Mezuza in Literature

Contemporary Jewish Italian writer and philosopher Dr. Alfonso Pacifici1 writes:

"Other nations, too, have inscribed various laws and slogans on their houses, on their monuments, but they have all fallen with their houses and monuments. They were proud enough to inscribe them in large letters on hardest stone, or to engrave them in bronze, on monumental sites. Thus, they thought, they would live through the centuries! Centuries have passed, and with them came the day of forgetfulness, of decay. The stones fell, the earth covered them, wars, fires destroyed them, or sometimes they were just simply forgotten. People went away or were deported to distant countries, displaced through wars, through plagues. Silence fell on the once so famous forums, grass grew on them and sand covered them. The contents of these inscriptions became obliterated... Later after a long night of centuries, men came, curious of knowing the past; they searched and toiled, made excavations and discovered fragments of old inscriptions, tried to decipher them, sometimes without success, some times using their imagination... until they found out the contents of this law which nonetheless had not been able to preserve its people from death.

“And throughout all these centuries, children were born to the children of Israel, first as citizens of their own land, and later dispersed among all countries, mostly persecuted, oppressed for their attachment to G-d's law. And the fathers, when their sons reached thirteen years of age, taught them to put Tefillin on their arms. And these sons became men, and found their companion for life, and when opening their new homes for the teaching of the Divine Word wrote down on the Mezuzah this Divine command, and, prior to any other thing, affixed it on the door-posts of their new houses. Thus, the Law of G-d remained living amidst the Jewish People, actual, fresh, superior to all other laws of the times.

“Not on stone, nor on bronze was this commandment inscribed, but on parchment, on humble parchment, attached to the doorpost. The door could fall down with the house, yet the ‘Mezuzah’ remained intact, together with the ardent desire of everyone who knew its value, to carry it with him, all through his life, to his house - wherever and whenever it might be - which The Almighty will give him as a place of rest....

“Nowadays, this tradition has become interrupted for many sons of Israel who are no more able to recognize the Divine contents of this idea, and have also followed the error of the world that wants to see out-dated superstitions in a Mezuzah failing to see in it the fulfillment of the supreme Divine commandment which - as such and only as such has been able to survive over the centuries more than the most imposing Monument.”