By WARREN E. LEARY – New York Times
 APE
CANAVERAL, Fla., Jan. 16 - He is a soft-spoken man conscious
of the importance of symbols and history, and the role he
plays in both. As the space shuttle Columbia rose with a roar
today from the Kennedy Space Center to propel a diverse crew
of seven astronauts toward a busy 16-day scientific mission,
much of the attention focused on Col. Ilan Ramon.
Colonel Ramon, a 48-year-old Israeli combat pilot and son of a Holocaust survivor, is the first citizen of his country to go into space. The accomplishment, he says, is not his alone.
“Every time you are the first, it is meaningful,” he said before the flight. “I am told my flight is meaningful to a lot of Jewish people around the world. Being the first Israeli astronaut, I feel I am representing all Jews and all Israelis. I am kind of proof that even with all of the hard times, we can go on.”
Before the launching today, most of the attention paid to the mission centered on security and efforts to keep the shuttle and its crew safe from any terrorist attack. Officials at NASA acknowledged that the presence of an Israeli astronaut had only intensified the heightened security they had imposed since Sept. 11, 2001.
But Colonel Ramon and his crew mates said they were not unduly concerned about their safety, and they concentrated on keeping up their training for their much-delayed research mission. Colonel Ramon, who spent more than four years preparing for the flight, saw it repeatedly postponed by higher-priority missions and problems that periodically grounded the shuttle fleet.
“I have a lot of patience,” he said with a smile the other day, “but now I'm ready to go.”
The delays gave Colonel Ramon more time to personalize his journey into space. Though other Jews have gone on space flights, he is the first to request an all-kosher menu for his meals. (NASA found a supplier, and all the food in his sealed packs is kosher.)
Colonel Ramon describes himself as a secular Jew but said he would try to observe the Sabbath while in space if it did not interfere with his duties. That raised the question of when the day of observance, normally from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, occurred in earth orbit, since the shuttle circles the planet every 90 minutes. The astronaut consulted a group of rabbis, who developed a consensus that the day should be observed on the basis of times at his launching point, Cape Canaveral.
Ilan Ramon was born in Tel Aviv and, after graduating from high school in 1972, attended the Israel Air Force Flight School. He became a fighter pilot, and has now logged more than 4,000 hours in various combat aircraft. He fought in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and in the Lebanon conflict in 1982.
He received a Bachelor of Science degree in electronics and computer engineering from the University of Tel Aviv in 1987, and in 1994 was promoted to the rank of colonel and assigned to head the air force's weapons development and acquisition division.
Colonel Ramon was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1997 as a result of a science agreement two years earlier between President Bill Clinton and Shimon Peres, then the Israeli foreign minister. He and his wife, Rona, moved to Houston in 1998 so that he could begin training at the Johnson Space Center there. The couple, who have four children ages 6 to 14, plan to return to Israel after the flight.
More than 300 friends and dignitaries from Colonel Ramon's country attended the launching, including his father, 79, and older brother, a restaurant owner in Israel. The astronaut's 75-year-old mother, who survived a year and a half at Auschwitz, is too ill to travel.
One personal item Colonel Ramon took into space is a piece of Holocaust-era art, a small black and white drawing called “Moon Landscape” that was borrowed from the Yad Vashem Art Museum in Israel. The drawing was created by Peter Ginz, a 14-year-old Jewish boy killed at Auschwitz in 1944.
At the concentration camp, Peter dreamed of faraway places and drew a picture of what Earth would look like when viewed from mountains on the moon.
“I feel that my journey fulfills the dream of Peter Ginz 58 years on,” Colonel Ramon said.
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