"Mezuza-gate" and all its implications.

This story is so bizarre. The NY Times reports:

Judith Regan was investigated in the spring of 2003 after an editor complained that she had boasted of removing the scrolls from her neighbors'’ mezuzas and replacing them with torn pieces from dollar bills.

A mezuza is a small slender case containing a scroll inscribed with a prayer that many Jewish families place beside their front doors...

...In that incident, an editor at ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins, said that in early May 2003 she was in Ms. Regan'’s office when the publisher made the remark that "“she and her former husband would go around their apartment building, changing mezuzas with bits of dollar bills,"” according to an individual involved in the investigation, whose account was confirmed by the two executives.

In my humble opinion, it's pretty unlikely that ridiculous prank ever happened, because had Judith Ragen opened the mezuzah cases in her building, chances are that many of them would haven been empty. Do you know how many Jews think a mezuza is a decorative Judaica item with a Hebrew letter that gets hung on a door? Next time you notice a mezuzah on an unlikely door (i.e. someone who is completely unaffiliated and most likely hung the mezuza up for nostalgic reasons, to attract Jewish customers, or because they got it as a gift), try and get a peak inside and notice if the case is empty.

In non-heimish establishments, mezuza cases are sold empty-- there's no way the average Jew would know better. But how about the observant people who spend outrageous amounts of money on mezuza cases that are original, handmade, one of a kind pieces of art, and then proceed to fill it with the least expensive, standard, least mehudar scroll? This would be an example par excellence of missing the tochen (essence) for the klippa (literally, encasing). What's making me think of all this is Judith Ragen's supposed dollar-stuffing stunt. People are upset that she would even joke about being so crass, but all I can think about is how many Jews voluntarily do the same thing (hanging bills on the wall) to themselves (amount varies per community).

****************

In the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the Marranos came up with many innovative ways of hiding their practice. But unlike prayer, shabbos or other private mitzvoth which could be observed undercover and in secret, mezuzah was by its very nature a public mitzvah that, if hung on any home's entrance, would immediately spell the family's demise! The Marannos ingenuously devised a most unlikely mezuza case that solved the problem-- a statuette of the Virgin Mary, which had a hollowed out foot with a mezuza scroll hidden inside. The statuette was hung by the front door of their house, so that when they kissed the Madonna upon entering and exiting their homes, they would actually be kissing the mezuza.

Because I'm in the mood, let's play a little reductio ad absurdam... We're told materialism is the idol, so to speak, of the current age. In that sense, kissing the virgin Mary and kissing a flashy mezuza that screams $$$ is spiritually equivalent. In fact, kissing the virgin Mary may be less morally questionable because it's clear that the Marronos did not genuinely worship her. Money and materialism, on the other hand, are real objects of devotion.

****************

I vaguely remember my great-grandmother, who passed away when I was 5 or 6, hanging all sorts of strange things above the doorpost to "compliment" the mezuza. I distinctly recall a matzah hanging in a ziploc from pesach to pesach above the door; then there was also the ritual of smearing honey in the doorpost around the new year. My husband's grandmother, may she live long, is also unusually focused on the mezuzah, kissing it many times a day while mumbling her personal requests to G-d.

****************

Mezuza means many different things to different people. It's unfortunate that to Judith Regan it was a bowl of soup to spit in, on the way to the mouthes of the people she hated. On the other hand, because of her sophomoric act, the NY Times had the opportunity to educate its readers about exactly what a mezuza really is, "a small slender case containing a scroll inscribed with a prayer that many Jewish families place beside their front doors." Not bad at all.