You Can Learn a Lot from a Mezuzah

Mr. Mezuzah Man

That was what we called the little googly-eyed children’s sticker of a mezuzah dressed up as a little security guard.

Our Mr. Mezuzah had a place of honor on our Sukkah. Why? Because as kids, we played with these Jewish-themed stickers, and Mr. Mezuzah Man was a good way to remember how to properly set up the door of our Sukkah each year. Using it, we had a surefire way of knowing we were putting the panel up the right way, which made putting up the rest of the Sukkah easier.

Obviously, a Sukkah doesn’t need a mezuzah.

וּכְתַבְתָּם עַל־מְזוּזוֹת בֵּיתֶךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶיךָ׃

“Write these words on the doorposts of your homes and on your gates.” (Devarim 6:9 and 11:20)

A.J. Jacobs, in The Year of Living Biblically, notes that, literally, this means we should be writing verses of Torah on our doorposts. We know, however, that the mitzvah is to write the verses of the Shema on a scroll and affix it (usually in a case) on our doorways.

Nevertheless, we liked the idea of a quasi-mezuzah on the Sukkah because a mezuzah is more than a mitzvah. A mezuzah is a reminder, a prayer, and a statement of Jewish identity.  

Rambam (Laws of Mezuzah 6:13) writes:

“A person must show great care in the observance of the mitzvah of mezuzah, because it is an obligation which is constantly incumbent upon everyone. Through its observance, whenever a person enters or leaves the house, he will encounter the unity of the name of the Holy One, blessed and remember his love for God. Thus, he will awake from his sleep…and recognize that there is nothing which lasts for eternity except the knowledge of the Creator of the world. This will motivate him to regain full awareness and follow the paths of the upright.”

Rambam generally does not qualify or rank mitzvot, yet here he writes we need to show “great care” for mezuzah. Why? Rambam recognizes the role a mezuzah can have in our religious identities and personalities. It is an ever-present reminder of our faith in God and practice of Judaism.

It started with Onkelos, the famed translator of the Torah into Aramaic, who was also a convert.

The Talmud (Avoda Zara 11a) informs us that the Roman emperor was displeased that Onkelos converted and sent soldiers to bring him back to Rome. When they reached his home, Onkelos engaged them in conversation quoting verses from the Torah. They were so inspired that they, too, converted.

The emperor sent another group of soldiers, telling them not to engage Onkelos in conversation. When they came to take him, they didn’t utter a word of explanation. Nevertheless, Onkelos said, “Let me tell you something trivial…” What he shared was so impactful and inspirational, they all converted.

The emperor sent another group of soldiers and told them to order Onkelos to remain silent. As they were taking him out of the house, Onkelos saw a mezuzah on the door and stretched out his arm to touch it. The soldiers paused curiously, leaving Onkelos an opening. He asked them, “What is this that I am touching?” The soldiers responded, “You tell us.” Onkelos explained to them, “It is the custom of the world that the king sits in the inside of the palace, and the guards protect him from the outside. However, with the God of the Jews, His servants are inside their homes, and He protects them from the outside.”

The soldiers were inspired, and they converted. The emperor did not send any additional soldiers.

The mezuzah is more than a mitzvah. It is a symbol of our relationship with God. It is placed on the doors of our home – the outside doors as well as the inside doors – to declare – to ourselves and anyone who sees it – that we have a connection to God who watches us.

The religious importance of the mezuzah prompted the practice to touch the mezuzah (like Onkelos in the Talmudic story) or even kiss the finger that touches the mezuzah when walking into a room as if the holiness of the mezuzah is transferred to the hand. While not the most widespread practice, it is an extension of the desire to connect to the power of the symbolism of the mitzvah.

The Talmud, in connection with Onkelos and the mezuzah, quotes Tehillim 121:8, “God will note your departure and your arrival from now and forever.” God is watching us. God notices our behavior, and God protects us. This led to the idea that a mezuzah is a form of protection and for some people to check the mezuzah should, God forbid, things go wrong.

It’s not only Jews who appreciate this powerful symbolism of the mezuzah.

The late Senator Orrin Hatch noted in a speech on the Senate floor in 2018:

“As a symbol of my respect, I wear a mezuzah around my neck. I have done so every day for more than four decades. The mezuzah reminds me of the affinity that I, as a member of the Mormon faith, hold for the Jewish people and their history.”

The mezuzah is a timely mitzvah deserving of our affinity and, to quote Rambam, "great care."

