arts & entertainment A Lasting Legacy Amid Cosmos return, we remember famed Jewish astronomer Carl Sagan. Robert Gluck I JNS.org C arl Sagan fans old and new have been gazing at their televisions in awe as host Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson's resurrection of the science epic Cosmos takes them on a journey from the Big Bang, to microscopic one-celled organisms, to the ascent of man, to beyond the stars and planets. The return of Cosmos — which launched in March and runs for 13 episodes on the Fox and National Geographic networks, ending June 2 — provides an opportune time to remember Sagan, the show's Jewish creator. An American astronomer, astrophysi- cist, cosmologist and author, Sagan was born to Reform Jews. Science writer William Poundstone, author of Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos, has written that Sagan's family celebrated the High Holidays, and his parents made sure Carl knew the Jewish traditions. "Both of his parents instilled in him this drive to get ahead in America, and that is something he kept all his life Poundstone told JNS.org . "It may have been one factor in this idea that he not only wanted to be a suc- cessful astronomer, but [also] to write books, to become a celebrity and an entrepreneur. His mother particularly Jews iv •17 I instilled that in him!" Born in Brooklyn to Samuel Sagan, an immigrant garment worker from Russia, and Rachel Molly Gruber, a housewife from New York, Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara. Both Carl and his sister said their father was not particularly religious, but their mother believed in God, was active in her synagogue and served only kosher meat. From an early age, Sagan was seized with the mission of searching for life on other worlds, a quest that would domi- nate his entire professional career. Poundstone recounts how this quest continuously drove Sagan, from his ado- lescent chemistry-set accidents, to his colorful academic career, to his profes- sional work on the Viking and Voyager NASA missions, nuclear disarmament, his TV series Cosmos and Robert Zemeckis' space film, Contact (starring Jodi Foster). In 1986, the World Jewish Congress presented Sagan with the Nahum Goldmann Medal. According to WJC North American press officer Eve Kessler, the medal is awarded to distinguished individuals for their contributions to uni- versal humanitarian causes and actions benefiting the Jewish people. At that time, Sagan gave an address titled "The Final Solution of the Human Nate Bloom Special to the Jewish News TV Notes ‘ 12 On Friday, May 16, Barbara Walters, 84, retires from her ABC show The View 41) and from regular on-air work for ABC News. That same day, at 9 p.m., ABC will broadcast a two-hour retrospective CH I of her career. The new season of The Bachelorette on ABC debuts at 9:30 p.m. Monday, May 19, before moving to its regular time of 8 p.m. on Monday, May 26. Andi Dorfman, 27, is the first Jewish woman to be the star of the show. She is an assistant district attorney in the county that includes Atlanta. Look for an inter- view with her in an upcoming issue of the JN. 7:6 Cinderella Story I know you've heard the term "Cinderella story" bandied about for some participant at every major sport- ing event. But California Chrome, the winner of this year's Kentucky Derby 38 May 15 • 2014 JN (held on May 3), really is such a story as are his owners and trainer. The horse is owned and was bred by Perry Martin and Steve Coburn, who live, respectively, in a small city in Northern California and in a small Nevada town near Lake Tahoe. Neither earns much money as an engineer and press operator, respectively, but they took a chance and bred two horses, worth $10,000 together, and got a foal (California Chrome) that showed early promise. When Chrome was 2 years old, they told Alan Sherman, 45, a trainer based part-time in the San Francisco area, about the horse. He talked to his father and boss, trainer Art Sherman, 77, and they agreed to train ict rue" Chrome. Like Chrome, Art Sherman had modest beginnings. He was born in Brooklyn, where his father, the son of Art Sherman Russian-Jewish immi- Problem: Adolf Hitler and Nuclear War:' "If the United States and the Soviet Union permit a nuclear war to break out, they would have retroactively lost the Second World War and made that sacrifice meaningless:' Sagan said after accepting the Goldmann medal. "If we take seriously our obligation to the tens of millions who perished in World War II, we must rid the planet of the blight of nuclear weapons:' Also in 1986, Sagan received the Shalom Center's first Brit HaDorot (Covenant of the Generations) Peace Award. Shared with Boston's Jewish Coalition for a Peaceful World, the award was presented to Jews who work to pre- vent a nuclear holocaust. "We had relatives who were caught up in the Holocaust:' Sagan wrote. "Hitler was not a popular fellow in our house- hold. On the other hand, I was fairly insulated from the horrors of the war:' In his 1996 book The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan included his memories of this conflicted period, when his fam- grants, scraped out a living in construc- tion. Sherman told me that his father's brothers were doing a bit better in Los Angeles, so they moved there when he was 7, in 1945. His father opened a small Los Angeles barber shop. The family wasn't religious, Sherman said, but they sent him to Hebrew school for a while. He left when a rabbi/ teacher hit him and never returned. Meanwhile, Art was still only 5-foot- 2-inches when he was 15, so the bar- ber-shop customers encouraged him to become a jockey. Nobody he knew rode horses, but he found his way to a track and discov- ered he could learn what he needed by working at a nearby ranch that trained jockeys. Art had only modest success as a jockey. In 1980, he became a full-time, licensed trainer and gradually became pretty successful. But until Chrome, he never had had a really big-time thor- oughbred. Chrome won five big races in a row before the Kentucky Derby and entered ily dealt with the realities of the war in Europe, but he tried to prevent it from undermining his optimistic spirit. "Carl fulfilled his mother's unfulfilled dreams," Poundstone said. Sagan spent most of his career as a pro- fessor of astronomy at Cornell University, where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was the author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated for scientific skeptical inquiry and promoted the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. But it was perhaps Sagan's personality — not just his scientific credentials — that popular- ized his 1980 series TV series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, on the PBS television network. "One of the reasons the original Cosmos series worked was that Sagan was one of the few scientists who could wear jeans and a turtleneck and look comfort- able Poundstone said. "He did have this vibe as someone who Lasting Legacy on page 41 the race a heavy favorite. Pundits say that he has a good chance of being the first horse since 1978 to win the Triple Crown, the title accorded to a horse that wins the Derby, the Preakness Stakes (on NBC at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, May 17) and the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, June 7 (also on NBC, with time to be determined). Art Sherman was loath to predict that he would win the Triple Crown. He said he is just enjoying the attention that is going to the oldest trainer, ever, of a Kentucky Derby winner. Meanwhile, Art's other son, Steve Sherman, 47, is having a banner year as a trainer at a Northern California race track. Although his wife of 53 years, Faye, isn't Jewish, Art Sherman con- siders himself a "pretty Jewish guy," mentioning how much he loves eat- ing lox and eggs with one of the sev- eral Jews who own horses he trains. He also fondly recalled that he, his wife and his nieces loved their trip to Israel two years ago.