How and Why to Make a Mezuzah Rosh hashanah Morning 5772/2011 Rabbi Ari Mark Cartun

Transcription

1 How and Why to Make a Mezuzah Rosh hashanah Morning 5772/2011 Rabbi Ari Mark Cartun h"b The first version of this High Holy Day Machzor, prayerbook, had a reading of a story called the Tale of the Herdsman and the Torah scholar. 1 It is now a meditation to be found on page 16. Those of you who remember the photocopied, cut and paste version of this book from before it was first revised and computerized in 1982 will remember this story very well, as it speaks to the conflict between doing something from the heart and doing something correctly. Here is how the story goes: Once there was a Jewish herdsman who did not know how to say Jewish prayers. Still, every day he would say, "Almighty G0d, if you had animals and set me to watch over them, although I guard for all others for pay, for Y0u I would guard for free, because I love Y0u." One day a Torah scholar passed by and heard the herdsman saying this. He said, "Ignoramus, that's not how to pray." So the herdsman asked, "How should I pray?" So the scholar taught him the order, the siddur, of the blessings, and how to recite the Sh'ma, "Hear, O Israel," and some other prayers, so that the herdsman would no longer pray so ignorantly. Then the scholar went on his way. After the scholar left, the herdsman forgot everything the scholar had taught him. But now that he knew that there was a right way for Jews to pray he feared saying things to G0d that G0d might not want to hear. That night the Torah scholar had a frightful dream. He heard a v0ice say to him, "You just robbed Me of one of my most faithful worshippers, whose simple prayers were very valuable to Me. If you don't go back and fix what you broke I'll take it out on you. Go tell the herdsman that what he used to say to Me before you messed him up!" So early the next morning the scholar ran back to where he had seen the herdsman, found him, and asked him what he was praying now. The herdsman answered that he could not say anything to G0d, "for I forgot your teaching, and you told me not to say what I had been saying to G0d before." So the scholar told the herdsman what he had heard in his dream, and told the herdsman to go back to what he had been saying, because what G0d really wants, more than a "correct" prayer, is a sincere prayer. I chose that story for the Machzor I made 2 because I'm a lot like that herdsman. Before I went to rabbinical school, and even afterwards, I had and still have a tendency to 1 I don't remember where I first found this story, but it is from Sefer Hasidim (Book of the Hassidim), paragraphs 5&6. You can find it online in Tamar Alexander-Frizer's book The Pious Sinner: Ethics And Aesthetics In The Medieval Hasidic Narrative, (1991) page 60: %22&source=bl&ots=qkJ3qsRnFy&sig=FO0vKn4JdsBzb_Gun2p7ylF2Eac&hl=en&ei=t7BvTo2GH7PKiALN7pT- Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Said%20the%20herdsman%3A%20%22Ho w%20then%20shall%20i%20pray%3f%22&f=false. This is my paraphrase of the story for the purpose of this talk. 2 The first version of this Machzor was a photocopy/cut&paste version I made for Congregation Beth Ahaba in Lafayette, LA, my High Holyday pulpit in It became the basis of what I brought to Stanford Hillel the next year, and has since been revised twice, once in 1982 when I desktop-published it, and then again in 1996, when I adapted it for Etz Chayim.