The mezuzah has been a popular symbol since October 7. Many Jews have sought ways to express their Judaism through symbols like the Magen David or Chai. The mezuzah is a terrific choice. Not only as a necklace, but the real thing, a mezuzah on the door. Now more than ever, we need the mezuzah as a sign of our religious faith, a prayer for protection, and a declaration of our Jewish identity.

On this Shabbat when we read of the mezuzah, please make sure your mezuzot are in order. See if any are missing from any doorways. Maybe it’s time to buy a new one or replace the case to make the mezuzah more secure or visible. Ask your Jewish neighbors to do the same if they don’t have theirs. It’s a small mitzvah, which carries great significance and meaning.

We can learn a lot from the mezuzah.

What to Do with All the Unanswered Prayers?

I love getting questions.

Easy, complex, silly, I encourage people to ask questions. One of the worst feelings a presenter has is when they stop to ask if the listeners have any questions, and nobody has one. When I led the KJ Beginners Service, we would plant questions in advance to generate more discussion. So, please, ask me, your rabbis, and teachers questions.

Last month, I asked one of the teens if he had any questions. I expected the typical teen response, “No.” I was pleasantly surprised when he said, “Yes, I have a question. We daven for people to get better, and, sometimes, they don’t. Why do we pray for things if the prayers are not answered?”

Great question! I think our Rabbis encouraged this question.

“Va’etchanan – Moshe pleaded…” (Devarim 3:23)

Moshe prayed that God allow him to enter the land, but God said no. The Sages note that the gematriya, numerical value, of the word va’etchanan is 515, implying that Moshe prayed 515 times, and he was rejected each time. That’s a lot of rejected prayers. Why did Moshe stick with it? How do we deal with unanswered prayers?

Moshe prayed over and over again to teach us that prayer is an opportunity for us to look inwards and reach outwards.

Prayer is complicated. Just because we think our prayers aren’t answered doesn’t mean they have no purpose. We don’t always know the full picture. We know what we want. That doesn’t always align with what God wants.

Rabbi Aron Moss compares the way prayer works to the law of conservation of energy in physics. That law states that energy can never be destroyed, it just changes from one form to another. There is a similar law in metaphysics. No prayer is ever lost or wasted. Your request will be granted; it just may be in an unexpected form.

We should look more broadly at what we ask for. For example, we pray for someone to recover. At the same time, a prayer for healing should also encourage us to think about how we can make ourselves or the world healthier. Maybe, if we’re scientifically inclined, devote our lives to researching a cure for cancer or take action to support such endeavors. Prayer should be inward directed and not just requests for which we’re disappointed when there is a negative response.

Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb relates trying to explain to a Tehillim group why they keep davening if the prayers were going unanswered. One of the participants was an intensive care nurse. She provided a powerful answer. People find praying frustrating because they expect a total cure. Praying on behalf of a sick person need not only be about a complete recovery. She suggested people have other things in mind in their prayers like the sick person not suffer too much pain, anxiety, depression, or loneliness; that the sick person be treated gently and with dignity by the medical staff; that the veins of the sick person be easy to find for intravenous injections; that the family have the strength to hold up under the strain and to not abandon the patient; that the correct decisions, medical and ethical, be taken by the family, patient, doctor, and rabbi. The nurse said, “"If you pray for all of the above for a sick person, you will find that many of your prayers will be answered."

There is a lot to pray for. Making requests of God should not be a binary exercise for which the only responses are yes or no. We need to consider all the possibilities and expand our horizons.

We also should view prayer as an opportunity to reach out God regardless of the “answer.”

Rabbi Joseph Soloveichik captures this endeavor in Worship of the Heart (p. 63):

“Contact is established with the Almighty in the abyss of a warm heart, in a love-sick soul, in the experience of the invisible, in the richness of the inner life, in being aware of something supernal, great, awesome and beautiful, although this ‘something’ is neither seen nor heard…In a word, the aesthetic experience of God, whether constructed of impressions and sensations drawn from our daily life…or consisting of ecstatic emotions, in the throbbing of the heart and the longing of the soul, is the basis of the community of God and man. It is impossible to imagine prayer without, at the time, feeling the nearness and greatness of the Creator, His absolute justice, His fatherly concern with human affairs, His anger and wrath caused by unjust deeds. When we bow in prayer, we must experience His soothing hand and the infinite love and mercy for His creatures. We cling to Him as a living God, not as an idea, as an abstract Being.  We are in His company and are certain of His sympathy. There is in prayer an experience of emotions which can only be produced by direct contact with God.”

