Are there ways of hiding a mezuzah in times of danger?

Responsa in a Moment

Volume 18, Number 1

January 2024

Are there ways of hiding a mezuzah in times of danger?

(Yoreh De’ah 289)

by Rabbi David Golinkin

In memory of two of the IDF soldiers who fell in the line of duty,
Lt. Yanai Kaminka z”l, who was killed in action on October 7, 2023 and
Sgt. Major (reserve) David Schwartz z”l who was killed in Gaza on January 8, 2024.
May their memories be for a blessing.

Question from Rabbi David Touboul, Maayane Or Congregation, Nice, France:

To my teacher and rabbi, Shalom rav,

I hope you are well, along with all your relatives.

Here in France, anti-Semitism is on the rise, and many Jews are hiding their identity in public so as not to be harmed.

From what I hear and read, men and women are hiding their jewelry such as the Star of David or Chai, they do not speak about Israel loudly in the street, or men hide their kippah with a hat.

All this worries me as a French citizen and as a Jew, but does not bother me as a rabbi.

What does bother me is that Jews are encouraged to hide the mezuzot at the entrance to their apartments by bringing them inside, to affix them on the inside of the entrance to the house.

This fact is very sad and disturbing in and of itself, but I want to know how I should rule if they come to me and ask if this is permissible according to Halakhah?

After all, the Shulhan Arukh writes in two places that the mezuzah should be placed “on the outer tefah [=handbreadth]” of the doorpost (Yoreh De’ah 285:2) or “in the handbreadth [of the doorpost] adjacent to the outside” (289:2).

The question is whether there is an historical precedent in the codes of Jewish law (it goes without saying that our time is not similar to the time of the Nazi persecutions and the like), or archaeological proof that the shape of the doorposts of the ancients and ours are different.

Thank you in advance for your response to this question.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi David Touboul

Responsum: I am very sorry to hear about the growing anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States. At first glance, this is a new question, but unfortunately, “there is nothing new under the sun.” In the past as well, Jews tried to hide their mezuzot at a time of danger.

I. First suggestion: hang the mezuzah in a different place

We have learned in Bavli [the Babylonian Talmud] Shabbat 21b, in the section dealing with Hanukkah:

Our Sages have taught… the Hanukkah lamp, it’s a mitzvah to place it at the entrance to his house, on the outside…
And in a time of danger (she’at sakanah) he places it on his table [inside] and that is enough.

And so have we learned in Pesikta Rabbati (Piska 2, ed. Meir Ish Shalom, fol. 4b-5a), which includes sermons from the Land of Israel from the fifth to the ninth centuries:

Our Sages have taught: And in a time of danger (she’at sakanah) he lights inside his house.

There is a dispute as to the nature of this danger (see the Bibliography at the end of the responsum). Rashi and Tosafot to the passage in Shabbat, as well as Professors Louis Ginzburg, Louis Finkelstein, A.S. Rosenthal, and Moshe Benovitz believe that this was a decree of the fire worshippers in Babylon because fire was an integral part of Zoroastrian worship. They rely, among other things, on Shabbat 45b and Gittin 16b-17a.

On the other hand, Rabbi Tzvi Menahem Pineles and Professors Gedalyahu Alon and Saul Lieberman believed that this was the “danger/time of danger” mentioned almost twenty times in Tannaitic literature, which according to Prof. Lieberman was the first stage of the Hadrianic persecutions before the “decrees of destruction” (gezeirot hashmad) during the Bar Kokhba rebellion.

I tend to agree with the second group of scholars, but, for our purposes, we do not have to decide whether this danger occurred in Babylon or Israel. According to the beraitot in Shabbat and Pesikta Rabbati, if there is mortal danger, one places the Hanukkah lamp on his table inside and that is enough, even though one is not fulfilling the mitzvah of pirsumei nisa, of publicizing the miracle. And so ruled the Rambam, Laws of Hanukkah 4:8 and the Tur and Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim 671:5.

If so, maybe it’s possible to hang the mezuzah inside the house and that is enough? The answer is that this is forbidden, as we shall see below. The reason is probably because a mezuzah is a Biblical commandment — “And you shall write them on doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut. 6:9; 11:20) — whereas the Hanukkah lamp is a rabbinic commandment.

Indeed, the Tannaim [the Sages at the time of the Mishnah] discussed our question in Tosefta Megillah 3:30, ed. Lieberman, p. 362:

A person who hangs his mezuzah inside his entrance, it’s a danger and there’s no mitzvah in it.
If he put [the mezuzah] on a stick and hung it behind the door, it’s a danger and there’s no mitzvah in it.

Prof. Lieberman explained in his Tosefta Kifshutah that if a person tried to deceive the Romans in the time of danger and hung the mezuzah on a string from the door lintel inside the door opening — he risked his life for nothing, but has still not fulfilled the mitzvah. Or if a person put the mezuzah on a stick and hung it behind the door — he risked his life for nothing, but has still not fulfilled the mitzvah.

