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'Star Trek' icon Leonard Nimoy dies at age 83


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#1 Master Teal'c

 
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Posted 27 February 2015 - 12:54 PM

 

Leonard Nimoy played scores of roles in a showbiz career which lasted more than six decades.

But with his death on Friday at his Bel Air home at age 83, according to multiple reports, he will be remembered and loved by a character known simply as Spock.

With his stark bowl haircut, the famous Vulcan hand gesture (which Nimoy developed) and the phrase "Live long and prosper," Nimoy's Mr. Spock earned a place in the American psyche that will live on.

The half-human, half-Vulcan Spock would define the culture-changing science fiction franchise Star Trek as powerfully as the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, James T. Kirk, and leading man William Shatner. Nimoy would portray the character in the original series, animated series, comic books and eight Star Trek feature films

"Spock is even more representative of the show because he was so unique. So incredibly singular," says George Takei who played helmsman Hikaru Sulu in the TV series. "And that character was really (Nimoy's) creation. None of us had pointy ears or those eyebrows that would shoot up like that. We all got used to seeing those ears."

Ironically, it took much for Nimoy to agree to put the ears on, and years to accept the success of the character once it became a worldwide phenomna.

When first approached to appear in Gene Roddenberry's NBC science fiction program Star Trek, Nimoy was on the rise in Hollywood, garnering steadily increasing parts in Hollywood staples such as Bonanza and Perry Mason. He balked.

"I hesitated. I took my work seriously. Did I really want to put on those pointed ears?" Nimoy recalled during a commencement address at Boston University in 2012.

He took the part. And playing the sole alien onboard a starship of humans was inspired casting for a man born to Yiddish-speaking Russian Orthodox Jewish immigrants in Boston's West End in 1931. Nimoy was used to feeling like the outsider.

Nimoy would be nominated for three Emmy awards during the show's three-year run on NBC. Even after the original series ended in 1969 with faltering ratings, Spock and the rest of the Star Fleet crew would grow even more famous in prolific syndication.

 

 

SOURCE



#2 Locutus

 
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Posted 28 February 2015 - 04:05 AM

It's a sad, sad, day for Star Trek fans all over the galaxy. :cry:

RIP Spock, you are an icon, a legend, a memory that will forever live within our souls.



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Science fiction is an existential metaphor that allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said, "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinded critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

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As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man.”


#3 Master Teal'c

 
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Posted 28 February 2015 - 12:59 PM

Don't for get the Civ 4 fans too. Leonard Nimoy narrated that game.

 

#4 Master Teal'c

 
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Posted 28 February 2015 - 03:25 PM

William Shatner, two days before Leonard Nimoy's death, spoke to CNN about Nimoy and his colleague's creation and development of Spock as a character.  It's a moving and fitting tribute to a Star Trek legend.

 

Click the link for the video,

 

http://www.startrek....d-nimoys-legacy

 

Star Trek Online Announces In-Game Memorial for Leonard Nimoy

 

Following in the footsteps of World of Warcraft's magical tribute to the late Robin Williams, Star Trek Online will feature an in-game tribute to veteran Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy, who passed away yesterday at age 83.

"I want to once again express my heartfelt condolences to the friends, family, and fans of Leonard Nimoy," said executive producer Steve Ricossa in a statement. "Everyone at Cryptic Studios was saddened to hear of his passing and we want to make sure we never forget the cultural impact of the man or the character he played. To that end, the Star Trek Online team will implement a standing in-game memorial to Spock and Leonard Nimoy this Thursday March 5th with our regular weekly maintenance."

"In this way, we hope to keep his memory as alive in our game as he is in all of our hearts," Ricossa added.

Polygon reports that yesterday evening, at least 1,000 players spontaneously traveled to the in-game world of Vulcan to pay their respects, some of whom were captured by Reddit user MrMorlonelycat in the image at top.

 

http://comicbook.com...-leonard-nimoy/


Edited by Master Teal'c, 28 February 2015 - 03:36 PM.


#5 Master Teal'c

 
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Posted 05 March 2015 - 03:05 PM

Here is the eulogy from Leonard Nimoy's funeral.

 

 


Leonard shared with me after he and Susan married 26 years ago that he had never met a woman like her, never had he loved anyone so dearly and passionately, that she’d saved his life and lifted him from darkness and unhappiness in ways he never thought possible. His love, appreciation, respect, and gratitude for her transformed him and enabled him to begin his life anew.

 

Susan – you were a stellar, loving and brilliant life-partner for your Leib. He knew it and in loving you he learned how to love his own children and grandchildren more deeply, and he came to recognize that his family was his greatest treasure and gift.

 

At the moment Leonard’s soul left him on Friday morning, his family had gathered around him in a ring of love. Leonard smiled, and then he was gone. It was gentle passing, as easy as a “hair being lifted from a cup of milk,” as the Talmud describes the moment of death. What did Leonard see? We can’t know, but Susan imagines that he beheld his beloved cocker spaniel Molly, an angelic presence in life and now in death.

 

My wife Barbara and I shared much with Susan and Leonard over the years, in LA and in so many spectacular places around the world – so many joys and not a few challenges, and through it all we grew to love Leonard as a dear member ofour family and were honored that he felt towards us as members of his own family. 

 

At his 80th birthday celebration three years ago, I publicly thanked him for all he’d meant to my family and me, for being the love of Susan’s life, and for bringing her so much happiness.

