Mezuzah whats in it?

To understand the significance of the Mezuzah, we must first explore the text written in it. As we have said before, these are the two Torah portions: Shemaand Vehayah. These two portions, along with a third, comprise the prayer Shema Yisrael... – “Hear, O’ Israel...”– which every observant Jew recites every day at least twice, in the morning and in the evening. This is the main Jewish prayer, the first a child learns and the last a Jew utters before returning his soul to the Creator. Let us look closely into these portions of Torah.

Shema

Text

Hear, O Israel, the L-rd is our G‑d, the L-rd is One.

And you shall love the L-rd your G‑d with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them thoroughly to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way, when you lie down and when you rise. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be tefillin between your eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts (mezuzoth) of thy house and upon thy gates. (Deuteronomy VI, 4‑9).

The content of Shema

The first paragraph of the mezuzah, Shema Yisrael – Hear O Israel, contains several important principles:

Belief in the unity of G‑d.

Commandment to love G‑d.

Commandment to recite these passages every morning and evening.

Commandment to teach these words to our children - the mitzvah of Chinuch.

Mitzvah of tefillin shel yad (arm phylactery).

Mitzvah of tefillin shel rosh (head phylactery).

Mitzvah of mezuzah.

Let us examine these principles.

The Unity of G‑d

The first principle constitutes the credo of monotheism. The words, “Hear O Israel, the L‑rd is our G‑d, the L‑rd is One” express the very foundation of the Jewish faith – the belief in the Unity and Oneness (singularity) of G‑d. In Hebrew, this passage reads:

Shema Yisrael YHVH Elo-heinu YHVH Echad.

The Hebrew word Echad – One– is replete with meaning. Besides “one”, it also means “the first,” as in the Biblical verse from the story of Creation: Yom Echad – day one (first) (Genesis I, 5). It also means “unique”, unlike anything that He created. It may also mean “united”, i.e., simple and undifferentiated, not corporeal. Therefore, when saying Shema we are proclaiming that G‑d is the First Cause (the Creator), that He is the only G‑d (rejection of polytheism - idolatry), that He is Absolute Unity and Simplicity (rejection of any plurality or corporeality, such as Trinity, for example, in G‑dhead). Chasidic philosophy interprets the word Echad to mean “the only One,” that there is, in fact, nothing but G‑d alone, and the whole Universe exists within G‑d.

The word Echad consists of three letters: Alef (1), Cheth (8) and Daleth (4). According to Rashi, these letters allude to the concept that G‑d is One (Alef= 1) in the seven heavens and the Earth (Cheth = 7 + 1) and in the four directions (Daleth = 4).

The word Echad has the numerical value (gematria) of 13, which alludes to the Thirteen Divine Attributes of Mercy, thus describing the Creator further as the Merciful One.

According to Abudraham, the word Israel in this verse refers to one’s fellow Jew. According to the Midrash, it refers to the Patriarch Jacob to whom we reaffirm our faith. Chasidic philosophy interprets Israel as referring to the essence of one’s Jewish soul, the G‑dly spark within, the pintele Yid.

The Love of G‑d

Next, Torah commands us to love G‑d. We may question, how can a person be commanded to love? We may be forced to fear, we can be convinced to respect, but love is a basic emotion that defies reason. If you can explain why you love someone, in all likelihood it is not love, but a relationship contingent on certain conditions that one perceives as the reason for love. It is not coincidental that when one is truly “in love,” one is said to be “madly in love,” because this feeling is beyond reason, though not necessarily above it.

The sages of Kabbalah and Chassidic philosophy explain that the emotive attributes of the soul,6 such as love, fear, etc., stem from its intellectual faculties. Maimonides explains that the commandment to love G‑d is actually a commandment to meditate upon the infinite loving-kindness of G‑d, as revealed to us through His prophet:

I have loved you with an infinite world of love. (JeremiahXXXI, 3).

Meditating deeply on G‑d’s love will, in time, evoke a reciprocal feeling of love towards our Heavenly Father. Torah thus actually promises (rather than commands), “And you shall love the L-rd your G‑d...”

Why is it so important to meditate upon G‑d’s love and to love G‑d in return? The answer has its root in the most fundamental of all questions: why did G‑d create the world? Realistically, we cannot expect to find the ultimate answer to this question for G‑d’s intellect is infinitely beyond ours, and, as RabbiSchneur Zalman of Liadi (the Alter Rebbe)7put it, one cannot question a desire

Nevertheless, to the extent that we may understand it, the Creation was an act of love. As the Scriptures say:

To Him Who made the great stars, for His love is infinite. (PsalmsCXXXVI, 7).

The Reason for Creation

The rationale for creating the physical world can, perhaps, be explained with the following parable: Once the Attribute of Love rose to the throne of G‑d and asked, L‑rd, why aren’t you kind? G‑d agreed and chipped off Divine sparks from His Infinite Light, thus creating souls. He placed these souls in the Heavenly Paradise, where they basked in the rays of G‑d’s glory. Once again the Attribute of Love rose to the Divine throne and asked, L‑rd, why aren’t you yet kind? G‑d agreed and took those souls from the Heavenly Paradise and placed them in human bodies on Earth. Now the Attribute of Love was satisfied.

What does this beautiful parable mean? Needless to say, there is no Attribute of Love separate from G‑d. This parable is poetic allegory. As is unequivocally stated by the Prophet Elijah, the Divine emanations, Sefiroth, which we call G‑dly attributes, are utterly one with and inseparable from the Creator. This story teaches that G‑d, who is the ultimate source of love and kindness, had unrealized potential to be kind, to love. Of course, loving oneself is not exactly what we call love. One needs someone other than himself to love, to whom to be kind. Just as a woman has a motherly instinct that drives her to give birth and nurse a child, so every potential, every talent, begs for fulfillment, for realization. Similarly, G‑d created souls to love them and bestow on them His infinite benevolence. G‑d thus expressed His kindness by placing the souls in the Heavenly Paradise, the world of bliss and eternal joy.