Indeed, there are similar laws in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Megillah 4:12, ed. Akademia, col. 774 = ed. Venice, fol. 75c = ed. Vilna, fol. 33b) and in Bavli Menahot 32b (and see the discussion by Lieberman 1955, pp. 1212-1213), and it was also codified by Maimonides, Laws of Mezuzah 5:8.

II. A second suggestion: carve an indentation inside the doorpost and put the parchment inside

We have learned in Bavli Menahot 33b: “Rav Yosef the son of Rava preached in the name of Rav: If he deepened [the mezuzah] by a handbreadth, it’s invalid” and this was codified by the Rambam, Laws of Mezuzah 5:8. Here is the language of the Shulhan Arukh Yoreh De’ah 289:4 (which is almost identical to that of the Tur): “How does he attach the mezuzah? He hammers it with nails in the doorpost or he carves a groove in it and fixes it there, and he should not carve deeper than a tefah (handbreadth) in depth, and if he does so it is illegal.” A tefah is the width of four fingers of the hand, i.e., approximately 8-10 cm. In other words, you don’t have to put the parchment in a mezuzah case in order to hang it on the doorpost. It’s permissible to carve a groove inside the doorpost and put the parchment inside. Such a mezuzah does not protrude and it’s difficult to see it from a distance or from the street.

III. A third suggestion: drill a horizontal hole in the doorpost and insert the mezuzah inside the hole

This was the custom in the house of the famous Tanna, Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi, according to the aforementioned Yerushalmi Megillah:

Rabbi Jeremiah in the name of Rabbi Shmuel bar Rabbi Yitzhak:
Beit mezuzato, the house of the mezuzah of Rebbe [=Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi] was made like a נגר  (neger, a door bolt).

One can assume that there is a scribal error here, which is quite common in the Yerushalmi, because “the house of the mezuzah” cannot be made as a door bolt, and because this phrase does not appear anywhere else in the Yerushalmi (Moshe Kosovsky, Otzar Leshon Talmud Yerushalmi, Otzar Hashemot, Jerusalem, 1985, p. 635). On the other hand, the phrase shel beit rebbe, of the house of Rebbe, and the like appears some thirty times in the Yerushalmi, including the phrase “neger shel beit rebbe, the bolt of the house of Rebbe,” which appears five times in Yerushalmi Shabbat fol. 16b = Yerushalmi Eruvin fol. 26c (ibid., p. 636). Therefore, I suggest correcting the statement in the Yerushalmi according to the parallel passage in the Bavli, which we shall quote below:

The mezuzah of [the house of] Rebbe was made like a neger, a door bolt.

And here is the parallel passage in Bavli Menahot 33a:

Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: If he made the mezuzah like a neger, it is invalid.
Is this so?! But when Rav Yitzchak bar Yosef came [from Eretz Yisrael to Bavel] he said:
All of the mezuzot of the house of Rebbe were made like a neger!…

A neger is a door bolt, as we have learned in Mishnah Bava Metzia 8:7: “Whoever rents a house to someone, the landlord is required to provide the door, the neger and the lock, and everything that is the work of a craftsman” as well as in Tosefta Bava Batra 3:1, ed. Lieberman, p. 138: “He who sells the house, sold the door and the neger and the lock.” The difficulty is that sometimes it’s a vertical bolt that goes up inside the lintel as in Bavli Bava Batra 101a-b, and sometimes it’s a horizontal bolt that moves from side to side as in the above sources.

Indeed, Eliezer ben Yehudah already emphasized both meanings in his dictionary. Rabbi Prof. Daniel Sperber summarized all the approaches of the Rishonim [medieval rabbis] and proved that both types of bolt existed, and here the meaning is that they made a horizontal hole in the doorpost and inserted the parchment inside. Indeed, this is how Rashi interpreted the abovementioned passage from Menahot (33a, s.v. asa’ah k’min neger): “that he affixed [the mezuzah] and inserted it the doorpost, like the bolt which the carpenters insert in the wall like this [and then there is a picture of a doorpost with a mezuzah sticking horizontally into the doorpost like a bolt].”

However, one could argue that it’s forbidden to affix a mezuzah like a bolt because the Amora Rav forbade this in Menahot, and so ruled the Rambam in the Laws of the Mezuzah 5:8 and the Tur and Rabbi Yosef Karo in Yoreh De’ah 289:6.

However, it’s not clear why they ruled that way. After all, there is a dispute here between the Amora Rav who forbids a mezuzah in the form of a bolt and Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi who actually did so in practice. First of all, why rule according to an Amora against a Tanna? Second, Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi was Rav’s teacher. There is a Talmudic principle, “the words of the rabbi and the words of the pupil, who do you listen to?” This usually means that a Jew must listen to God, the rabbi, and not to another Jew, the pupil, but in the course of time, it also became a halakhic principle: that you do not rule according to the pupil when he disagrees with his teacher (Entziklopedia Talmudit, vol. 7, col. 79).

On the one hand, there is a Talmudic principle that the Amora Rav is “[like] a Tanna and may disagree [with a Tanna]” (Eruvin 50b and five other places in the Bavli; Yad Malakhi, Kelalei Hagemara, paragraphs 552-555), and according to this principle, it’s permissible for Rav disagree with Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi.

