Mezuza 2

Mezuza 2

Moshe Ben-Chaim


Question: Recently a young girl had died from illness at a young age the rabbi's said check the mezuza when she was sick and found a letter in the mezuza was pasul and this letter started the name for the girls sickness (it was a mem and the sickness was meningitis)what do you make of this?

Reply: To answer your question, I would check mezuzot from 20 more people, many of which I am sure letters would be cracked and missing, and ask why these people aren't sick. The Torah rebukes such foolish practices. The Rambam speaks about those who give signs for themselves, and classifies them under idolatrous practices. I believe it is Perek 11 in Avoda Zara, in the Yad.

I talked with a friend tonight who told me they had a friend who was dying. She went to a rebbe, he said she would live, but she died. This has happened more than once.

Yes, some times coincidences happen. Talmud Sanhedrin gives this answer to those who asked why a gentile was healed upon leaving his church - coincidence happens. In your case, a 'mem' happened to be missing. That's all. No proven connection to the illness. A rabbi made a good point: If we follow this practice that the mezuza caused the death, what happened to the Jewish concept of reward and punishment, "each man in his own sin should die"? If one did not sin, and had a faulty mezuza, would the mezuza kill anyway? Do you think this is God's practice? Intelligence and knowledge of God's justice completely dismisses such cruelty. Torah ideals must appeal to man's mind, this is why God gave us a mind - to use it in Torah study. The Ibn Ezra says on the Aseres HaDibros in Shmos that if we find something with no reasonable understanding, even a mitzvah, we abandon it. We do not perform that which is nonsense. This is not God's will.

I would like to quote again the Shulchan Aruch, in the Gilyon M'harsha, Yoreh Daah, 289, page 113 on the bottom, "if one affixes the mezuza for the reason of fulfilling the command, one may consider that as reward for doing so he will be watched by G-d. But, if one affixes the mezuza solely for protective reasons, it in fact has no guidance, and the mezuza will be as knives in his eyes".