Prayer is about reaching out to God since we are not in control. We think we know what we want, and we can (and should) allow prayer to shape how we will respond to a given situation. At the same time, prayer opens us up to a higher reality which defies logic.

The Maggid of Mezeritch captures this more mystical aspect of prayer:

“The Purpose of all prayer is to uplift the words, to return them to their source above. The world was created by the downward flow of letters: Our task is to form those letters into words and take them back to God. If you come to know this dual process, your prayer may be joined to the constant flow of Creation - word to word, voice to voice, breath to breath, thought to thought. The divine spring is ever-flowing: make yourself into a channel to receive the waters from above.”

Jews do a lot of davening. We also encounter many situations where it seems our prayers are unanswered. This moment – the days after Tisha B’Av and ten months after October 7 – hammers home the many unanswered questions and unresolved trauma we experience nationally and personally.

We always read Va’etchanan the Shabbat after Tisha B’Av. It provides us with the hope, faith, strength and resolve that our prayers work exactly the way we intend them – even if the answer is no.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Og?

How big was Og? (I know it’s Andre in the picture above…)

Maybe we start with: Who was Og?

The Torah (Bamidbar 21) describes Og as the Amorite King of Bashan, who is killed along with his nation in their battle against the Israelites in the desert.

According to the Midrash, Og first appears in the flood story. He survives by hanging on to the outside of Noah’s ark. Og later makes an appearance as the Midrashic messenger telling Avraham that Lot was being held captive and needed rescuing. Secretly, he hoped Avraham would die in battle, and he would marry Sarah. Another legend has Og trying to steal Sarah once again by telling her about the Binding of Isaac in the hopes that she’ll leave Avraham and marry him instead. It doesn’t go well as Sarah dies from the shock of the news.

Og’s staying power is just one aspect of his oversize persona. His giant size is alluded to in the text.

“Only King Og of Bashan was left of the remaining Rephaim. His bedstead, an iron bedstead, is now in Rabbah of the Ammonites; it is nine cubits long and four cubits wide, by the standard cubit.” (Devarim 3:11)

Og’s bed measured around 14 feet by 7 feet. That’s a pretty big bed. The fact it was made from iron informs us that he was too heavy for an ordinary wooden bed due to his giant size. Rabbinic statements describe Og in even more gigantic terms.

Even Moshe seemed to be afraid of him. When the Jews encountered Og and the Amorites in battle, God promises they will be victorious. Og, though, left Moshe feeling disconcerted.

“Then God said to Moses, ‘Do not fear him, for I will deliver him - and all his people and his land - into your hand; and you shall do to him as you did to Sichon, king of the Amorites who lives in Cheshbon.’” (Numbers 21:33-35.)

Why did Hashem have to tell Moshe “Do not fear Og?” It is a strange expression which does not appear elsewhere. God had promised that the enemy would be defeated. Why was Moshe still afraid of Og?

Og, through his various iterations, appearances, and larger-than-life dimensions, embodies the fear we feel when encountering an enemy, adversity, or a setback.

It is OK to be afraid. At the same time, we need to also maintain the composure and confidence that we can overcome.

At times, when we encounter a challenge or are afraid, we magnify the fear – sometimes into mythic proportions. For example, if it’s raining lightly outside, we may exaggerate just how hard it is raining to explain why we don’t go somewhere. (I didn’t say Shul; you just thought it…) Sometimes, fear may paralyze us – especially if it comes in the form of a thousand year-old giant. Even Moshe feels fear, and he had a promise from God.

We can move forward.

There are challenges. Some of them are huge. Sometimes, we fail. At the same time, we should try to maintain perspective and hope despite the fear or even the failure. Moshe was afraid, but he overcame that fear. So can we.

Rabbi Avi Weiss once invited Ariel Sharon to speak in his shul in the years before he became Prime Minister of Israel. Sharon was regarded as a fierce and fearless soldier, who led his troops to daring victories and was a storied military leader. Rabbi Weiss introduced him to the shul as “The Fearless General.”

When Sharon came up to the bimah, the first thing he said was, “K’vod ha’Rav, do you think that when I was on the front in the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Suez Canal that I wasn’t afraid? Only a fool wouldn’t be afraid!”