But, on the other hand, there is a Talmudic principle that “Rebbe and his colleagues, the halakhah follows Rebbe” or “the halakhah follows Rebbe when he is opposed by one colleague” (Yerushalmi Demai 2:1, fol. 22d = Yerushalmi Terumot 3:1, fol. 42a;  Rabbi Yosef Karo in the Kesef Mishneh to Rambam, Beit Hebehirah 3:12; Klei Beit Hamikdash, beginning of Chapter 8; and Biyat Hamikdash, beginning of Chapter 5; Yad Malakhi, paragraphs 175, 225, 232, 238). If the halakhah follows Rebbe against his colleague, how much the more so when he disagrees with his student Rabbi!

Furthermore, there is another well-known Talmudic principle that “ma’aseh rav, action is great,” that when something was done in practice, it becomes a precedent (see my book The Status of Women in Jewish Law: Responsa, Jerusalem, 2012, pp. 251, 292). As we have seen above, it’s written both in the Bavli and in the Yerushalmi that all the mezuzot of Rebbe’s house were made like a bolt. In other words, this is not a theoretical halakhah, but this is what they did in practice.

Therefore, since this is a time of danger, we can rely upon Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi and it’s permissible to drill a horizontal hole in the doorpost, roll up the mezuzah and put it inside.

IV. Pikuah Nefesh

As is well-known, pikuah nefesh [saving a life], sets aside all the commandments in the Torah except for idol worship, forbidden sexual relationships and murder (Sanhedrin 74a and Rambam, Hilkhot Yesodei Hatorah, Chapter 5).

Therefore, if hanging a mezuzah outside the house endangers the lives of Jews in France or elsewhere in the Diaspora, it’s permissible and even obligatory to remove the mezuzah outside the house until the danger passes, but one must continue to hang mezuzot in the rooms inside the house.

We hope and pray that things will calm down soon, both in Israel and the Diaspora.

David Golinkin
Jerusalem
16 Kislev and 12 Shevat 5784

​  Bibliography

 I. About she’at sakanah (a time of danger)

Alon – Gedalyahu Alon, Jews, Judaism and the Classical World, Jerusalem, 1977, p. 12

Benovitz — משה בנוביץ, “על שעות סכנה בארץ ישראל ובבבל”, תרביץ עד/א (תשס”ה), עמ’ 20-5

Finkelstein — Rabbi Prof. Louis Finkelstein, JQR 17 (1926-1927), pp. 89-90

Ginzberg 1928 – הרב פרופ’ לוי גינצבורג, גנזי שכטר, חלק א’, ניו יורק, תרפ”ח, עמ’ 476

Ginzberg 1941 — הרב פרופ’ לוי גינצבורג, פירושים וחידושים בירושלמי [ברכות], חלק א, ניו יורק, תש”א, עמ’ 279, הערה 33

Lieberman 1944 — Saul Lieberman, “The Martyrs of Caesarea”, Annuaire de L’institut de Philologie… et Slaves VII (1939-1944), pp. 424, 427

Lieberman 1962 — הרב פרופ’ שאול ליברמן, תוספתא כפשוטה, חלק ה’, סדר מועד, ניו יורק, תשכ”ב, עמ׳ 1214-1212

Lieberman 1975 — הרב פרופ’ שאול ליברמן, “רדיפת דת ישראל” בתוך: ספר היובל לכבוד שלום בארון, חלק עברי, ירושלים, תשל”ה, עמ’ רט”ו = שאול ליברמן, מחקרים בתורת ארץ ישראל, ירושלים, תשנ”א, עמ’ 350

Lieberman 1984 — שאול ליברמן בתוך: א”ש רוזנטל ושאול ליברמן, ירושלמי נזיקין, ירושלים, תשמ”ד, עמ’ 137-136

Pineles —  הרב צבי מנחם פיניליש, דרכה של תורה, ווינא, 1861, עמ’ 47-46

Rosenthal –Talmudica Iranica”הרב פרופ’ א”ש רוזנטל, “למילון התלמודי
שאול שקד, עורך, איראנו-יודאיקה: לחקר פרס והיהדות, ירושלים, תשמ”ב, עמ’ 42-38, 63-58 = א”ש רוזנטל, עיונים בספרות התלמוד, ירושלים, תשפ”א, עמ’ 499 ואילך.

II. About the word neger

Ben Yehudah — אליעזר בן יהודה, מלון הלשון העברית, כרך ד’, ניו יורק ולונדון, 1960, עמ’ 3525-3524, ערך” נגר”

Krauss — הרב פרופ’ שמואל קרויס, קדמוניות התלמוד, כרך א, חלק ב, ברלין-וינה, תרפ”ד, עמ’ 364-363

Sperber — הרב פרופ׳ דניאל שפרבר, תרבות חומרית בארץ ישראל בתקופת התלמוד, ירושלים, תשנ”ד, פרק שמיני

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