Three Cheers for Mezuzahs

 I have to admit I'm feeling a bit vulnerable, although not as vulnerable as the house.

That's because there are no mezuzahs on our doorposts. I took them down to have them checked by a sofer, to make sure the ink on the parchment is still dark, the letters still intact, 17 mezuzahs in all.

The house trembles, which makes me nervous. I look both ways when passing through a doorway, as if crossing a busy intersection. 

"I feel naked and exposed," the house is saying.

"Relax," I say. "It's not that you don't have mezuzahs. You have mezuzahs. They are being carefully examined by a sofer through an eyeglass. Checking them is part of having them."

Before removing the mezuzahs, the sofer told us to keep track of which door each mezuzah is on, so that it can be returned to the same place. This, he said, will prevent inadvertently moving a mezuzah from a better to a worse location; from, say, a majestic front door to a lowly basement storage closet, the rough equivalent of demoting one of the Buckingham Palace royal guards to doorman at a greasy old fish-and-chips joint.

"The mezuzah," the sofer said, "will cry." The idea is sourced in holy books.

A house full of crying mezuzahs? No, thanks.

This reminded me of something I heard from another sofer more than 30 years ago, the first time I had my tefillin checked. The tefillin were only one year old, but there was an issue with one of the letters, whether it was kosher or not.

I called the sofer who wrote the tefillin. He was alarmed. "What?" he said. "Who's saying this?" He promised to fix the problem. Later, he explained his alarm.

"If a sofer doesn't pay proper attention to the quality of his work, and produces parchments that are sloppy, slipshod, or suspect, parchments that are, in the end, treif, then, after 120 years, when his neshama goes on high, those parchments are waiting for him, with serious accusations, maybe to rough him up a bit, then dragging him by the nose to the heavenly court for prosecution: 'Why did you not create us with wings to fly? Why did you leave us like lifeless cripples? Why did you deny us our chance holy?' 

"I'd rather get it right in this world," he said, "than answer charges like that in the next."

This idea, too, is sourced in holy books.

And I say, Three cheers for anthropomorphism. What a wonderfully spiritual way to talk about a wonderfully soulful world. To talk in the language of the prophets, the sages, the mystics–and even the rabbi who spoke in shul last Shabbos; a language that takes the sparkling light of divine inspiration and wraps it in everyday words, just for us.

So I say, Yes, Mister Holy Sofer, personify those parchments for me. I love lively mitzvahs. Give me a mezuzah with soul.