These days, there is much that generates fear. We’ve had ten months of war in Gaza, rockets fired daily from Lebanon, the pain of those killed and held hostage. In Israel, people are literally holding their breath waiting for an Iranian response or a Hezbollah attack. (There’s also plenty of disturbing behavior by anti-Israel voices and Jew haters in America.) I know there is fear. Yet life also goes on.

FDR famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Maybe. I think it’s OK to be afraid. What we must fear, however, is giving in to our fear. The Jewish nation has a long history of overcoming challenges small, large, and horrific. On Tisha B’Av, we do not shy away from recounting all the pain and suffering. We recognize that our painful history is part of the promise of Jewish survival. That’s how it was when the Jews faced Og and our enemies throughout history. That is how it will ultimately be, please God, today.

Life is a Highway

Are you familiar with the song “Life is a Highway?” It was written and sung by musician Tom Cochrane, later famously covered by Rascal Flatts for the 2006 movie, Cars.

There are many songs about life and the passage of time. A quick web search yields:

“Cat’s in the Cradle,” “Step by Step,” “Yesterday,” “It’s My Life,” “Everyday is a Winding Road,” and “The Long and Winding Road.” Extra cholent at Kiddush for whoever can name all the artists!

We know that life can take all sorts of twists and turns. The Torah recognizes the need to be mindful of the journey.

The last portion of the book of Bamidbar begins by recounting the 42 stops that the Jews made during 40 years in the desert. Rashi points out that the Jews did not move all that often during their time in the desert. (Many of the travels took place before the 40 years were decreed.) What is the significance of recounting each of these stops here now?

Rabbi Tanchuma in the Midrash suggests that this recounting is like a travelogue. At the end of their journey, the Jews are remembering the stops they took - the hardships, the highs, the lows - in getting them to the banks of the Jordan River. They remember all that transpired in the past 40 years.

Reading these masa’ot, the stops, each year is more than a history lesson. Our journeys have a lot in common with the original Jewish journey in the desert.

Each step of the journey has significance.

The commentators focus on the names of some of the places and that they allude to specific episodes along the journey. There is also a tradition that some of the stops teach lessons for the future as well. For example, the 25th stop was Chashmonah, which has a linguistic connection with the Chashmonaim of Chanukah, which is celebrated on the 25th of Kislev.

Our journeys have meaning and significance. Each stop tells a story of what happened and may even offer a clue to what will happen next.

The journey is holy.

According to Jewish law, we do not interrupt the reading of the masa’ot. The explanation is that the 42 stops correspond to the mystical 42-letter name of God. This name is a secret. Rashi writes (Kiddushin 71a) that “We don’t know this name.” It is associated with various miracles and wonders performed by Moshe and others in the Torah. How does this 42-letter Divine name and its correlation with 42 stops in the desert relate to us?

There are things about the journey which we don’t understand, yet they are still significant, even sacred. There are plenty of mysteries in life. The question “why” is very often on our lips (especially these past 10 months). The recounting of the journey in the desert teaches us that our journey – and the entire Jewish journey – is meaningful. It is our mission to contribute our share in the uplifting story of the Jewish people. We each have a role to play. There are actions large and small we perform in this effort, but we must be mindful of each step of the mysterious road.

The journey is a song.

When we read the masa’ot from the Torah, there is a special way to sing them. It’s different from the usual cantillation and more like the way we sing the Song at the Sea. This may be based on the Talmud (Avoda Zara 24b) which includes the movement in the desert in the list of all of the various songs the Jews sang.

Songs are a great way to remember things. Songs are a great way to tell stories. As noted above, there are plenty of songs about the journey of life. Recounting the Jewish journey in song teaches us to recount our stories in a memorable, meaningful way so that we and our children appreciate and learn from them.

There is a tradition that reciting the Jewish journey in the desert is a segulah, a form of remedy or protection in difficult times. Why? One explanation is that the journey was “al pi Hashem,” the Jews only traveled and camped in accordance with God’s command. Reciting the journey is meant to remind us that God is in charge of the world, and this may provide us with the perspective to move forward and overcome challenges. It’s an important lesson worthy of telling and singing.

We live in extraordinary times. (I prefer that than calling them crazy.) In Israel, there is a vast “soundtrack” of songs which have been used to tell the stories, laud the heroes, mourn those who have been lost, bring us together, pray for victory, and encourage us to be strong and together we will win. Each of us is writing our own soundtrack of our experiences, hopes, dreams, disappointments, and aspirations.

We’re mindful of each step of our holy journey along this long and winding road of life. Let’s sing about it together.

Travel safe!