"Live long and prosper"
Ancient Jewish Cemetery in Ostiano - Italy
Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015) first saw what became the famous Vulcan salute, “live long and prosper,” as a child, long before “Star Trek” even existed. The placement of the hands comes from a childhood memory, of an Orthodox Jewish synagogue service in Boston.
The man who would play Spock saw the gesture as part of a blessing, and it never left him. “Something really got hold of me,” Nimoy said in a 2013 interview with the National Yiddish Book Center.
Nimoy spoke about the Jewish roots of the famous gesture for an oral history project documenting the lives of Yiddish speakers, of which Nimoy is one.
videocloud.aish.com/misc/Live%20Long%20and%20Prosper_%20T...
The Vulcan salute is a hand gesture popularized by the 1960s television series Star Trek. It consists of a raised hand with the palm forward and the thumb extended, while the fingers are parted between the middle and ring finger.
The gesture was devised by Leonard Nimoy, who portrayed the half-Vulcan character Mr. Spock.
In his autobiography "I Am Not Spock", Nimoy wrote that he based it on the Priestly Blessing (Hebrew: ברכת כהנים; translit. birkat kohanim) performed by Jewish Kohanim with both hands, thumb to thumb in this same position, representing the Hebrew letter Shin (ש), which has three upward strokes similar to the position of the thumb and fingers in the salute. The letter Shin here stands for El Shaddai, meaning "Almighty (God)", as well as for Shekinah and Shalom. Nimoy wrote that when he was a child, his grandfather took him to an Orthodox synagogue, where he saw the blessing performed and was impressed by it.
"Live long and prosper"
Ancient Jewish Cemetery in Ostiano - Italy
Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015) first saw what became the famous Vulcan salute, “live long and prosper,” as a child, long before “Star Trek” even existed. The placement of the hands comes from a childhood memory, of an Orthodox Jewish synagogue service in Boston.
The man who would play Spock saw the gesture as part of a blessing, and it never left him. “Something really got hold of me,” Nimoy said in a 2013 interview with the National Yiddish Book Center.
Nimoy spoke about the Jewish roots of the famous gesture for an oral history project documenting the lives of Yiddish speakers, of which Nimoy is one.
videocloud.aish.com/misc/Live%20Long%20and%20Prosper_%20T...
The Vulcan salute is a hand gesture popularized by the 1960s television series Star Trek. It consists of a raised hand with the palm forward and the thumb extended, while the fingers are parted between the middle and ring finger.
The gesture was devised by Leonard Nimoy, who portrayed the half-Vulcan character Mr. Spock.
In his autobiography "I Am Not Spock", Nimoy wrote that he based it on the Priestly Blessing (Hebrew: ברכת כהנים; translit. birkat kohanim) performed by Jewish Kohanim with both hands, thumb to thumb in this same position, representing the Hebrew letter Shin (ש), which has three upward strokes similar to the position of the thumb and fingers in the salute. The letter Shin here stands for El Shaddai, meaning "Almighty (God)", as well as for Shekinah and Shalom. Nimoy wrote that when he was a child, his grandfather took him to an Orthodox synagogue, where he saw the blessing performed and was impressed by it.