A sad manifestation of the fear many Jews around the world are feeling these days—born of widespread anti-Semitism in the wake of the war with Hamas—has been an advertisement for the “Safe and Discreet Mezuzah Case.”
Since Jewish homes are often identifiable by the mezuzos on their entrances’ doorposts, there seems to be a market for something to allow the fearful to have their mitzvah and safety too.
The advertisement for the “Camozuzah” touts it as a “strong, durable and waterproof” way for Jews to obtain “spiritual protection for their home without attracting attention.” It is designed to look like a (non-spiritual) security device.
The fear of being outed as Jewish by one’s doorposts isn’t without basis. A man who broke into the home of a Jewish family in Studio City, California, yelling anti-Semitic slurs and “Free Palestine!” had allegedly earlier questioned the family about the mezuzah on their front door.
And on October 20, in one of hundreds of anti-Semitic acts in Paris since October 7, when Hamas gleefully butchered some 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped hundreds of others, a man set fire to the front door of an elderly French-Jewish couple. Their apartment, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, was the only one in their building with a mezuzah on its door.
And on the 29th, in Lyon, a Jewish woman was stabbed while at home by an assailant who painted a swastika on her door, next to the mezuzah affixed there.
Vandalizing of mezuzos themselves has also been occurring for years, both in the United States (repeatedly at Boston’s Northeastern University’s Hillel House, where Jewish students regularly meet) and in Europe (where, in 2013, for one example, a Belgian woman was severely beaten by neighbors, allegedly because she and her Israeli spouse had placed a mezuzah on the frame of their Antwerp home).
Ostensible anger over casualties in Gaza has morphed (surprise!) into overt anti-Semitism. The resurgence of Jew-hatred of late, even in our own country, has been flagrant.
At many of the large “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations we have seen in the US and Europe, there has been full-throated support for Hamas, even for the savagery it recently wreaked, the murder and mutilation of men, women and children. Flyers with photographs of the hostages held by Hamas, including those of women and children, have been torn down in multiple cities.
Hamas’ murderfest on October 7 was entirely in line with its foundational charter, which asserts that “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people.” And which invokes a hadith, an Islamic tradition, that “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O’ Moslems, O’ Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
According to the ADL, “in the month following Hamas’ terror attack on Israel, anti-Semitic incidents in the US increased by 316% compared [with] the same time period last year.”
Thinking about doorposts conjures the fact that they were also identifiers of Jewish homes millennia ago, on that special night in ancient Mitzrayim, when the blood of the korban Pesach, as per divine command, was daubed on the doorframes of Jewish dwellings.
And on Seder nights, when we commemorate the events before, during and after that ancient night, Jews the world over open their own doors and recite from their Haggados the words: “In each and every generation, there are those who stand against us to destroy us.”
Even in fairly recent times, some “progressive” Jews were discomfited by that declaration, feeling that it was overwrought, even paranoid.
But now they’ve come to recognize that it’s anything but.
I don’t think many Jews will remove or try to hide the mezuzos on their front doorposts. But the fact that there is a perceived market for a “Safe and Discreet Mezuzah Case”’ is indicative of the persistence of Jew-hatred even in our day. Of the unfortunate reality so bluntly expressed by the Haggadah.
“Never Again” has yielded to “Here We Go Again.”
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