El Al decided to take advantage of all of the publicity from the recent Tefillin scare. They have published this ad in some newspapers.
I was trying to think of a way to sell some pairs of Tefillin from this story, but it has alluded me. I am glad to see that El Al is on the ball though.
This is a very interesting news story about a young man who decided to put on his Tefillin to do his morning prayers on an airplane. Apparently the passengers and crew didn’t know what they are and got scared.
Before 9/11 I used to put on Tefillin regularly on airplanes. Since then I do everything I can do get my prayers done before boarding the plane or after landing. Once or twice I have had no choice but to put Tefillin on on the plane. What I did was start a conversation with the passengers next to me and explain to them what I was doing and also tell the flight attendant so they would see that I was a normal friendly person and not get scared. It worked fine for me. Apparently this young man just whipped out his Tefillin and strapped them on.
There is something very interesting in the Shulchan Aruch in the laws of Shabbat. Normally it is forbidden to even handle Tefillin on Shabbat since we have no use for them. The exception is if Gentiles come to attack a Jewish community. In such a case one is allowed to put on their Tefillin on Shabbat. The reasoning is that Gentiles are scared when they see a Jew wearing Tefillin and this will help the Jews defend themselves.
Perhaps this young man should have kept that Halacha in mind.
You probably already know that a Mezuzah scroll is holy and cannot just be discarded in the trash when it becomes unfit. What is less known is that the Mezuzah case also takes on holiness since it was used for a Mitzvah. Here is a question that I recently got by email:
Hi,
Recently we were trying to teach our young son to kiss the mezuzah, when he pulled it off and broke it.
The mezuzah case is now unable to be fixed. The parchment is fine and we can use this in a new case. Is there a custom in getting rid of the case? Are we allowed to just throw it away?
Thank you,
Stephanie
Here is what I answered:
Dear Stephanie,
Even though it is the scroll that is the mitzvah, the case also becomes holy because it is used for a Mitzvah. Therefore the case should be brought to a genizah – that is a place where holy items are brought to be buried in the Jewish cemetery. If you do not know where a genizah is, you should bring it to your local Orthodox synagogue where they will be able to help you.
I would also like to point out that according to custom, when a Mezuzah falls off of the door for any reason, we take it to a certified scribe to have it checked. The reasoning is that if something happened to the Mezuzah, it may be a sign from above that the Mezuzah needs to be tended to. In this matter as well, your local Orthodox synagogue should be able to help you.
With blessings,
Aaron Shaffier
People frequently ask, “How high up do I put the Mezuzah on an arch?” This is a bit of a complicated question. First let’s make sure we understand the question. A regular door is rectangular in shape. The Halacha requires that the Mezuzah be placed at the ‘bottom of the top third’ of the door. This means that you measure the door, divide by three and place the Mezuzah just above the one-third-from-the-top line. You can read more about this here.
A problem arises with making this calculation with an arch. What do we consider to be the top of the arch? The most obvious answer would be to say that the highest point of the arch is the top and measure from there. The problem is that according to Halacha, a door has to be at least 4 Tefachim-hand-breadths wide in order for it to be obligated in a Mezuzah. At the highest point of an arch, it has not width at all because it is a single point on a curve.
Because of this, we never measure the height of an arch from the highest point. How then do we arrive at the proper calculation of where to put the Mezuzah? There are two opinions. The most widely accepted opinion is that we measure from the first place that you can square out 4 Tefachim. (The most commonly accepted estimation of a tefach is 3.16 inches.) This is the first place that the door is wide enough to be considered a door and therefore this is the top of the door. We measure down from that point to the ground and divide by 3 to arrive at the height where the Mezuzah should be. This is the most commonly accepted opinion.
According to some others, including Chabad, we use a different calculation based on the Rambam. The Rambam rules in the case of an arch that we consider the the place where the arch begins to curve as the top of the door. This is as long as the straight part of the arch is at least 10 Tefachim high. 10 Tefachim being the minimum hight that a door needs to be in order to be obligated in a Mezuzah. According to this opinion, we measure from the floor to the place where the curve starts. We divide this by three and put the Mezuzah at the ‘bottom of the top third’ of the straight area. In theory you could have an arch where the straight part is 3 feet high and the round part is 5 feet high. According to this opinion, you would put the Mezuzah a bit more that 2 feet from the ground. This would mean that the Mezuzah would be about knee hight.
