(NEWS) Where (Almost) No Jew Has Gone Before

"Astronaut Garret Reiseman charms audience at Jewish Federation of North America’s General Assembly with stories of space mezuzahs.

Garret Reiseman is a Jewish pioneer. No, he doesn’t grow cucumbers on a kibbutz in the Negev. His frontier is space and his mission is to boldly go where no Jew has gone before, or at least relatively few.

'I’m the first Jew to have been on the international space station,' Reiseman said at the Jewish Federation of North America’s General Assembly on Monday where he was a guest of Limmud FSU, an organization dedicated to promoting Jewish education among Russian-speakers. 'It’s very hard to break records in space today. Yuri Gagarin first man in space, it’s been done. First man on the moon Neil Armstrong, been done. The first Jew in space, that’s been done long ago. So all I have is this: the first Jewish crew member on the international space station, and I brought with me a mezuzah.'"