The Mezzuzah's

 

My daughter Sarah went to Halifax on business. She was gone about a week. She lives in a high rise luxury building in Silver Sring, Maryland. They have 24 hour on site Security, cameras and a Concierge. 

When she left, this Mezzuzah, shown above, was hanging on her outside apartment door frame. Sue and I bought it for her when she moved out of our home and married. It has graced the outside door frame of every place she has lived for the last 19 years. Almost half her life. 

She came home to the photo shown below. It is  It is possible, but not very probable, that this was the work of an outsider. More than likely it was done by a custodian, or worse, by a neighbor in the building. Someone she sees each day.

I often wonder about the fate of the many Mezzuzahs which hung outside of my friends apartments when growing up in Brooklyn. My Father and my brother simply left ours when my Mom passed and my Dad moved out. 

I remember that as I left Apartment 2-H that last time, I only had a big scredriver with me and slid it under the edge of the Mezzuzah and pried it loose. I got married 2 years later to Sue, who is Christian, and hung it inside the house on our bedroom door frame. It has hung in that same spot in every home we have lived.

It was a small one, not very sturdily made, or even fancy. Several years ago my daughter bought me a new one,  much larger and more ornate. I took the older, smaller one, and placed the whole thing inside of the new one. And rehung it as one. Somehow that appealed to me. Maybe it represented a sign of continuity. The old one was a part of my life growing up. My Uncle Irving used to kiss his finger tips and then touch it each time he entered our apartment. They are shown, together in the next photo just before I rehung it here at our home on Stonecroft Lane.

No point to this; except that evil will always be around us. It takes many forms. And it is up to us all to report it when it happens, and move to stop it when we see it. And then replace the loss as best we can. It is both the most, and the least, that we can do.