2 make up my own prayers when I want to. That's what gives me the chutzpah to rewrite prayer books and put in them the crazy stuff that's there. One of the first things I did my own way was make a mezuzah for my room in my parents' home. I was in High School, and had already decided to become a rabbi, when I noticed that some of my youth group friends had a mezuzah on their bedrooms. We had one on the house, but I decided to make one for my room. My dad was a hobbyist carpenter, and we had a woodshop in the basement. So I made a decorated wooden plate, not a box, just a plate, with the word Shadday (yd"v') on it, like I had seen on other mezuzot. 3 For the scroll I took a nice piece of goldenrod-colored paper, and wrote, in Hebrew print, and then in the archaic English of the old translation of the Torah, the Sh'ma and v'ahavta (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). I did not know at that time that there was another paragraph later in Deuteronomy (11:18-21) that is also on a traditional mezuzah scroll, which also mentions "writing (these words) on the doorposts/mezuzot of your house and on your gates." I rolled up the paper scroll with string, and I tied it to the back of the wooden plate, and tied it up to the doorpost of my room. I kept it there until I moved out to California, and then, since I had acquired mezuzot in Israel in the meantime, I put them on my apartment, and then, later, my wife and I put new store-bought mezuzot on the homes we bought. 4 The point of this is to say that sometimes the things we make are more meaningful than the things we buy. The next time you walk around our congregational home, look at the clear plastic mezuzah cases on the classrooms. They are hand-made mezuzot, made by Shorashim kids about six or seven years back just after our congregation moved into the YWCA. But this is not just for kids. Once you write your own mezuzah scroll, in Hebrew or in English, you won't look at a mezuzah the same way ever again. First, you'll be very aware of what's in it. Second, whenever we make our own Jewish objects, they are just so much more a part of us than anything we could ever buy. When I was in religious school there was an elective we could take on making Kiddush cups, Shabbat candlesticks, and mezuzot cases out of redwood and brass. In a terrific case of "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4)," we used surplus artillery shell casings to make the Kiddush cups. Of course, brass is not the safest material to drink out of, so had we actually used them for wine they might still have killed us! But I still have the Kiddush cup and candlesticks that I made 50 years ago. When I was in rabbinical school in Cincinnati, OH, I got a teaching job at Congregation Adas Israel. After a year of proving myself as a teacher of what they wanted me to teach, they asked me what I wanted to teach. I told them about my experience in carpentry and metalworking, and the workshop I had taken in religious school, and they found a donor who built a workshop big enough for me to teach 12 students at a time to make Kiddush cups, candlesticks, and mezuzot. What a trip that was! 3 I just thought that was a Name of G0d, which it is. But on a mezuzah Shadday is an acronym that stands for laer:c]yi t/tl;d rme/v / Sh0mer D'latot YisraEl / Guardian of the Doorways of Israel 4 My favorite Israeli mezuzah was made of sterling silver filigree, and you could see the scroll inside through the filigree. I put it up on my apartment in Washington, DC, the day I moved there for a rabbinical internship with Temple Sinai there in The next day I awoke to find that it had been pried off and stolen. That was the last time I ever hung an expensive silver mezuzah on an outside door. Making Mezuzot, Rabbi Ari Cartun, Rosh hashanah Morning, 5772, page 2

3 So how do you make your mezuzah? First, make the scroll. Buy a nice piece of parchment-style paper, like the kind we use to print out certificates for Bar/t Mitzvah students. Or whatever kind of paper you'd like. There is a principle called Hiddur Mitzvah, which means Honoring the Mitzvah by making the things we use to fulfill mitzvot specially nice. You don't need to use 24-karat gold leaf, but using something a bit special makes the whole thing holier, because, as I mentioned last night, "h0ly" means "really special." You could use any pen or pencil you want to write it. I used a pencil to make my mezuzah when I was 16 because it was the first time I had ever tried to write that much Hebrew, and I wanted to be able to erase all the mistakes I knew I would make. I really wished I had used something nicer to write it with. I had a purple ink pen back then, my favorite color, but I never got around to rewriting my mezuzah scroll because of how much work it had been, and because I was and still am a bit of a perfectionist. If you're a perfectionist too, you understand how we can let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Next, pick a translation of the Sh'ma and v'ahavta that you like, or use the one from our siddur ( and use that translation and Hebrew. Or perhaps you'd rather use a transliteration of the Hebrew than the Hebrew letters. Feel free to do what works for you. Once you've made your scroll, think about what kind of case you need to put it in. (Making the scroll first shows you how large a case you'll need to make. That's usually easier than making the case first and trying to fit a handwritten scroll to it.) Perhaps you've seen a nice-sized wooden box in an antique or tchotchke store that could do the trick, or a see-through plastic vial made for storing spices. Perhaps you are handy enough to make some kind of case by yourself. Shopping for something that you could turn into a mezuzah case in Cost Plus can be just as meaningful as actually making it. You're making it, or making something do the trick, and turning a spice vial into a mezuzah case is a lot like turning an artillery shell into a Kiddush cup. Then devise some way to affix it to the door. Double-sided tape is the easiest solution to this issue but there is a problem with it. My wife and I were given a few new mezuzot by our daughters after they had spent a couple weeks in Israel this summer. We did not want to use the double stick tape that came with them, because you sometimes pull the wood of the doorframe off when you try to pry it off to repaint your house, as we found out this past year when we did exactly that. So we went to a hardware store and voilá, a solution appeared when we found little flat brass hangers. We attached them to the back of the mezuzah with the double-stick tape, and then screwed the hangers into the doorpost. I'm partial to screws over hammering nails in, because I'm likely to smack the mezuzah with the hammer while trying just to hit the nail. Just make sure to drill a pilot hole before you screw it on, or you may wreck your wrist with the twisting. Consider this to be a Jewish identity arts and crafts project! Let all your kids make them for their rooms. But you should make one for yourself first, just so you can have thought it through before you advise them on what to do. Of course if you decide to go on our congregational trip to Israel this coming end of July, beginning of August, you can also bring home a reminder of your experiences there. At which point you may ask if you can have two mezuzot on one doorpost, one home-made and one store bought? We did. When our kids were little we had one at their eye level, and one at ours. Making Mezuzot, Rabbi Ari Cartun, Rosh hashanah Morning, 5772, page 3

