Spock Speaks

Leonard Nimoy comes to Ann Arbor's Hill
Auditorium on Wednesday.

ALICE BURDICK SCHWEIGER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

H

90

Leonard Nimoy on Mr. Spock's
Vulcan sign: "The sign came
directly from my synagogue
experience as a kid, watching
the Kohan spread his arms and
stretch his fingers to form a `V'
while he blessed the
congregation."

is face is familiar to almost everyone
with a television set. He's starred in
feature films and on the Broadway
stage. He's authored two autobiogra-
phies and three volumes of poetry. He's gained
worldwide acclaim portraying a half hu-
man/half Vulcan with raised eyebrows and
pointed ears.
He is Leonard Nimoy, and on Wednesday,
Jan. 29, at 8 p.m., he will be appearing at Hill
Auditorium in Ann Arbor. As the first major
guest speaker in 1997 in conjunction with U-
M Hillel's Celebration of Jewish Arts, Nimoy
will talk about his experiences with Yiddish
theater, his films with Jewish content, and, of
course, "Star Trek" and Mr. Spock, the Vulcan
native whom he considers to be a Diaspora
character.
Best-known for his role on "Star Trek," Nimoy says he will
place a heavy emphasis on the birth of Spock and the Jewish
subtext which pervades the character.
Indeed, when "Star Trek" first hit the airwaves in 1966, Ni-
moy never imagined that Mr. Spock would gain him interna-
tional recognition or that the series, which aired for three years
on NBC and then went into syndication, would become a pop-
culture phenomenon.

"I don't think any of us could have predicted its success," says
Nimoy, who is 65. "I thought it was science fiction at its best,
being able to give insight into our civilization; but there was no
way of knowing it would be everlasting, which is what it seems
to be.
"I only knew we all felt very comfortable with the show and
that there was a morality and an ethical structure that I en-
joyed being a part of. The stories had to do with the hopeful
future of mankind, solving problems that we are faced with and
dealing with metaphorical presentations of current concerns in
a 23rd-century setting. It was a way of theatrically looking at
our own civilization from a new perspective."
Some have also called "Star Trek" a Jewish phenomenon.
"One can draw a parallel between the classic Diaspora image of
the Jew and Spock," says Nimoy, whose co-stars William Shat-
ner (Captain Kirk) and Walter Koenig (Ensign Chekov) are Jew-
ish.
"The Diaspora Jew is someone outside of his own culture, al-
ways being an alien in somebody else's country, in someone else's
society, and I think that's true of Mr. Spock. The original con-
cept of Mr. Spock was that he was a sort of chosen alien, the out-
sider; he was the one who was not at home, the one who was
half-Vulcan. (His parents were Sarek of Vulcan and Amanda of
Earth.)
"He is not totally at home on his own planet because he is
half-human," says Nimoy. "He has to find his own identity. In
that sense, he is a Diaspora character."