal Jewish family similar to his during the Great Depression. "Playing this teenage kid in this Jewish family that was so much like mine was amazing," he said. "The same dynamics, the same tensions in the household." The role "lit a passion" that led him to pursue an acting career. "I never wanted to do anything else."

 Shatner has said that Nimoy also worked on local radio shows for children, often voice acting Bible stories, adding:  Obviously, there was something symbolic about that. Many years later as Captain Kirk, I would be busy rescuing civilizations in distress on distant planets while Leonard's Mr. Spock would be examining the morality of man- and alienkind.

Gene Roddenberry was raised a Southern Baptist; however, as an adult, he rejected religion, and considered himself a humanist. He began questioning religion around the age of 14, and came to the conclusion that it was "nonsense". As a child, he served in the choir at his local church, but often substituted lyrics as he sang hymns. Early in his writing career, he received an award from the American Baptist Convention for "skillfully writing Christian truth and the application of Christian principles into commercial, dramatic TV scripts".

 Resource:

Magazine: Nov 2015, Jewish Life, by Deborah Moon, William Shatner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Nimoy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_T._Kirk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Chekov#:~:text=animated%20Star%20Trek.-,Character%20biography,s%20equal%20in%20some%20areas.