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The Mezuzah Story  

For the blessing and a creative ritual for putting up a mezuzah please click here.  For a car mezuzah moment click here.

It is 1998 during a teaching tour in the Ukraine, I’ve taken a day off to visit Shargorad, a town where I am told no Jews live today, though it functions like a shtetl frozen back in time. It truely is like a scene from a Sholem Aleichem novel.

Outside of a dilapidated house which appears abandoned, an old woman comes out screaming at us in Russian. My translator explains that a "genchene ravvin," a woman rabbi is exploring the town. The woman doesn’t miss a beat, she starts screaming at us in Yiddish. It’s not clear which of us is more surprised to meet the other. She assures us there are still Jews who live in Shargorad and goes off to gather them.

Soon she has assembled a serious array of people in the alleyway beside her house. One man shouts something out quite angrily. I turn to my translator. She appears not to have noticed.

"What did he say?" I ask.

"Who?" She asks.

"That man over there."

"...Him? Oh, Nothing."

"What did he say, I ‘d like to know."

" It’s not important." she says.

"What did he say!" I ask again. "Look," I say, "I am paying you to translate for me, what did he say?"

She sighs and shrugs as though to signal what is she to do with such an obstinate being. "He said that Judaism is nothing but magic and superstition; that Jews put amulets on their doorways to keep away evil spirits and no wonder we helped to invent communism."

Another man shouts. "What did he say?" I ask.

"He said that if there really is such a thing as a woman rabbi that you would teach them some Torah."

Oh, God. What a challenge. I had just been to the grave of the Baal Shem Tov, a famous founding rebbe of the Hassidic approach some two hundred years earlier. Although I usually pray direct, a spontaneous plea arose within my heart: "Baal Shem Tov, this is your neighborhood; You know how to work this crowd! Please help! What could be the right words of Torah to say right here, right now?"

The sea of people disappeared to my awareness, something or somewhere was opening inside of me, like a new screen name for a different personality and a full teaching emerged. I accept that it was a gift from beyond.

I turned to the group, drew up my five feet of body to its full height and said: "A Jewish person comes to the door of her house. She doesn’t run right in. She stops at the threshold and places a kiss on the little box on the doorpost."

"Why? The little box is a Jewish consciousness shifting tool. It reminds you to shema v’ahavta, "Listen so that you will love." That is what the words of Torah say that are inside that little box. A quotation from the Torah, from the book of Deuteronomy is in there, a prayer about the unity of all which is called the "Shema" which means listening, and the paragraph after the shema which explains why we listen, v’ahavta, so that you will love."

"A Jewish person doesn’t enter his or her home in a hurry with all the shmutz (dirt) of the day on their lips ready to spill out. We notice how easy it is to get blood on the doorposts of our lives and so we gently and consciously enter the sacred space of our homes sh’ma v’ahavta, loving and listening, placing a kiss full of our loving intentions upon that little box, called a mezuzah, on the doorpost."

I hear the Russian word "m’leetvah" (prayer) being alternated with "Torah?" in whispers around the group. Those gathered in the square become very quiet. I continue to emerge from the trance-like state that had allowed the Torah telling to travel through me. A few people have tears sliding down their cold-reddened faces. The same old man calls out again, he sounds soft and dignified this time. "Spaciba, Ravvin, spaciba." ‘Thank you Rabbi, Thank you."

The recognition of the Unified Field of All Being which is expressed in the Shema can have a deep impact upon our awareness, actions and prayers. When we remember this unity, it is harder to hurt another, because we are so keenly aware of how our actions affect the Whole.

The Shema is also the traditional prayer to say upon going to sleep at night and at the time of our dying. As you may well know the shema goes like this:

Sh’ma (listen/hear)

Adonai (Adonai is usually translated as "Lord". The root letters of Adonai, ADN also form the term adan, threshold.)

Eloheynu (is our God)

Echad. (Is One.)

What a lovely way to leave the world of consciousness, listening and loving and joining the Oneness. So we place the shema on the thresholds of our homes and interestingly, also on that of our dreams. By saying the shema before bedtime I like to think of myself as placing a mezuzzah on the threshold of this next level of consciousness, to entering listening and loving and in your dreams also comes the voice of God.