Protecting Yourself from Harm

Building an Iron Dome in our Personal Lives

A miracle took place in Tel Aviv this week.

For the first time in 20 years, a suicide bomber hid deadly explosives in his backpack and made his way to a crowded shul or stadium in Tel Aviv. Miraculously, the bomb detonated before he was able to reach his target, and his body was ripped to shreds. Thankfully, he alone was killed.

This world is a dangerous place. The Torah (Devarim 11:20)  teaches us how we can secure G-d’s protection over us and our loved ones by simply affixing a kosher Mezuzah on our doorposts. A kosher Mezuzah is meticulously written on parchment by an expert scribe, exactly as we write a Torah scroll. It contains the first two paragraphs of the Shma Yisrael prayer, as pictured here.

The Zohar (III, 300b), the foundational text of the Kaballah, teaches that the word Mezuzah is made of two words “Zaz Maves,” which means “repelling death.” Though the Mezuzah scroll is rolled with the writing on the inside, the three letters on the outside—Shin, Daled, and Yud—are an acronym for “Shomer Dalsos Yisrael, Guardian of the doors of Israel.”

The Giant Mezuzah at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv

The Mezuzah carries G-d’s protection guarantee for all those in the room it protects. The Torah tells us that when the Jews were preparing to escape from Egypt, they needed to paint the doorposts of their homes with the blood of the Passover lamb so that G-d Almighty would pass over their homes—striking the Egyptian firstborns and sparing the residents whose doorposts had been marked with G-d’s sign.

In 2020, as draconian COVID lockdowns spread through China, Rabbi Dovi Henig, the Chabad rabbi of Chengdu, swiftly took his family to live in Israel until things settled down. Upon that family’s return months later, they were shocked to discover their street had been closed by police. Apparently, thieves had broken into many of the homes on that street that were vacated during the lockdown. 

Before long came a puzzling update—the Henig’s home was the only one in their complex left untouched; everything remained just as they had left it.

Two weeks later, the local police chief invited Rabbi Henig for a meeting. “We caught the thieves,” he explained, “and the first question we asked was why they didn’t break into your home. They told us that while they were able to hack into all the security systems in the complex using Wi-Fi, your home had a strange system they weren’t familiar with. Unable to bypass it, they decided against breaking in and risking an alarm.”

The police proceeded to show Rabbi Henig pictures from the thieves’ phones showing the mysterious security system: it was the mezuzah on the family’s front door. “As always,” he said, “the Israelis have the most sophisticated security equipment.”

When Rabbi Yehuda the Prince received a precious jewel as a gift from a Persian official named Artaban, two thousand years ago, he reciprocated by sending him a Mezuzah scroll. Indignant and incensed, the Persian demanded to know why the rabbi had reciprocated his expensive gift with a mere “piece of paper!?” Calmly, the rabbi responded that, whilst Artaban had graciously sent him a jewel that he needed to protect, the rabbi had sent him a gift that would protect him! (Talmud Tractate Peah)

Indeed, when Ataban’s only daughter seemed to have lost her mind a short while later, no doctors were able to cure her. Only when Artaban affixed the Mezuzah to her doorpost, was her sanity restored. (Sheiltot d’Rav Achai, 145).

It’s not enough to have a Mezuzah on your door; the Mezuzah must actually be kosher. The Mezuzah must be checked and re-certified every three years at most, to confirm that it hasn’t succumbed to weather and other conditions that render it unfit. Just like your Wi-Fi needs to be properly connected to function, the Mezuzah draws G-d’s protection only when it’s certified as Kosher, and then only upon the room that it is in.

After Arab and German terrorists hijacked the Air France jet, flight 139 on Sunday, June 27th, 1976, over 100 Jewish passengers were held hostage in the abandoned airport terminal in Entebbe, Uganda.  Thankfully, the IDF was able to successfully execute its daring raid on Shabbos, July 3rd, safely bringing home  102 of the 106 hostages. Exactly one week after the rescue, the Rebbe spoke about the importance of the Mezuzah in every Jewish home and business to protect our nation. In a stunning conclusion, the Rebbe shared how all the Mezuzahs in the homes of the hostages had been checked and every single one of the hostages had some form of deficiency in the Kosher status of their Mezuzahs!

Far from being a punishment, the unkosher mezuzahs are merely a defect in our protective gear, allowing harm to penetrate. A theft that succeeds where there is a defective alarm system isn’t a punishment to the careless owner as much as it is a consequence of their negligence.

In these turbulent times, we need to do everything we can to ensure our safety and security. It’s well worth our effort to do whatever it takes to protect the ones we love.

Rabbi Dovid Vigler
Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens
6100 PGA Blvd, Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418
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