Mezuzah Blog

Thanks to The Lansey Brothers’ Blog

Some of you may have tried to visit our site in the last 12 hours or so and found that the site was down.  We had a really horrible experience with our web hosting company.  When we realized that the site was down, we contacted customer support right away.  It took them almost 7 hours to get the site back up.  Also during that time, none of our company email addresses worked.

Please except our apologies if anyone was inconvenienced by the down time.  We pay a lot of money to host with a company that has a reputation for high quality hosting.  We didn’t expect this kind of thing with them.

In any case, keep your eyes on MezuzahStore.com.  In the near future we are going to be upgrading the entire site.  It is going to be very nice when it is done.

You will be happy to hear that the Israeli athletes at the Olympic village will have Mezuzahs on their door.  Rabbi Freundlach of Chabad-Beijing affixed them this week.  The Rabbi also is making sure that there will be kosher food available at all times at Dini’s Kosher Restaurant, situated near the American Embassy.

You can read the full story here.

I am gonna go ahead now and take the liberty of posting it on Mezuzah Planet.  (But it won’t qualify for the $108 gift certificate.)

I wonder how the sweet and sour chicken is at Dini’s?

On Sunday I posted about my little project to take over the Google search results for terms like “Printable Mezuzah”.   My goal was that people who are searching for a printable Mezuzah scroll would end up on a page on my site that explains why it is so important to have a real, Kosher Mezuzah scroll.

Well now it is Tuesday and it seems to be working quite well.  If I do a Google search for “Printable Mezuzah” here is what I get:

You can see in the image above that the top result is a site that links my blog post.  The second link is to the page I created.  The third link is to the blog post.  Of course at the time that you are reading this the results on Google may have changed.  But at least for now I feel I have succeeded in my goal.

Its coming up on a year since we moved here to Tekoa, Israel.  The longer I am here the more I realize how amazing Tekoa is.  I have really been wanting to build a website dedicated to Tekoa.  I have been very busy this year and haven’t had the time to get to it.  In the mean time this little Tekoa Page on Squidoo will have to do.

The only other sites out there that I can find about Tekoa are:

Tekoa.co.il 

Tekoa - Wikipedia

Those sites really don’t give you much of a feeling of what Tekoa is about.  I will work on my new page some more this week and try to make it into a starting point for people who want to learn about Tekoa.

Could this too be a product of the tough economy?  Lately I have noticed that a lot of people reach our website searching for terms like “free printable mezuzah” or “printable mezuzah scroll“.  Of course, we don’t have any such item to offer because we very much believe that every Jewish home needs to have Kosher Mezuzahs.

I think that what is happening is that people are finding the picture of our Kosher Mezuzah Scroll, printing it out, and using it in place of a real Mezuzah.  I am a bit disturbed by this and its not for the reason you think.

I actually would love to offer a free printable Mezuzah scroll!  As it is, we hardly make anything off of the Kosher ones.  The dollar is really low now and the scrolls are getting more and more expensive.  We have to put a whole lot of effort into obtaining scrolls that are truly Kosher at a price that is somewhat affordable (the really good quality scrolls cost around $70).  Then we have to put more work into checking each scroll in our workshop to make sure that it is 100% Kosher.  Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to personally stand behind the product.

If we could offer a free downloadable Mezuzah scroll, we could focus our energy on selling the Mezuzah covers which have a much higher profit margin and don’t require nearly as much effort on our part to obtain.  But then we would be defeating the primary goal of our website which I started originally as an effort to get Kosher Mezuzahs into the hands of Jewish people all over the world.  So you can imagine that I am disturbed to see that people are printing the picture of our Kosher Mezuzah and using it as a Mezuzah scroll.

So today I made a new page that I think will eventually rank quite high in the search engine results when someone searches for things like “printable mezuzah”.  The page explains briefly why we can’t offer such a product and refers the visitor to our Kosher Mezuzah scrolls.  It will be interesting to see what happens.

But I just think it is very cool.  Take a look at my Judaism knol and you will see a very interesting conversation going on in the comments.  This is the kind of thing that I love about the internet.

I even started a Knol Blog today on blogger.  Can’t wait to see what will happen with it.

Google just came out with a new service called Knol.  It seems their idea is to make a sort of Wikipedia that is written by individual authors instead of by community collaboration.  With Wikipedia, there can only be one ariticle on any given subject, and it is the job of the community to maintain it in an accurate state.

