Jewish astronaut Jessica Meir, who made history last month as one half of the first all-female spacewalking team, has posted pictures of Israel snapped from space with a caption saying the country was part of her father’s journey. The Times of Israel reports:
“My father’s globe spanning journey as a surgeon from the Middle East, to Europe, and eventually to the U.S. was an inspiration to many in my immediate and extended family. ” Meir wrote.
Meir’s late father was born in 1925 in Baghdad, and in 1931 the whole family left Iraq as a result of anti-Semitism and settled in pre-state Israel. He was in medical school at the American University of Beirut when the 1948 War of Independence broke out and returned to Israel, where he drove an ambulance during the war.
He then went to Geneva to finish medical school before taking a job in Sweden, where he met Meir’s mother, a nurse who was raised in a Christian Swedish family. Her parents then moved to the US.
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