Here’s a question I recently got by email:
Shalom.
There is a wall with an arch that runs from one end of my house across to the other end with living areas on both sides. When going through the arch toward the back of the house I’m entering the den, kitchen, and breakfast area. When going through the arch toward the front of the house I’m entering a living room and dining room. Should I have mezuzahs at the right of the arch on both sides?
Debra
Here is what I answered:
Dear Debra,
You only put the Mezuzah on one side. The main way to determine which side is by assessing the natural flow of traffic through the house when entering from the front door. It sounds from your email like it is more common to go from the living/dining room to the den/kitchen first. If that is the case then you would put the Mezuzah on the right side as you enter the kitchen/den.Blessings,
Aaron Shaffier
I frequently get asked if Gentiles can affix Mezuzahs to their doors. Here is what I answered recently to one such inquiry.
Dear Friend,
This is a question that I get very frequently. It always makes me so happy to hear from people who are not Jewish and want to put up a Mezuzah to honor God.
Generally Judaism recognizes two systems of law for mankind. The basic ‘7 laws of Noah‘ apply to all of mankind. The Torah, with its 613 laws, is a special system that God has instituted for the nation of Israel who he chose to be a ‘nation of priests and a holy people’.
Just like one would not expect the average person to live up to the same spiritual standards as a priest, so to God does not demand from most people to live up to the extra high standard that he demands from His ‘nation of priests’.
The Mezuzah is one of the 613 laws that are were given to the Jewish people in the Torah to help them live up to this standard. Therefore, non-Jews are not in any way obligated to put up a Mezuzah.
If a non Jew wants to voluntarily keep any of the Torah laws in order to attain a closer relationship with God, they are permitted to do so.
In the case of the Mezuzah, the only concern is that you respect the holiness of this article that contains the original name of God in Hebrew. It cannot ever be taken into an unclean place (such as a bathroom for example). And if it ever becomes damaged and needs to be disposed of, it must be taken to a synagogue where they have a box for holy items that need to be disposed of. It will then be buried in a Jewish cemetery.
For this reason, there are some Rabbis who discourage non-Jews from affixing a Mezuzah to their door. But, if you wish to put up a Mezuzah, and you understand that you are taking responsibility to care for a holy object in the proper way, then there is no reason that you cannot purchase and put up a Mezuzah.
Whatever you decide, your desire to do something to come closer to God is certainly a sign that you are on the right track. Keep up the good work.
God Bless,
Aaron Shaffier
Here is an interesting article from Ynet:
Can mezuzot thwart water crisis?
Government ministers’ attempts to come up with ideas to deal with depleting levels of Lake Kinneret prompt agriculture minister to suggest replacing all of Water Authority’s parchment scrolls for good luck
Itamar EichnerThe escalating water crisis plaguing Israel has its ministers racking their brains in an attempt to come up with ways to deal with the predicament.
Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) is Israel’s main freshwater reservoir; and a recent succession of dry winters has left it nearly depleted.
The Knesset has heard suggestions the likes of partially shutting off the water supply to prisons or organizing mass prayer rallies, but Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon has come up with an original idea: Changing all the mezuzot in the Israel Water Authority offices.
Jewish tradition calls for a mezuzah, a piece of parchment inscribed with specified Hebrew verses from the Torah and places in a special case, to be affixed to every doorframe.
Simhon’s peers found the suggestion somewhat puzzling, prompting the agriculture minister to explain the logic behind his proposal: “I would like to remind everyone that Labor was at an all-time low in the polls, but after I had the mezuzot at the Labor House changed we doubled our strength.”
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suggested, fondly, that the next government consider keeping Simhon in the Agriculture Ministry so he may continue handling the water crisis.
The government has held three sessions on the water crisis in the past few weeks, at National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer’s request.
Ben-Eliezer claims he want his fellow ministers to be fully updated on the situation, so that none of them claim they were unaware of its severity.
“This has been an extremely dry winter, with the lowest recorder rainfall since Israel started keeping track.”
Head of the Water Authority, Prof. Uri Shani, said that “the rainfall we’ve had so far is about 45% of what we were supposed to see at this time. Water consumption, however, has increased. The probability of us having a dry winter for the fifth year in a row was minute.
“We have prepared an emergency contingency plan meant to see the water system though this hard time. The government has already approved these steps and we have been implementing them uncompromisingly. The Water Authority is also working on several other emergency contingencies to cope with the drought.”
