The Final Frontier

I freely admit that my husband and I ran out to see Star Trek opening weekend (and that nerds that we are, we own all three seasons of the original series on DVD and a couple of seasons of the Next Generation). Yes, as a movie-going experience it was beyond fantastic, but it also made us reflect on the fact that in terms of race relations and world outlook, the original series was way ahead of its time. In it men and women, Caucasians, African Americans, Asians, Russians, and even Vulcans and other alien life forms worked together to make the universe a better place. A great article in the New York Times expands on this vision of the late great Gene Roddenberry.


Of course, while Star Trek is science fiction, we know from the Museum of Jewish Heritage's current exhibition, Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges, that at the time the show was originally aired (1966) and even a few decades earlier than that, there were pockets of explorers, like the professors and students featured in the exhibit, that overcame the racial boundaries to get to know each other, learn from one another, and indeed to boldly go where no one has gone before.