 

Kind-hearted, gentle, patient, refined, and keenly intelligent was he.

 

As I listened to NPR’s story of his passing on Friday, I was struck by how uniquely recognizable to the world was his voice, not only because of its innate resonance and gentle tone, but because it emanated who he was as a man and as a mensch.

 

He was unflappably honest and warm-hearted. He embodied integrity and decency. He was humble and a gentleman. His keen sensitivity and intuition connected him with the world and offered him keen insight into the human condition. Whatever he said and did was compelling, inspiring and provocative. He strove always for excellence.

 

Leonard’s Hebrew name was Yehudah Lev, meaning “a Jew with a heart.” His interests and concerns were founded upon his faith and belief in the inherent dignity of every human being, and he treated everyone regardless of station, friend or stranger, with kindness and respect. His world view was enriched by his Jewish spirit and experience.

 

Leonard was nurtured in the Yiddish-speaking culture of his childhood on the West End of Boston, yet he transcended the particular categories with which he was raised. He cared about the Jews of the former Soviet Union, about Jews everywhere, and he was concerned for all people as well.

Because he grew up as a minority in his neighborhood, even sensing at times that he was an outcast living on the margins (which is what his Spock character was all about), Leonard adventured out from the conservative home and culture of his youth, courageously at a very young age, into the world where he sought greater truth and understanding. He was curious about everything and was a life-long learner.

 

Leonard appreciated his success, never taking his fame and good fortune for granted. He was generous with family, friends and so many good causes often contributing without being asked, quietly and under the radar, to individuals and causes selflessly, without need of acknowledgment or credit. In his later years, he learned that by fixing his name to some gifts, he could inspire others to give as well.

 

Over the years, from the time he performed in the Yiddish theater as a young actor, Leonard was particularly drawn to Jewish roles in film, television, stage, and radio. Most enduringly he brought the gesture of the Biblical High Priest to the world’s attention as an iconic symbol of blessing. He was amused that his fans unsuspectingly blessed each other as they held up their hands and said, “Live long and prosper!”

 

Most recently, Leonard created magnificent mystical images of feminine Godliness in his Shekhina photographs, one of which he gave to me as a gift graces my synagogue study and adds a spiritual dimension for me of everything I do in my life as a rabbi.

 

One year Leonard asked me what I thought of his accepting an invitation from Germany to speak before thousands of Star Trek fans. He told me that he’d been asked before but always turned the invitation down due to his own discomfort about setting in a country that had murdered six million Jews. I told him that I thought it was time that he went, and that he take the opportunity to inform a new generation of Germans about who he was as a Jew and about the Jewish dimension of Spock’s personality and outlook. He liked the idea, and so on that basis accepted the invitation.

 

When he returned he told me that he had shared with the audience his own Jewish story and that Spock’s hand gesture was that of the Jewish High Priest blessing the Jewish community, an image he remembered from his early childhood attending shul with his grandfather in West Boston on Shabbes morning and peeking out from under his grandfather’s tallis at the Kohanim-priests as they raised their hands in blessing over the congregation.

 

He told me that when he finished his talk he received a sustained standing ovation, an experience that was among the most moving in his public life.

 

There’s another incident worth recalling.

 

The Soviet Film Institute had invited Leonard in the mid 1980s to come to Moscow to speak about Star Trek IV, which he had directed. Leonard agreed to come on the condition that he be granted free passage to Zaslov, Ukraine to visit Nimoy relatives he’d never met. The Soviet officials refused, so Leonard declined. Then they had a change of heart and caved, and he and Susan visited the Ukrainian Nimoys thus reuniting two branches of his family tree divided eighty years earlier. Who else but Leonard Nimoy could stare down the former Soviet Union and win!?

 

Over time, Leonard became one of the most positive Jewish role models in the world. He cared about all the right things, about promoting the Jewish arts, about peace and reconciliation between people and nations, and about greater justice in our own society.

 

He and I talked frequently about our love for Israel and its need for peace. He understood that a democratic Jewish state could survive only alongside a peaceful Palestinian state. He was disgusted by terrorism and war, disheartened by Israeli and Palestinian inability and recalcitrance to find compromise and a way forward towards a two-state solution and peace, and he was infuriated by continuing Israeli West Bank settlement construction and by both Islamic and Jewish fundamentalist extremism.

Though keenly aware of, knowledgeable about and savvy when it came to national and world politics and history, Leonard was at his core a humanitarian and an artist, and that was the lens through which he viewed the world.

 

Among his favorite quotations was that spoken by the 19th century actor Edwin Booth who claimed to have heard the solemn whisper of the god of all arts:

 

“I shall give you hunger and pain and sleepless nights, also beauty and satisfaction known to few, and glimpses of the heavenly life. None of these shall you have continually, and of their coming and going you shall not be foretold.”
Leonard did indeed glimpse the heavenly life in his artistic pursuits and in his love for his family and friends.

 

In thinking of him, I am reminded of Shakespeare’s words:
“Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, 
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”


 

“Romeo and Juliet,” Act III, Scene 2

 

I’ve never known anyone like Leonard – he was utterly unique. I loved him and will cherish his memory always.

Zicharon tzaddik livracha – May the memory of this righteous man be a blessing.

http://www.thewrap.c...eloved-actor/1/


Edited by Master Teal'c, 05 March 2015 - 03:08 PM.





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