Warning: This contains a number of swear words
From the book "Counting the Stars:The Jewish Journey to the Cosmos"
To begin with, Manishcewitz is the brand name for a range of kosher products, specifically to be found in the United States, although it exports its products world-wide. At Pesach it really comes into its own.
One of its slogans was “Man, oh, Manischewitz," and it was generally reported that “In 1973, Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan shouted, "Man, oh, Manischewitz," in the middle of his moonwalk.
Specifically, the Washington Post, who you would expect to verify its sources, went even further. “It is December, 1972, Apollo 17 time, and Cernan is on the moon. He sees something especially spectacular and what does he say, with the entire civilized world listening in, but "Man, oh, Manishewitz."
Sadly, they were wrong. The truth is more mundane, and no, Cernan was not a secret Jew promoting Manischewitz products.
In reality, it is all to do with swearing, by which I mean profanities.
On one Apollo mission, Apollo 10, astronauts Thomas Stafford, John Young and Gene Cernan swore a whopping 230 times during their lunar mission 50 years ago, as per NASA transcripts.
An article in the Daily Mail stated that a brief scan of NASA's publicly available transcripts reveals a veritable cornucopia of swear words, with the word 's**t' appearing 157 times.
For example:
103:21:15 Cernan: That may have been. I thought I looked at that son of a bitch, but God dang. OK - that's beautiful.
It was noticeable that on the following mission Apollo 11 astronauts were far more careful with their language - maybe because with the civilised, and no doubt the uncivilised world watching, the astronauts were warned in advance to keep the language down.
However when one looks into the archives the natural instinct of people under a massive amount of mental and physical pressure to make the odd profanity was to say the least not totally extinguished.
The proof is in the transcripts in the archives, and there was some fruity language used.
For example, when Apollo 16 was on the Moon, John Young – the man who smuggled a salt beef sandwich into his spacesuit in Gemini 3 - was the first person ever to use f*rt and f**king on the Moon (complaining about the diet NASA was forcing onto the astronauts.)
Here's the transcript:
128:50:45 Young: (Laughing) I mean, I haven't eaten this much citrus fruit in 20 years! And I'll tell you one thing, in another 12 f**king days, I ain't never eating any more. And if they offer to sup(plement) me potassium with my breakfast, I'm going to throw up! (Pause)I
It seems that Eugene Cernan used the word “Manischewitz” as an alternative to certain curse words, as the following transcript shows:
(Cernan was discarding some of the Television Control Unit packing or perhaps a dust or thermal cover).
117:58:43 Cernan: Doesn't take long, does it? (Jack laughs) Doesn't take long. (Pause) Manischewitz, look at that go! Did you see that?
117:59:04 Schmitt: I wish you'd be more careful.
117:59:05 Cernan: What?
Schmitt said later “Throwing things was fun; but you also had to watch out you didn't hit somebody."
Cernan also said the “M” word later in the mission, when they had a problem with the camera on the Lunar Rover on the second Extravehicular Activity.
142:46:06 Cernan: Oh, Manischewitz!
142:46:06 NASA: did not get a good bearing from you guys. We might also check the Lunar Module Pilot's camera.
142:46:11 Cernan: Okay. I'll give it to you again.
142:46:15 Schmitt: That's fixed.
So Cernan was using "Manischewitz" as an exclamation or as a substitute for swearing.
Why Manischewitz in particular? I guess we’ll never know.
Note
Actually notwithstanding his use of ‘those words’ no harm was done to John Youngs career as he went on to fly the Space Shuttle twice and worked in senior positions for NASA for a total of 45 years, retiring in 2004.
These books are available from Amazon:
Counting the Stars
Kosher Foxtrot
Jews and the Sea
The Definitive Guide to Jewish Miscellany and Trivia
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