
The origins of one of Judaism’s most recognizable rituals make its performance today particularly resonant.
Putting up a mezuzah in one’s doorway is a timeless and meaningful means of asserting proud Jewish identity. When it was first commanded, as now, it serves as a testament to Israel’s ongoing survival in the face of those who seek our destruction.
As the book of Exodus recounts, prior to the Plague of the Firstborn, the Jewish people were commanded to sacrifice the paschal lamb and spread its blood on their doorposts, the mezuzot, of their homes. This sign of commitment to the covenant with God would serve as a signal to God’s destructive forces to pass over the Jewish homes, while striking those of the oppressive Egyptians who had been enslaving the Israelites for centuries.
The courageous act of asserting covenantal commitment by marking the doorway of the home was repeated as the Jewish people stood on the precipice of the Promised Land. As God instructs in Deuteronomy’s sixth chapter, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” The original doorpost sign from back in Egypt was given new shape, enshrined in the parchment rolled up into the casings known today as mezuzot.
As my Yeshiva University colleague Rabbi Meir Soloveichik has noted, Israel’s Egyptian oppressors also believed doorways to hold spiritual significance. As visitors to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art or the British Museum might have noticed as they toured the Egyptian wings, “false doors” decorated the tombs of Egyptian kings and officials, and were found in the pyramids. The doors, as their name indicates, were fake — they are blocked and lead nowhere. As the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website explains, “Egyptians believed that the soul of the deceased could freely enter and exit the tomb through a ‘false door,’ which was characterized by a recessed surface with a symbolic entrance in the center.”
In the ancient Egyptian belief system, following the embalming of the body, the aspect of the soul known as the “ka” needed to be sustained physically. So food was brought in from the world of the living by relatives of the deceased, and placed by the door as the site of sacrifice and offerings that would be laid there by the family of the deceased.
As the travel website Atlas Obscura elaborates: “The ancient Egyptians shared the world they inhabited with innumerable otherworldly entities: invisible, yet with immense power. Demons haunted the desert wastes and goddesses dwelled in the marshes of the Nile Delta, but the spirits of the dead were omnipresent … To facilitate the transfer of offerings and messages from the living plane to the Afterlife, the ancient Egyptians created a number of objects that could serve as both portals between worlds and as memorials to the people who had died … False doors were carved from a single piece of limestone and took the form of a narrow doorway surrounded by inscribed door jambs and surmounted by a lintel … The false doors were often the focal point of a tomb’s offering chamber because they allowed both real and magical offerings to reach the soul, or ka, of the tomb occupant ….False doors were generally the preserve of the extreme elite, those state officials who could afford to hire artists and craftspeople to build their multichambered stone tombs.”
Thus, the doorframe for the Egyptians ensured the physical immortality of the deceased. “In Egyptian belief,” as Rabbi Soloveichik has noted, “the soul kept coming back to this world in order to receive physical sustenance.” That’s why elite Egyptians spent so much time designing their graves. At Pharaoh’s tomb, separate temples were set up in which sacrifices were performed to sustain the Pharaoh’s soul and allow it to connect with this world.
Contrast this perspective with that of the Israelites. The spreading of the paschal blood serves not as a passageway but a demarcation point, “marking how the sacred home within was a realm of love and life even when death and destruction stalked outside, and thereby emphasized that the sanctity of the Israelite home is a source of endurance, transmission and ultimately immortality.”
Our mezuzot, then, are a “ritual reversal” of all that Egypt practiced. Whereas for Egypt the doorframe embodied a portal between the world of the living and the world of the dead, the mezuzah is a forcefield, a source of spiritual protection, keeping death out and Israelite life safe inside. Whereas for Egyptians, the entryway was a privilege for the elite, for the Jewish people it was and is an opportunity for each and every one of us to demonstrate our fealty to the divine.
As we continue to withstand the tyrants of our time, the mezuzah’s embodiment of God’s continued protection of His people and our commitment to Him, will always adorn the homes of countless generations to come.
By appreciating the original meaning of the mezuzah then, we can better understand its power today. As we continue to withstand the tyrants of our time, the mezuzah’s embodiment of God’s continued protection of His people and our commitment to Him, will always adorn the homes of countless generations to come.
Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”