The problem was that G‑d had created these souls from His very Self, as there was nothing else. Therefore, the souls, who were thus actually G‑dly sparks, also inherited from their Creator the talent for love, the desire to be kind. They did not lack to whom to be kind as they had their Creator, their Father. They wanted to be kind to G‑d. They were, therefore, not happy in Paradise receiving free gifts from Him. The very nature of the one-way relationship with G‑d intrinsic to Paradise did not allow the souls to reciprocate. Their innermost wish was to be as their Creator, to love and be kind. G‑d, however, is perfect, and so, too, must be His love. For G‑d to be truly kind to the souls He had to make them happy. Therefore, He created this lowest of worlds, placed the G‑dly sparks in human bodies, gave them freedom of choice, and placed their fruition in their own hands. G‑d told the sparks to perfect this imperfect world, thereby becoming co-creators. He told them, as it were, “Make Me happy, then you will be happy, and thus I will be happy!”

We see now that, as Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan put it, the whole drama of the Creation is about love. It is about G‑d loving us and us loving G‑d. Thus the main Jewish prayer, Shema, brings to the fore the commandment to meditate upon G‑d’s love, to bring oneself to love G‑d.

Physics of the Spiritual World

One may wonder why such an exalted principle as the love of G‑d need be reduced to a ritual. How can a mere physical act such as donning tefillin or affixing a mezuzah add anything to a deep meditation and sincere feeling?

To understand this, it will help to make an excursion into what we might call the physics of spirituality. Firstly, how do the material and spiritual worlds differ? The principal difference is that the material world exists within physical space. In the spiritual universe, there is no space, as we know it. As Rabbi Schneur Zalman states in Tanya:

…In spiritual matters, the category of space is in no way applicable.

Spiritual worlds are therefore intangible. Nevertheless, we speak of being “close” to G‑d. Spiritual “space” in fact possesses certain geometrical characteristics. The spiritual world is a conceptual world; thus, “distance” there is measured by the similarity of the objects. The more two objects resemble one another, the “closer” they are said to be, and vice versa. Identical objects occupy the same “place” in this conceptual space, and opposite concepts are on opposite poles, infinitely far apart. Thus, the more a certain angel resembles G‑d’s attributes, the “closer” he is to G‑d and the “higher” on the ladder of creation.

The goal of life is to get closer to the Creator, as He is the ultimate goodness for which we all strive in our relentless pursuit of happiness. In a very important sense, however, we are inevitably infinitely far apart from Him. Since G‑d is the Creator and we are His creations, He is the Giver and we ultimately are the receivers, we are always on opposite poles. Therefore, in the conceptual spiritual space we can never get closer to G‑d.

As we have already explained, however, G‑d created the world only to make us happy; and the ultimate good He can give us is Himself. Since it is impossible to do this in the spiritual realm, G‑d created a material world wherein opposites could coexist in the same physical space. Therefore, He enclothed His will in His commandments and gave them to us as a mechanism through which we might attach ourselves to Him. Most of the commandments, therefore, are done through physical objects such as tefillin or mezuzah. These material objects become vehicles for the Divine will, and by performing commandments with them, we attach ourselves to G‑d. Paradoxically, in donning tefillin or affixing a mezuzah or performing any other commandment, we actually touch the Divine, embracing our Creator. The only way G‑d and a human can come together is through the medium of a material object with which one performs a Divine precept. The commandment to love G‑d is thus followed by commandments that allow us to achieve closeness to G‑d.

Symbolic of All of the Mitzvoth

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi explains that the commandment to love (i.e.,serve) G‑d with “all your heart” is fulfilled through the service of prayer, “with all your soul” through observing the Torah and mitzvot (commandments), and “with all your might” through the mitzvah of mezuzah. The commandment of mezuzah is, then, just as important as all the other commandments combined. The Alter Rebbe also derives this comparison from the custom of placing the Chanukah menorah in the doorway opposite the mezuzah, as we find in the Talmud:

The Chanukah Menorah shall be on the left and mezuzah shall be on the right.

The light of the menorah, on the left side of the doorway, represents the light of Torah. The mezuzah, on the right doorpost, represents mitzvoth (Torah commandments). The Tzemach Tzedek states so explicitly:

Mezuzah is equivalent to all of the mitzvoth.

In this portion, G‑d also commands us to study the words of Torah, to teach them to our children, to recite the Shema twice a day – every morning and evening – and to put on tefillin (phylacteries) every weekday.

Reward for the Mitzvah

It is in this portion that G‑d promises a reward for the observance of the precept of mezuzah:

...so that your days and the days of your children may be prolonged on the land which the L-rd swore to your fathers to give to them for as long as the heavens are above the earth.

Ten Commandments

The Zohar notes that this portion contains allusions to the Ten Commandments.

The Names

On the obverse side of the mezuzah we find two inscriptions. The first, in the middle of the parchment reads Sha‑DaY, the Almighty, which is one of the seven most sacred names of G‑d. The Sages underscore its particular relevance to mezuzah, reading the word Sha‑DaY as the acronym for Shomer Delathoth Yisrael – the Guardian of the Gates of Israel.

The other inscription is on the top of the parchment and is written upside down. It reads KUZU BMUKSZ KUZU. This cryptogram represents three names of G‑d: the L-rd our G‑d the L-rd.