Proud Jew Jef­frey Hoff­man always dreamed of being an astro­naut. He hoped to explore the uni­verse, and, after much hard work, he final­ly achieved his dream. Up in space, he thought about God’s glo­ry and attached a mezuzah to his bunk.

One day, he spoke to his rab­bi about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of bring­ing the world’s most sacred object, a Torah scroll, with him into space, know­ing that this would be the most sym­bol­ic state­ment he could make. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the aver­age Torah scroll exceeds the size lim­it of the objects that an astro­naut is allowed to car­ry with him into the shut­tle. But then Jeff’s rab­bi had a bril­liant idea: he would search for a Torah scroll small enough for Jeff to take with him on a mission.

The rab­bi locat­ed a Torah of the right size, and it accom­pa­nied Jeff into the space shut­tle Colum­bia. On what Jeff knew was Shab­bat in Jerusalem, he read the por­tion of the Torah about the world’s cre­ation. He brought the scroll safe­ly back to Earth and, since that day, a gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren has learned from and been inspired by the ​“Space Torah.”

An after­word by Hoff­man explains why he felt it was sig­nif­i­cant to take a Torah scroll to space. He want­ed to show that our sacred Torah — as well as Jew­ish tra­di­tion — will con­tin­ue to be mean­ing­ful at all times and in all places. He is hap­py that Space Torah makes his sto­ry acces­si­ble to chil­dren and helps his beloved tra­di­tion live on.

This beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed book includes two glos­saries: one of space-relat­ed words and one of Torah-relat­ed words. Tak­en togeth­er, they demon­strate the con­nec­tion between sci­en­tif­ic inquiry and faith.