4 I have a little FAQ and fact sheet about mezuzot on the last two pages of this talk, as well as what Jews often say when putting mezuzot up: ( But, again, feel free to expand, contract, or rewrite, or extemporize what you want to say. The point, as the story I began with made, is that sincerity trumps empty parrotry. This was all about do it yourself ways of creating meaning in our Jewish lives. Go for it! I began this talk with a story. I'll end with a joke. A Jewish family buys a new home, and brings in a local contractor to decorate the place. When the job is finished, the homeowners are delighted, but then they realize they've forgotten to put mezuzahs on the doors. They buy enough mezuzahs for every room that people eat and sleep in, and for all the corridors that lead from one part of the house to another (which leaves out the bathrooms and closets). They put up the mezuzah to the whole house by themselves, but then tell the decorator where to put the rest of them. They show him how to place them on the right hand side of each door, about 2/3 of the way up, facing into the house and into the rooms, on the doorposts. Then they leave for the day. When they return a few hours later, they see that the job has been carried out to their entire satisfaction. They're so pleased that they give the decorator a bonus. As the decorator is walking out of the door he says, "Glad you're happy with the job. By the way, here are all the warranties that were inside the little boxes. I left them on the kitchen table for you!" Making Mezuzot, Rabbi Ari Cartun, Rosh hashanah Morning, 5772, page 4

5 A little info on mezuzot: These are the verses on a mezuzah scroll. Both paragraphs contain the phrase "write them (these words) on the doorposts (mezuzot) of your house and on your gates." In the facsimile of a mezuzah scroll below the Sh'ma is the first line, beginning and ending with words with large letters. The v'ahavta follows it to the end of the first paragraph. The bottom paragraph is called v'hayah im shamoa, (And if you heed). Here is what it means: Deuteronomy 6 5 You will come to love Ad0nay your G0d with all your mind, with all your being, and with all your intensity, and let these words which I command you this day pervade your mind. 6 Repeat them to your children. 7 Speak, cite them whether sitting at home or walking on your way, when lying down to sleep or arising. 8 So bind them as a sign on your hand, so that they will be reminders* before your eyes. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your home and on your gates. Deuteronomy And if you heed, heed My commands which I command you today to love hashem your G0d and worship G0d with your whole heart and soul, 14 then I will give the earth s rain in due season: the autumn and spring rains, and you will gather your grain, wine, and oil. 15 And I will give grass in the field for your herd, and you will eat and be satisfied. 16 But guard yourselves lest your minds wander away and you deviate, and worship other gods and bow down to them! 17 For hashem will rage against you and the skies will stop up and there will be no rain and the land will not yield its produce and you ll fast be lost from your good earth which hashem gives you. 18 So put these, My words on your heart and soul And bind them as a sign on your hand, so that they be reminders* before your eyes. 19 And teach them to your children. Speak of them when sitting at home or walking on your way, when lying down to sleep or arising. 20 and write them on the doorposts of your homes and gates. 21 That your days and your children s days be as many on the land which hashem swore to your ancestors to give them as the days the skies arch over the earth. * Reminders has been substituted for the unique, undefinable Hebrew term "Totafot", which is rendered in archaic guesswork English as frontlets. This is based on the parallel text in Exodus 13:9. Making Mezuzot, Rabbi Ari Cartun, Rosh hashanah Morning, 5772, page 5

6 Here is a picture of a mezuzah case with the letter shin, standing for Shadday / yd"v' (laer:c]yi t/tl;d rme/v / Sh0mer D'latot YisraEl / Guardian of the Doorways of Israel): Here is where you put a mezuzah: Angle it inward to invite people inside. When it is on an inside hallway it should also angle inward towards the innermost part of the house, what ever you consider that to be. Making Mezuzot, Rabbi Ari Cartun, Rosh hashanah Morning, 5772, page 6