Aroostook County native Jessica Meir on Sunday marked the beginning of Hanukkah with a special message from outer space.
“Happy Hanukkah to all those who celebrate it on Earth!” Meir tweeted in orbit from the International Space Station. In a picture accompanying her tweet, Meir wore a pair of menorah-themed socks.
Hanukkah is an eight-day celebration that commemorates the Maccabees’ rededication of the second temple in Jerusalem after their defeat of the Syrians.
Happy Hanukkah to all those who celebrate it on Earth! #HappyHanukkah pic.twitter.com/FKC2M5iXni
— Jessica Meir (@Astro_Jessica) December 23, 2019
Meir, a Caribou native, became the third Jewish woman to go into space in September when she blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the space station, according to the World Jewish Congress.
She was born to an Iraqi-Israeli father, who fought in Israel’s 1948 war of independence, and a Swedish-American mother, the news website Ynet reports.
The Caribou native considers her Jewish heritage an integral part of her identity. Her mother remained a Christian, but the Meir family still occasionally attended services at a synagogue in a nearby town, according to Kveller magazine.
“Personally I’m not really a religious person, but I think my Jewish cultural background is obviously a big part of my culture and especially traditions,” Kveller quoted Meir as saying in October after her historic all-female spacewalk.
When she was launched into space in September, Meir was allowed to take three personal items with her to the International Space Station. She took with her an Israeli flag, the menorah-themed socks and a painting of a phoenix by Rona Ramon, the widow of Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut who died during the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, according to The Forward.
Meir is among at least three Maine natives who have made the extraordinary journey into space, the others being Christopher Cassidy, a York High School graduate who has completed six spacewalks and served as the nation’s chief astronaut from 2013 to 2017, and Charles O. Hobaugh, a Bar Harbor native who has made three spaceflights. Bridget Ziegelaar, a graduate of Old Town High School, is an operations manager for International Space Station Research Integration at NASA.