(4) Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. (5) You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (6) Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. (7) Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. (8) Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; (9) inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
According to the Torah, what is the purpose of a mezuzah? What are we told about what a mezuzah is made out of and where it goes?
There are ten conditions on a house, and after [meeting] such, the occupant of it is obligated to do a mezuzah for himself. And if it lacks one condition out of them, one is exempt from the commandment. And these are them: that it will be an area of four cubits by four cubits or more; that it will have two doorposts; and it will have a lintel; and it will have a roof; and it will have doors; and the entrance will have a height of ten handbreadths or more; and that house will be for ordinary [i.e. non-sacred] use; and it will be made for the occupancy of a human; and made for the occupancy of [something] respectful; and made for fixed occupancy.
According to this text, what qualifies a building for requiring a mezuzah? Do any of these qualifications surprise you?
(ט) בית הכסא ובית המרחץ ובית הטבילה ובית הבורסקי וכיוצא בהם פטורין מן המזוזה לפי שאינן עשויין לדירת כבוד סוכת חג בחג ובית שבספינה פטורין מן המזוזה לפי שאינן עשויין לדירת קבע שתי סוכות של יוצרים זו לפנים מזו החיצונה פטורה מן המזוזה לפי שאינה קבועה החנויות שבשוקים פטורין מפני שאינן קבועים לדירה.
(9) A toilet, a bath house, a mikveh, and a tannery and those like them, are not required to have a mezuzah because they are not used as a dignified dwelling. A sukkah on Sukkot and a house on a boat are exempt from having a mezuzah because they are not used as fixed dwellings. Two booths of potters, one inside the other, the outer one is exempt from the mezuzah because it is not fixed. Stores in the market are exempt because they are not fixed as dwellings.
What categories of places do not require a mezuzah? Do we learn from this text whether you are permitted but not required to put up a mezuzah on these places or whether it is forbidden? What do you think about text's explanation for why a mezuzah isn't required on these places?
(י) בית שיש לו פתחים הרבה אף על פי שאינו רגיל לצאת ולבא אלא באחת מהן חייב לעשות מזוזה בכל פתח ופתח פתח קטן שבין בית לעליה חייב במזוזה חדר שבבית אפילו חדר בחדר חייב לעשות מזוזה על שער החדר הפנימי ועל שער החדר החיצון ועל שער הבית שכולן עשויין לדירה וקבועין.
(10) A house which has many entrances, despite that it is unusual to go out and come in other than through one of them, one is obligated to make a mezuzah on every single entrance. A small entrance between a house and an upper room - one is obligated in [affixing] a mezuzah. A room which is in the house, even a room within a room, one is obligated to make a mezuzah on the entrance of the inner room and the entrance of the outer and on the entrance of the house since all of them are made for occupancy and permanent.
What new information do we learn from this text?
(יג) חייב אדם להזהר במזוזה מפני שהיא חובת הכל תמיד וכל זמן שיכנס ויצא יפגע ביחוד השם שמו של הקדוש ב"ה ויזכור אהבתו ויעור משנתו ושגיותיו בהבלי הזמן וידע שאין דבר העומד לעולם ולעולמי עולמים אלא ידיעת צור העולם ומיד הוא חוזר לדעתו והולך בדרכי מישרים
(13) People must be very careful about the mitzvah of mezuzah because it is an obligation on everyone at all times, so that any time they go out or come in, they will brush against the unity of the name of the Holy Blessed One and remember God's love and wake up from their sleep and errors in the of daily life and know that there is nothing that lasts forever except the knowledge of the Rock of Ages. And they will then immediately return to their true knowledge and and walk on the right path.
According to this text, what is the purpose of a mezuzah? How does this explanation compare to the original explanation in the Torah?
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹקֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשַׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ לִקְבּוֹעַ מְזוּזָה.
Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha'Olam, Asher Kidshanu B'mitzvotav Leekbo'ah Mezuza
Blessing for Putting up the Mezuzah
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who sanctified us with mitzvot, and commanded us to affix a mezuzah.
(8) And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.
() והנה ידוע מה שכתב האלשיך, על פסוק (שמות כה, ח) ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם, שלא יהיו ישראל סבורים שהשם יתברך ישכון בבית המקדש לבד, רק שהעיקר שהשכינה תשרה בישראל. וזה אמר ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם, כלומר ושכנתי בישראל אשכון ולא בבית המקדש לבד.
The purpose of the Mishkan (Sanctuary) is to signal that the principal Presence of God was to be on earth, i.e. among people, as is clear from the words: ושכנתי בתוכם, “I shall take up residence among them;” the operative word in that line is the word בתוכם, which ought to be translated as “within them,” within the hearts and minds of the Israelites, as opposed to God’s presence being confined to a Temple only.
My Jewish Learning
Way back in the 11th century, Rashi, a French rabbi and commentator, opined that when you put up your mezuzah, it should be hung vertically (Rashi and Tosafot on Menahot 33a). But then Rashi’s grandson came along. He’s known as Rabbenu Tam, and he wrote that a mezuzah should be affixed horizontally, because the Ten Commandments and the Torah scrolls were kept horizontally in the ark in the Temple.
A hundred and fifty years later Rabbi Jacob Ben Asher, also sometimes called the Tur, was writing his book of Jewish law, the Arbaah Turim. In it, Ben Asher suggests that the way to hold by the precedents of both Rashi and Rabbenu Tam was to split the difference, and affix your mezuzah at a slant (pointing into the room). (Yoreh Deah 289)
Three hundred years later this view was codified again by the Rema, an Ashkenazi commentator, who noted that slanting a mezuzah had become the common custom among Ashkenazi Jews. (Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews today still hang their mezuzot vertically.)