Here’s an interesting article from Haaretz.com:
Who puts up a mezuzah in space? A Jewish astronaut
By Ofri Ilani, Haaretz Correspondent
If Dr. Garrett Reisman did not exist, then Mel Brooks or Woody Allen would have had to invent him. The veteran astronaut, who spent three straight months in space, looks like a character from a comedy about Jews in space: He is short, an engineer and full of self-deprecating humor that is often missing in astronauts.
Reisman, a native of New Jersey, is the first Jew to have lived in the International Space Station.
“The mission went pretty well, I did not break anything that was too expensive,” he says.
When he got to the space station, via the space shuttle Endeavor, he was quick to put up a mezuzah in the bunk where he slept.“I did not consult any rabbi, so I hope I did not get into any trouble,” he says.
Reisman is in Israel for the fourth Ilan Ramon International Space Conference, which is organized by the Science Ministry and the Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies.
The NASA delegation will make a presentation on progress in its most ambitious project: sending humans to Mars. Its schedule is for a manned mission to Mars by 2030.
However, at this stage, there are still problems to be resolved. The round trip is expected to last at least three years and will require enormous amounts of food, water and fuel.
No less troubling is how best to assure the health of the crew while millions of kilometers from earth.
Dr. Johnston Smith, a medical officer at NASA, who is also visiting Israel, is one of those dealing with this challenge. “If someone experiences a standard medical problem, like appendicitis,” he says, “a decision will need to be made on what to do. Therefore, on the voyage to Mars one of the crew will be a doctor and will have the means to undertake simple surgery.”
Those traveling to Mars will also be away from family and friends for years. According to Johnston, the missions to the International Space Station are meant to build up experience in dealing with psychological dilemmas. Thus, for example, a year ago, NASA had to inform astronaut Daniel Tani, who was at the space station, that his mother had died in an accident.
“Every astronaut decides before a mission whether they want to know [such news] immediately or not. But on a voyage to Mars these questions will be more significant, and we need to think about how to deal with them,” Johnston says.
It seems that NY state has a whole section of business law that protects the consumer from being sold non-kosher Mezuzahs and Tefillin.
Here is a link to the section Just type Mezuzah in the search box and it will come up.
Pretty amazing huh?
Thanks to xerpentine for the tip.
I recently got this question in the email:
If I take down multiple Mezuzot for checking, do I make a Brocha when replacing them. I will not be placing them on the same door as they were taken down from as they were not marked to ensure this. What happens if one has be replaced due to its being possul?
This issue always comes up when people have their Mezuzah checked. The problem is that the answer is not so simple because there are several issues here, with multiple opinions involved.
Lets first deal with some more simple issues one by one and at the end I will suggest an answer to the emailer’s question.
1. Do you have to say a blessing when reaffixing a Mezuzah to the same door after having it checked?
There are several opinions regarding this. Some say that you would say a blessing if the Mezuzah was down for 24 hours others say you say a blessing only if it was down for 30 days. In this case, one should check with their local Rabbi to find out which custom they should observe. In a case where this is not possible, the rule is that we are always conservative about saying a blessing in a case of doubt. Therefore one would refrain from saying a blessing if the Mezuzah was down for less than 30 days.
2. Do you say a blessing when switching a Mezuzah from one door to another?
Yes. Assuming that the new door is obligated in a Mezuzah according to all opinions. That is to say it has an actual door that opens and closes and that doorway leads to a room that has more that 36 square feet and is used as a living space.
3. If the scribe finds something Passul (not kosher) in the Mezuzah and fixes it, do you say a blessing when re-affixing the Mezuzah to the same door?
First see answer to #1 regarding how long the Mezuzah was down. If the Mezuzah was down long enough it will require a new blessing in any case and this question becomes irrelevant.
Let’s assume though that you took the Mezuzah down and brought it straight to the sofer and he found something passul, fixed it and now you are ready to put it up on the same day. In this case, you must ask the sofer if the problem that he found was definitely passul according to all opinions or if he was just fixing something to make it better or to make it Kosher according to more opinions. If the sofer says that it was definately passul, you would make a blessing.
Based on all of the above:
In a case like the one described in the email the best thing to do would be to take one Mezuzah that you know was not on the front door and affix it to the front door saying a blessing. When you say the blessing, have in mind that it should exempt all of the other Mezuzahs. Then without interrupting, proceed to affix the rest of the Mezuzahs.