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February 27, 2015

When I learned that Leonard Nimoy died of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at his Bel Air home on Friday, at 83, my thoughts turned to my first interview with the actor-director-author-photographer in his sunny den back in 2003.  Nimoy, of course, had acquired a global cult following for creating the ultra-logical character of the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock on the TV series “Star Trek” and its movie spinoffs (some of which he directed), so I was surprised that his den displayed so few memorabilia items from his most famous role.

Among the slim Trekkie pickings were a pair of pointy Vulcan ears that Nimoy had worn in his last TV appearance as Spock, his director’s chair from “Star Trek III” and a Hirschfeld cartoon of the “Trek” cast.

But in his trademark resonant, gravelly voice, the regal, angular-faced and, yes, logical Nimoy – the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants – was far more eager to show off souvenirs of his Jewish-themed projects:  A photograph of himself with Ingrid Bergman from a TV movie on Golda Meir, in which he played the famed Israeli prime minister’s husband, for example.  Then there were copies of his controversial photography book, “Shekhina,” which features black-and-white photos of nude or semi-clad women, some wearing tefillin, in Nimoy’s exploration of the feminine aspect of the Divine.  He also proudly described his 1991 television movie, “Never Forget,” in which he portrayed a Holocaust survivor who was determined to sue a Neo-Nazi group of Holocaust deniers.

“’Star Trek’ made it possible for me to make choices, and Jewish projects are what I choose to do,” he said in that interview.  “I feel authentic doing them.  They make me feel at home.”

At the time, Nimoy was sponsoring his Nimoy Concert Series at his synagogue, Temple Israel of Hollywood, as well as serving on the advisory board of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and funding a recording project for the National Yiddish Book Center.

Two years later, I would again interview Nimoy, this time about his participation in a program of the Jewish Federation’s Tel Aviv-Los Angeles partnership in Israel; in two master classes, he lectured students about his use of the Stanislavsky method, in which an actor draws on personal memories to create a character.

In later years, Nimoy would go on to narrate the 13-week radio series “American Jewish Music from the Milken Archive with Leonard Nimoy,” among many other Tribal endeavors.

In all three of my interviews with Nimoy (the last one took place in 2006), the actor, a charming raconteur, regaled me with stories of growing up the son of a barber in a Jewish enclave in Boston’s West End.  With great relish and gusto, he described himself as the son of shtetl Jews who never quite “got” the science fiction appeal of “Star Trek” but were ecstatic that the character had made him so successful.

Yiddish was the language spoken in the one-bedroom apartment he shared with six relatives, and Nimoy put his facility with the language to good use when he landed jobs with traveling Yiddish theater troupes in Los Angeles early in his career.  Nimoy even once auditioned for the legendary Yiddish theater star Maurice Schwartz, and was amused, at that meeting, when he overheard Schwartz’s wife declare in Yiddish that Nimoy didn’t look Jewish.

When Nimoy was hired to portray Mr. Spock on “Star Trek” in 1966, he identified with his character – a half-alien, half-human who was an outsider in both worlds – as a Jew who had grown up in the predominantly Catholic city of Boston.  He even went so far as to call Spock a kind of “Wandering Jew.”  And the show proffered Jewish values such as the idea of tikkun olam (repairing the world), he insisted; after all, the crew of the fictional Starship Enterprise sped across the galaxies, “trying to heal the universe,” he said.

Inevitably, the conversation would always get around to Nimoy’s famous story of how he brought some Judaism to Spock.  The hand gesture in which the character spreads his fingers in a V-shape, while proclaiming “Live long and prosper” hails from Nimoy’s childhood memories of Yom Kippur at his Orthodox shul.  The actor recalled how the Kohanim (priestly class) would bless the congregation while making the V-shaped gesture, when Nimoy and the other congregants were supposed to have their eyes closed.  Of course, young Leonard peeked, (“It was very chilling, passionate, ecstatic, fervent, theatrical,” he told me) and decades later brought the same gesture to Spock.

My final interview with Nimoy took place in 2006, just after the artist had donated $1 million towards establishing the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater at the Griffith Observatory, which at the time was undergoing historic renovations.  I asked him why he had chosen to make the donation publicly rather than anonymously, as he had done with his gifts in the past.  “In Judaism, there is a philosophical understanding that the highest form of charity is that which is given anonymously,” he acknowledged.  [But today], when [my wife] Susan and I give publicly to an institution, we do so in the hope that it will encourage others to do the same.”  In fact, his million-dollar donation prompted legions of “Star Trek” fans to contribute funds to the observatory.  “So that is the difference,” he said.

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