hatam_soferet | Notes on checking mezuzot

I was going to give a class on checking your own mezuzah, but it got prevented by weather. Today I found the notes I’d made for it, so I’m typing them up.

But I’m not putting in the pictures here because that’ll take hours of scanning and photographing; if you want those you’ll have to get me to come give the class.

Anyway, this is what we would have covered:

Is the mezuzah written on parchment, or printed on paper?
Does it have all the words? (checking using a tikkun; checking using the internet)
Are all the original letters there? (flaking, damage)
Are they still in good repair? (cracking)
Theoretical interlude: why repairing letters out of order is problematic
Technical bit: checking to see if the letters have their proper form (this is the bit that requires lots of training and practice, but there are some things that you can see straight away, like letters which are connected, or really egregious malformations).

Such a class is not going to equip the average mezuzah-user to say “Yes, this mezuzah is definitely kosher,” but it will equip said user to know if their mezuzah is not kosher, or if they should be worried.

As ever, for more information I heartily recommend the book Tefillin and Mezuzos: A Pictorial Guide by Yerachmiel Askotzky. You can buy it here at his site.

Mirrored from hasoferet.com.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I bought my mezusa years ago at Torah Treasures in Hendon and went to Chabad but only to get my mezuza into the case. I had already rolled it. They just asked me where I got it from and said where I had it from and they did not check thoroughly just had glanze at it and assured me they are reliable shop who don't sell non-kosher mezuzot.

How do they know that they are reliable? Have they looked into it in the past?

Presumably...

I guess so. The shop is near to Chabad and the same area. I am sure lots of people bought mezuzot from there and got them checked by them. It is the only Jewish book shop that also has these small things like mezuzot in Hendon. The others are food shops or restaurants.

How often should you check your mezuzot?

Contemporary wisdom has it that you should check them twice in seven years.

Every time I hear that I think it sounds like a really odd way of specifying frequency. Does it mean that you should check it less than seven years from the last time you checked it? That gives some seven-year periods that only have one check in them. If you have at most 3½ years between checks then every seven-year period has at least two checks in it - but then why phrase it in this way?

Yeah, I think it's weird too. Not sure where that phrasing comes from - don't remember if it's in the gemara.

My guess is that most people don't get around to it within more than about six months' accuracy - sort of "I should get my tefillin checked, I guess," and then four months later "I really ought to get my tefillin checked."

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What about people who do it old school and actually write it on their door posts? Is it Kosher for everyone to do that or does it have to be in your family tradition? I saw atleast one house with it written in Tzvat I think.

Thanks for the interesting posts as usual!

Sarah / CarKeysImp from LJ

Well...the rules say a mezuzah has to be written on parchment, not on doorposts. So someone doing it directly onto the doorposts either lives in Bayit Rishon times or has some seriously weird stuff going down.

Ahhh- any insight on why the rules have made it so that you can't actually follow the instruction "and you shall write it on your doorpost"?

There's a reasonably strong view that it's deeply inappropriate to write pieces of The Book on anything other than parchment. It's already a stretch to write just the mezuzah and not the whole Torah, being that we really don't like to break the Torah up into chunks - but we let it pass for the mezuzah because you can't very well have a whole Torah on your door - but removing the parchment as well, that's a bit too much of a stretch, seems to me.

Wow! That is super interesting- how do people justify Chumashim?

Ah, hah, for that you should talk to MarGavriel, who is deeply engaged with that very question. MarGavriel, are you listening?

Hmm I guess not

I know, I actually thguhot about switching to a 3rd party comment system, but the advantages really outweighed the disadvantages. I can export my comments from Disqus, anyway, if I wanted to switch back. But, I doubt I'd do that. Hehehe.

This is super-cool! And it's definitely also true that while women wrinitg Perl or Ruby is awesome, any large-scale project also relies on artists, designers, testers, writers, communicators, note-takers, organizers, business-people, and scads of other behind-the-scenes volunteers, along with users who try things out and provide feedback, and we literally couldn't do it without them.

Great example of using blog comtmnes as a networking tool, Kristin. I've actually connected with people as a result of comtmnes I've left on other blogs (not theirs) and I've remained in contact with one of them two years later. In other words, don't underestimate the value of commenting on blogs! Sharing links on social networks is great, but have a limited shelf life whereas comtmnes stay on the blog as long as it remains online.Read Janet Barclay's post:

Notes on checking mezuzot

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old school?

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