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.
2 comments
Miriam,
I certainly understand your frustration. It is not always easy to keep the mitzvot. I would like to point out a few things though regarding your comment.
1. Judaism believes in both the written and oral Torahs. So even though you are of course correct that the written Torah doesn’t elaborate the details of this commandment, that is not relevant to the observance of the Jewish religion since these laws are elaborated in detail in the works of the oral Torah such as the Talmud etc. Of course there are and have been in the past other religions that only accept the written Torah, and they can inturpret it however they wish, but that is not Judaism.
2. I agree with you that $70 is a lot of money, but who said that you have to spend $70 on a Mezuzah? We have kosher scrolls starting from about half that price! You can purchase a kosher scroll and wrap it in paper and pin it up to the door and you have fulfilled the Mitzvah. I am not saying that $36 is a negligible amount of money, but when you consider how much a door, or even a door knob costs, not to mention the rest of the house, I don’t agree that it is unreasonable for us to be commanded to spend another few dollars to affix a kosher Mezuzah.
3. Regarding your general comment that it is too expensive to be Jewish, I could’t agree with you more. That is one of the main factors that led me to pick up and move to Israel with my family a few years ago. Here it is not expensive to be Jewish. Much of the expense of being Jewish in America has to do with the unnatural situation of a Jew living a Jewish lifestyle in a non Jewish country.
In the mean time until you come join us in Israel, I would like to offer you a coupon code that I sent out the other day to all of our customers to celebrate our newly redesigned site. Enter code ‘NEWSITE’ in the coupon box, and you will get 10% off your order. It is still valid for the next five days.
Thanks for visiting,
Aaron Shaffier
So, you are saying that the mitzvah is not fulfilled unless the scroll is hand painted on lambskin? Does it acutally say that in the command? Does it not require of us to place these words on the doorposts of our homes? By touching the mezuzah as we come in and go out are we not remembering HaShem’s command and what it requires of us? $70.00 is just A LOT OF MONEY! Why does it have to be so expensive to be Jewish? We keep kosher and drive hundreds of miles to get to a kosher butcher, and pay almost double the price for the kosher meat. I would like to give some of that money to people who don’t even have food to eat or a home to live in. Things are skewed for the rich once again…sad
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