Mezuzah Blog

Thanks to The Lansey Brothers’ Blog

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.

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

That is what the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week.  The ruling came in a case where Lynne Bloch of Chicago, put up a Mezuzah on the door to  her condo.  The home owners association at Shoreline Towers said that it was a violation of their rule against displaying items on the doors in the hallway.  It seems that a game of cat and mouse followed with the association removing the Mezuzah and Ms. Bloch replacing it and so on.  The jist of the decision was that the association has the right to make rules of this sort, as long as the are not specific to any religion.  You can read more about the decision here and here.

My question is, why can’t a home owners association in say a gated community do the same thing?  They would essentially be able to make a no Jews allowed rule in this way.  You can almost understand the logic in a condo where the association maintains the hallways and they are saying that they want a uniform look etc.  But the fact is that when you live in a gated community or even in many planned communities, there is also a home owners association that tells you which colors you can paint  your house and how tall you can let your grass grow etc.   I would love to hear the opinion of some lawyers out there if they think that this ruling could also apply to the communities that I mentioned.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was looking over our order history since we started back in 2004.  I realized that we have literally covered the planet with Mezuzahs.  People all over the globe have bought Mezuzahs from us.  I started picturing this image of the Earth covered in Mezuzahs.  Then I came accross some websites that have used Google Maps to display stuff like their different store locations etc.

I realized that I could do the same thing with Mezuzahs.  Today, I put up a new section on the website called Mezuzah Planet.  It allows customers to send us in a picture of them with their Mezuzah along with a little story about what it means to them.

Also, since I realize that nobody wants to be the first with these kind of things…we decided to make a prize.  For now, we will be awarding a $108 gift certificate to the best of every 10 submissions. If the feature becomes popular, we may have to do one certificate a month or something like that, but for now, if you submitt, you have at least a 1 in 10 chance.

I can’t wait to see what you all send in!

Since we started our website a few years ago, some of our best sellers have been Mezuzahs made from Jerusalem stone.  Mezuzahs like the Kotel Mezuzah or the Land of Israel Mezuzah have been favorites of our customers for years.

Recently, we got in six new products from the same manufacturer.  Some of these Mezuzahs are made out of pure Jerusalem stone.  Others are made out of Jerusalem stone as well as stone from several other parts of Israel.  The latter Mezuzahs allow you to bring something from all parts of the Holy Land into your home.

A few months ago, I had the privilege to visit in the factory of CJ Art in Yavne, Israel where these Mezuzahs are made.  I was so happy to see how all of the workers in the factory are Jewish.  A lot of factories in Israel employ Arab or foreign workers to save money.  The owner showed me all of the raw stone that they use to make the Mezuzahs and explained to me where each type was from.

These Mezuzahs are the real deal!

In October I reported to you that Florida’s Governor, Charlie Crist, had affixed a Mezuzah to his office in the Capitol. Crist, as you may have suspected, is not a member of the tribe. Some of you were in favor of this and some against.

Well, I guess that some of the Jewish members of government in Florida felt funny that the Gentile governor had a Mezuzah on his office and they didn’t. It seems that House Majority leader Adam Hasner (Jewish) called up Chabad’s Rabbi Oirchman and asked him to put up a Mezuzah on his office. Two weeks later the Rabbi got a call from the Minority Leader, Dan Gelber.

I wonder if we will see a day when there will be Mezuzahs on the White House and the Congress?

You can read the original article from Lubavitch.com here.

You may have noticed that we recently introduced a new product on our website.  It is the fabric Mezuzah (see them here and here).  I am not 100% sure, but I think we may be the only ones selling a product of this type.

 These Mezuzahs were made specially for us by Rachel Weinstein.  Rachel lives in the village of Tekoa in the Judea region of Israel.  She specializes in making all kinds of crafts from fabric.  She uses classic quilting techniques as well as hand embroidery work.

I met Rachel and we started talking about what kind of fabric products she could make for our website.  She said, “Why don’t I make a fabric Mezuzah?”  Although the idea seemed nice, I was immediately concerned that the scroll inside would not be protected enough by the soft fabric.  We came up with the idea of putting a hard plastic tube inside.  That is how the fabric Mezuzah was born.

Since this is a totally new idea, I would love to hear what you think about it.  Let me know in the comments.

stop Israels ultra-left media? Check out this story from ArutzSheva.com:

Workers for the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) have raised funds by themselves to affix mezuzot in studios and workrooms after the IBA did not comply with requests by employees, according to the Chabad website. The mezuzah is required by Jewish law and is found in every government room and on almost every store and home in the country.

There was no explanation from the IBA why its rooms lacked the mezuzah. Channel One television reporter Uri Revach, whose office is an informal synagogue, initiated the fundraising to buy 40 mezuzot.

However, dozens of IBA studios and workroom lack a mezuzah. “A kosher mezuzah affects the room to which it is affixed, and a kosher mezuzah at an office where it is decided what is broadcast will only help to create a positive influence,” he said.

I think stopping Kassam rockets may be a bit easier than influencing the Israeli media.

What do you think?