Washington Post journalist Sally Quinn wrote that she was tempted to remove the mezuzah from her doorpost amid mounting antisemitism but then she remembered that “the silence of good people enabled the Holocaust.”
Why does Quinn, who’s not Jewish, have a mezuzah on her door in the first place? In a Washington Post article published on Tuesday, Quinn wrote that when she and her late husband Ben Bradlee moved into their house 40 years ago, Bradlee’s closest friend, Art Buchwald, gifted them with a mezuzah. He nailed the mezuzah to their doorpost himself and explained: “I’m putting this up here for your protection. Don’t ever take it down.”
Quinn said that “years went by without incident,” adding that most people didn’t even notice the mezuzah. But one night, they held a dinner party and the Canadian ambassador and his wife, Allan and Sondra Gotlieb, who were Jewish, failed to show up. They started dinner without them but then the doorbell rang in the middle. It was the Gotleibs, who said that they had originally arrived on time but when they saw the mezuzah, they assumed they made a mistake. They drove around for almost an hour and then decided to try again – despite the mezuzah. “We all had a good laugh about that.”
Quinn continues by writing that in the wake of the war in Gaza, she considered removing the mezuzah for safety reasons.
” I agonized about whether I should take it down. Few would notice, and I would definitely feel safer. Yet it seemed to me that taking it down would be a betrayal of everything I believed in, maybe even a betrayal of Artie.”
“And then I thought about my father taking me to Dachau. Inscribed on a stone near the huge iron gate there are the words “Denket Daran Wie Wir Hier Starben” — “Remember how we died here.”
“I was stricken with shame. I knew that the silence of good people had enabled the Holocaust to take place. Of course I would not take the mezuzah down. It had protected me for 40 years. It would stay.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
1) Shomer Dalsos YISROEL – How exactly (if at all) did her Mezuzah protect her?
2) Do you really believe that Art Buchwald bought them a kosher mezuzah (presumably only a kosher one protects).
3) Do you even believe there is ANY klaff in the case (I have met many who say the case is the “mezuzah” and you can have one with or without the parchment inside).
4) Now, if perhaps she or her husband are actually Jewish, and if there was a klaff inside and it was kosher, and if it has indeed provided her protection, could you find out if it was ksav Ari, Beis Yosef or Velesh?
1) Shomer Dalsos YISROEL – How exactly (if at all) did her Mezuzah protect her?
2) Do you really believe that Art Buchwald bought them a kosher mezuzah (presumably only a kosher one protects).
3) Do you even believe there is ANY klaff in the case (I have met many who say the case is the “mezuzah” and you can have one with or without the parchment inside).
4) Now, if perhaps she or her husband are actually Jewish, and if there was a klaff inside and it was kosher, and if it has indeed provided her protection, could you find out if it was ksav Ari, Beis Yosef or Velesh?
5) Has someone on your staff mixed up Chanukah with Purim and Purim with April Fools Day?
useless article___what was your point……
Shauli, a mezuzah protects the house it’s on and the people of that house, even if they are not Jewish. That is apparent from the gemara’s story about Rebbi sending a mezuzah to King Artaban of Parthia. We also see from the gemara that it was common for travelers to take a mezuzah with them and put it up on their hotel rooms even if they were only staying for one night, and were not obligated to put one up, because they wanted the protection that the mitzvah gives.