Please Help Get “An Article of Hope” on PBS and in Classrooms

Go to An Article of Hope, Kickstarter to support this project.

The story: Dawn is breaking on the morning of February 1, 2003 above West Texas. Suddenly the peace of the early morning is shattered by two loud bangs. The Space Shuttle Columbia is announcing its return home, causing sonic booms as it streaks across the sky faster than the speed of sound. The shuttle is speeding toward a Florida homecoming. But in an instant, onlookers below and controllers in Houston are stunned at what they see. Something has gone horribly wrong. The shuttle has broken up, vanished! Gone is its precious cargo of seven astronauts from around the world. Among them, Col. Ilan Ramon, Israel’s first Astronaut.

Also gone, an artifact that embodied the glory of the Shuttle’s mission and the despair of its demise: a tiny Torah scroll – smuggled into a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust; safeguarded by Joachim Joseph, a Holocaust survivor; and carried into space by Col. Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut.

If the documentary is finished, why do you need more money?: It took 7-years to make the documentary. We did it by raising a little money here, borrowing a little more money there, and a lot of love and un-reimbursed time from the director. Now the final challenge is to get it on television before millions. PBS is a non-profit network, which means we must bring underwriting to the agreement. With your help, the funds we raise here go toward final editing to conform the documentary to PBS technical requirements, broadcast rights and fees, promotion, web site, all of the things that would normally come from a traditional agreement, we must fund it all.