When Jason Sherwin told his parents he wanted to be an astronaut, they weren't thrilled. Jews, they reminded him, "don't have a good track record" in outer space. Notwithstanding the "Jews in Space" bit from Mel Brooks's "History of the World: Part I," they're right. Arguably, the first Jewish astronaut was Elijah. According to the Bible, "a fiery chariot with fiery horses suddenly appeared... and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind." He didn't come back down. In modern times, the first Jew in space, Judith Resnick, died in the Challenger explosion of 1986. In 2003, Ilan Ramon of...