What is a Mezuzah?

A mezuzah (Hebrew: מְזוּזָה‎ "doorpost"; plural: מְזוּזוֹת‎ mezuzot) is a piece of parchment called klaf contained in a case and inscribed with specific Hebrew verses from the Torah. 

These verses consist of the Jewish prayer Shema Yisrael, beginning with the phrase: "Hear, O Israel, the Hashem is our God, the Hashem is One".

Bless This House

“JEWS have been putting up mezuzahs on their doorways for 3,300 years -- a kind of insurance policy long before there were insurance agents.

Mezuzahs are customarily small boxes or cylinders, that contains verses from the book of Deuteronomy, handwritten on parchment. They say in part: ''write these words upon the doorposts of your house and on your gates.''

Mezuzahs are reminders of Gd's presence and commandments. They tell the world that a home is a Jewish home. And, according to Jewish beliefs, they offer protection. ''The reward for putting it up is one's safety, like an insurance policy,'' said Rabbi Sheya Hecht, headmaster of New Haven Hebrew Day School in Orange.

Even people who are not Jewish give mezuzahs a try. ''We do have non-Jews coming in to buy mezuzahs because they see it as a good luck symbol, '' said Marla Cohen, a sales assistant at the Judaica Store in West Hartford, which carries a large selection of mezuzahs.

Religious laws governing the mezuzah -- a word that means door post in Hebrew -- have stayed pretty much the same for thousands of years. Mezuzahs go on the right door frame as one enters a room. They slant toward the room. They go on the upper third of the door frame. But they do not go on bathroom doorways. In all, there are 4,639 laws regarding mezuzahs, not that everybody knows them all.

To fulfill the religious obligation of putting up a mezuzah, one has to put the scroll inside the case -- and a photocopy will not do. A kosher scroll is handwritten, created by a recognized scribe. The letters have to be perfect and the parchment has to be made from animal skin.

The scroll has to be inspected periodically. ''Since the scroll is written with ink on parchment, over time there can be some crack or fading, and many people have the custom to have the parchment checked by scribes twice in seven years,'' Rabbi Hecht said. A slight crack, he added, could render it unfit.

It is the scroll, after all, that counts, Rabbi Hecht said. ''There is nothing wrong if you wrap the scroll in a little piece of cellophane and nail it the door. That would be fulfilling the mitzvah,'' he said, another word for commandment.

'The world being in such a state of insecurity, anything we can do to increase safety or security in the world in the spiritual sense is important,’ he said.”

— By Margo Nash – New York Times

Sept. 14, 2003