The Idea of Knol, is to allow anyone to write on any topic.  Over time, the articles that are accurate and informative will rise to the top through community ranking and commenting.   This ultimately allows authors, who publish under their real name, to establish credability in their field.

I am very excited about this.  I love to share what I know with others.  I think this Knol thing is going to become a really great platform to do it.  Here are my first two contributions:

Judaism

Mezuzah

Last week I launched this Mezuzah Planet project. I knew from the start that the most difficult part of it would be to get the first few post.  Of course nobody wants to be the first.  That’s why I made a contest to win a $108 gift certificate. After a couple of days, I still only had 2 submissions.  I really wanted to get the ball rolling.  So last night I went to Flickr and started looking for pictures of people putting up their Mezuzah.  I found quite a few.  So I sent out emails to some of them telling them about our project and inviting them to submit their picture.  I figured that people who already had a digital picture would be more likely to submit it with their story.

When I came back in the morning, I was a bit upset to see what was in my mailbox.

Dear Aaron,

Thanks so much for writing and for your interest in my picture of the mezuzah. Unfortunately, I do not feel comfortable accommodating your request.

As I noticed on your online map, Rabbi Shaffier (I’m not sure if that is you or someone else) lives in and gets his scrolls from Tekoa, which is an Israeli settlement inside the West Bank. While Im an ardent Israel supporter, I do not feel comfortable associating myself with businesses or individuals that perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through settlements in the West Bank (even though I know that Tekoa rabbi Menachem Froman is a strong supporter of Israeli-Palestinian peace).

Sincerely,
-Rob

I wasn’t really so surprised by this email. When I put up my picture on the Mezuzah Planet Map showing where I live, I knew that it may cause controversy.  Its just that I can’t help being disappointed every time that I hear this kind of thing from my fellow Jews.  I wrote back to him:

Dear Rob,
I am sorry to hear that you will not be submitting to our Mezuzah Planet Map. As to your comments regarding my town of Tekoa being a “settlement”, let me refer you to the first couple and last couple of verses in the book of Amos.

Although I didn’t quote the verses in my reply (I didn’t want to go too ‘Old Testament’ on him), I was referring to the following verses:

1:1 The words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa—what he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.

Then the rest of the book speaks of the terrible things that will happen to the nation of Israel due to their sins. Then in the end it says:

9:11 “In that day I will restore David’s fallen tent. I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be, 12 so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name,” declares the LORD, who will do these things. 13 “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. 14 I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. 15 I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the LORD your God.

Although I didn’t elaborate on my intention in my response, if he took the time to look at the verses he will see what my intention is. Amos the prophet lived in the same “settlement” that I live in over 2,000 years ago. And he is the very prophet who promised us that in the end we would return to this place and rebuild ruined cities.

Now here’s the thing. I understand (sorta) people who say, “Those Jews are messing it up for everybody, if they would just get out of that land, the whole world wouldn’t have to put up with terrorism.” I think that they are greatly mistaken but I understand that they just want peace and quiet and to be left alone. What gets me is that a guy who bothers to put up a Mezuzah - in fulfillment of a Biblical commandment - would be so anti Biblical in his views on the Israeli situation.

I concluded my short reply:

In any case, I wish you much peace and happiness in your occupied Native-American home in America.

Aaron

The thing that bothered me the most about his response to me was this. Here is this guy who I think lives in Los Angeles (if I am correct based on his pictures on Flickr) telling me that he cannot support my business because it is connected with the “settlements”. The United States stole California from Mexico. Mexico had a revolution ’stealing’ it from the Spanish who in turn had stolen it from the Native Americans. Here he is, a Jew, living comfortably in a land that non-Jewish white people stole from the Natives and judging me for living in our national homeland that has had Jews living here for over 3,000 years. The only way that I can understand this is to say that it is Jewish Antisemitism.

Then I was thinking that maybe I am being to harsh on the poor guy.  Here he is living in Los Angeles (I lived there once too) watching CNN and reading the LA Times.  He is probably just a bit brainwashed by what the media is feeding him.  They try to make it seem like the Jews who live in the Judea region (”West-Bank”) are a bunch of wild, violent types and we are terrorizing our Arab neighbors.  So I thought I would go ahead and post a few pictures to show you my kids and some kids of our Arab neighbors and let you be the judge.

