Star Trek

Star Trek is a phenomenon that has been around since the early 1960s. It started as a TV show that lasted three seasons, but has become one of the most successful “franchises” of all of pop culture. It stands alongside not just other sci-fi series like Star Wars and Superman, but also James Bond, Tarzan, the Muppets, and The Pink Panther. (All of these have been books, TV shows, and movies. OK, there was never a James Bond TV show, but Remington Steele was close!)

The original TV show, called just Star Trek, was about a group of humans from all over Earth, plus one half-alien, exploring space to look for new civilizations to join the United Federation of Planets. The latest movie, also called just Star Trek, is about how that famous crew met at the Star Fleet Academy, which is sorta like the West Point for starship crews.

The original show had one of the most Jew-ful casts in TV, especially up to that point. The main crew of the Starship Enterprise, of course, was Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Mr. Chekov (Walter Koenig). All these actors were Jewish. Then there were Dr. “Bones” McCoy, Lieutenant Uhura, Mr. “Scottie” Scott, and Mr. Sulu (not played by Jews). So three out of seven main cast members were Jewish!

The first set of Star Trek movies were based on the original series, and had those actors. The first movie was simply called Star Trek, the Motion Picture. It was about what happened when an Earth space probe was discovered by aliens. Then came probably the best, most action-y movie based on the original series, The Wrath of Khan. It was followed by Part Three, The Search for Spock; directed by Leonard himself, it was the artsiest of the bunch. Part Four, The Voyage Home, was the funniest, and it had a great environmental message. Part Five, The Final Frontier, was directed by William. And Part Six, The Undiscovered Country, was about a peace treaty between the Federation of Planets and their enemy the Klingons, who are sort of like alien Vikings.

And now, in 2009, we have the new Star Trek movie, which like we said goes back to the college years of Kirk, Spock and the rest. It was directed by Jewish producer J.J. Abrams. Chekov, who as we said was played by a Russian-Jewish actor to begin with, is now being played (well, his younger self is, anyway) by Russian-Jewish actor Anton Yelchin. Also, Leonard shows up again as Spock. None of the other crew is played by Jewish actors this time, but Winona Ryder plays Spock’s human mom!

Aside from its movies, the original show spun off several other TV series. The next one made was called Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it was the most successful Trek series, running for seven years! The main cast this time, however, only included one Jewish actor, Brent Spiner (read more about him in Leonard's Bonus section). Brent played the android Data, who longed to be human.

Then they made a movie called Generations that connected the old cast with the new one. After that they started making movies based on Next Generation characters. Their first movie, First Contact, went back in time to when the people of Earth first met the Vulcans, the no-feelings aliens that Spock is one of. Then came Insurrection, and then the last Next Generation movie (so far), Nemesis, which featured Ron Perlman.

But wait, there’s more! The third Star Trek TV show shifted the action from a starship to a space station called Deep Space Nine. The only Jewish actor in the main cast this time was Armin Shimerman, who later played the obnoxious principal in Buffy. Here, he played Quark, part of an alien people called the Ferengi, who only care about making money. Their leader, the Grand Nagus Zek, is played by Wallace Shawn, and two other Jewish actors play Ferengis we see a few times: Max Grodenchik played Rom, and Aron Eisnberg played Nog.

Then came the fourth series, Voyager, about a small spaceship sent far from home, trying to make its way back to Earth from across the galaxy. It had no Jews in the cast... even though, well, who knows more about wandering around trying to get home than us?!

The most recently made series is called Enterprise, and it was about the time right after First Contact, when humans and their new friends the Vulcans were just starting to explore deep space beyond our solar system. Neither of these series had Jewish actors in their main casts. And there have been no movies made from the Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or Enterprise series… yet!

So that’s about the casts of the shows. There has also been a lot of discussion about the Jewish influences on the Star Trek world. There have been been whole books about it, like The Jewish Themes in Star Trek, written by a rabbi! No, really!

The most famous Jewish part has got to be the way you wave hello in Vulcan. You hold your hand up, like to say “stop,” but with a space between your pointer and ring fingers, and then your thumb off to the side:

What’s Jewish about that? Well, it makes the shape of the Hebrew letter shin:

The Kohanim— both in the ancient Holy Temple in Israel and in congregations today— bless everyone by holding their hands out that way and saying a special blessing from the Torah. You’re not supposed to look at them when they do this… but when he was a kid, Leonard took a peek and saw the special way they hold their hands!

And who are the Kohanim? Not another alien race, silly! They are Jews who are directly descended from Moses’s brother, Aaron. (If you want to know more about the Kohanim or their blessing, ask your rabbi or Hebrew school teacher.)

So don’t worry if you don’t know anything about Star Trek! The new movie starts near the beginning of the story, so it is a great place to start learning about this great piece of pop culture— and its vision of an Earth where all humans can all work together… to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before!