Us

Them

From time to time, I like to look through the statistics for our website.  I keep on top of how people find us.  If it is from Google or if it is from some other page that links to us etc.  Today I was going through the stats and I found a new link that I had never seen.  It was from a site called AboutUs.org.  I wasn’t familiar with the site.  Part of what they do is to provide a platform for users to report their experience with different websites.  I was happy to see that they have a page dedicated to MezuzahStore.com.  When I checked it out I was a bit surprised to see the following comment posted from a user who calls him/her self “vmirzaye”.

There customer contact center number DOES NOT work! I called Aron Sheifer directly and he hung up, telling me “I have the wrong #”. The site charged my credit card 3 times, incorrectly. DO NOT ORDER ANYTHING FROM THEM!! 11:19, 27 May 2008 (PDT

It is not so much that I was bothered that there was a negative comment. It was more the content of the comment that disturbed me.  You see, I am the ‘Aron Shifer’ (correctly spelled Aaron Shaffier) that he/she is talking about.  I know for a fact that the story never happened.  In fact, I don’t answer the phones at all because I live in Israel.  The more I thought about the post, the more that I realized that it was someone (perhaps a competitor) who was trying to harm me and my business for personal reasons.

In the end I decided that the best thing to do was to post a reply and lay out my case.  Here is what I posted.

This comment was obviously posted by someone who has something personal against me or is running a competing website. Perhaps they are the owner of one of the several sites that has popped up in the last years that try to imitate ours and draw off of unsuspecting customers. Here is why I am sure this is the case:.

1. In the post, my name is mentioned as Aron Sheifer. My correct name is Aaron Shaffier. What is interesting about this is that my friends and acquaintances call me by the Yiddishized form ‘Aron’ or ‘Arun’. Also my last name, although spelled Shaffier, is pronounced Sheifer. If this was some random customer who found our site on the internet, and purchased and then had a bad experience, their only knowledge of my name would be what is printed on our website. The very way that they spell it proves that they know me personally or are in my business field and know of me from colleagues.

2. They claim to have called me personally. How do they have my personal number? I live in Israel! We have an employee in Oxnard, CA who deals with all phone calls. I sometimes will deal with issues that have been emailed, but I do not answer the phones from Israel.

3. Why would we charge their card 3 times? All of our orders go through an automated system which is linked in with Authorize.net, one of the largest credit card processors on the internet. We never once have had an issue of a card being charged multiple times. It is very clear that this person who is either a competitor or has some personal vendetta against me is trying to invent a nightmare story that will be sure to scare away customers. From a psychological point of view, you can understand their intent from their conclusion, “DO NOT ORDER ANYTHING FROM THEM”.

4. They say that our phone number doesn’t work. Unlike most websites, we do not bury our customer service number on some page that you have to search for. We post it loud and clear on the top of EVERY page on our site. If you are wondering, try giving a call yourself. I cannot say that we answer it 24/7. After all we are not Walmart of Costco, we are a small website selling a niche product and we have one person doing customer service part time. But the number does work and if you leave a message you will get a return call. In addition we offer email customer service as well as Live Chat that is often available. (Also posted on the top of every page).

In any case, despite the obvious bad intent of the this person’s post, I would like to thank them for giving me an excuse to share all of the reasons why you should feel great about shopping at our site. I believe that the truth is something that can be seen clearly by anyone with open eyes and that any person who reads the childish post and my reply will see which one is true. 01:34, 16 July 2008 (PDT)

The greatest thing about the internet is that it allows an open forum for all kinds of people to speak their mind. A site like AboutUs.org works very well when you are dealing with a large business that is shipping hundreds of orders a day. Then you have enough customers who will go there and post their experience. Even if you have a couple of people with bad intentions, they will be drowned out by the hundreds of positive post which are posted by real customers. In the end the consumer will be able to tell what is the truth by seeing the overwhelming consensus.

The problem arises when you have a smaller site like ours. We have a much smaller base of customers. This means that one or two people with bad intentions can go and make a false post like this one without much or any response from all of the real customers who have had a good experience.

I guess that in this case all I can do is to make my case in the response and to ask all of my customers who have had a good experience to go to AboutUs.org and post positive comments about us.  If you take the time to do that, I thank you in advance.

Aaron Shaffier

Owner - MezuzahStore.com