{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "mezuzah",
 "type": "amulet",
 "names": {
  "name": "Mezuzah",
  "native": "מְזוּזָה",
  "script": "Hebrew",
  "lang": "he",
  "said": "me-zu-ZAH, plural mezuzot; the word means 'doorpost'",
  "aliases": [
   "mezuza",
   "klaf"
  ]
 },
 "etymology": {
  "root": "Biblical Hebrew mezuzah, 'doorpost' — the upright that carries the lintel; it takes on the meaning 'inscribed parchment' only in post-Biblical Hebrew, from the Deuteronomy commandment to write the words on the doorposts",
  "note": "The root is disputed. One reading takes it from z-w-z, 'to move or shift', the doorpost being what lets the door move. Another takes it from Akkadian mazzāzu, 'stand', from izuzzu, 'to stand' — the fixed part as against the revolving door, which matches the Septuagint's σταθμός. Some researchers doubt the Akkadian borrowing.",
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-mezuzah"
 },
 "region": [
  "levant",
  "diaspora",
  "north-america"
 ],
 "countries": [
  "IL",
  "US"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "era": "living",
  "status": "living",
  "portable": "placed",
  "restricted": "open",
  "hemisphere": [
   "N",
   "E",
   "W"
  ]
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "A strip of parchment, handwritten by a trained scribe in indelible black ink with a quill, carrying Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and 11:13–21. It is rolled, put in a case, and fixed to the right-hand doorpost, in the upper third at about shoulder height, within about eight centimetres of the opening. The case can be anything — silver, wood, stone, ceramic, pewter, polymer clay — and the case is not the point; a photocopy on paper inside a beautiful case is not a valid mezuzah.",
  "story": "Jewish law does not class a mezuzah as an amulet, and the atlas has to say so before it says anything else. It is a mitzvah, a commandment, one of the 613, and its stated purpose in the verses that command it is educational: to keep God's words in front of a person, taught to their children, spoken of at home and on the road.\n\nThe objection is on the record and it is old. Maimonides, in the Mishneh Torah, allows writing Shaddai on the outside of a mezuzah and then draws the line hard: \"Those, however, who write the names of angels, other sacred names, verses, or forms, on the inside [of a mezuzah] are among those who do not have a portion in the world to come.\" And the reason: \"Not only do these fools nullify the mitzvah, but furthermore, they make from a great mitzvah ... a talisman for their own benefit.\" A commandment converted into a charm stops being a commandment.\n\nSo why is it in an atlas of amulets? Because people have in fact used it that way, in writing, for a very long time, and that argument is itself documented. The cited account states that in later generations the mezuzah began to be interpreted as an apotropaic device protecting the house from evil, and names early rabbinic sources that explicitly witness a belief in an anti-demonic function: Jerusalem Talmud Megillah 4:12, Babylonian Talmud Bava Metziya 102a, Babylonian Talmud Pesahim 113b. It also notes that some Jewish sources construe the mezuzah as a guard against divine anger and that others vehemently reject that reading. In the 1970s, after a series of attacks at Ma'alot, Chabad began a campaign to have mezuzot systematically checked, on the assumption that keeping the mitzvot would guarantee personal safety. And sociological research summarised in the cited article reports that about three-quarters of adults in Israel hold that the mezuzah guards their houses.\n\nThat is the record this atlas prints: a tradition that calls it a commandment, a legal authority who wrote down exactly why calling it a talisman degrades it, and a large documented practice of treating it as protection anyway. The atlas does not settle it.\n\nKaraite Jews read the Deuteronomy verse as metaphor and traditionally use no mezuzah, putting up instead a small plaque shaped like the two Tablets of the Law with the Ten Commandments — though in Israel many Karaites also fix a mezuzah so as not to make other Jews uncomfortable. Samaritans read the commandment as displaying any selected text from the Samaritan Torah, on marble, wood, parchment or good paper, above the door or on a prominent wall inside; stone plaques of the Ten Commandments from the Byzantine and early Muslim periods survive, and are in the Israel Museum. For Samaritans, the more of them in a house, the better.",
  "how": "Written on klaf, parchment, by a sofer stam — a scribe trained both in the relevant laws and in Ktav Stam calligraphy — in indelible black ink, with a quill made from a feather or, rarely now, a reed. On the back it is customary to write Shaddai, a name of God which also reads as an acronym for Shomer Daltot Yisrael, Guardian of Israel's doors; many cases carry the letter shin for the same reason. Ashkenazi custom adds a second line that is a one-letter Caesar shift of three words of the Shema, written on the back opposite the words it shifts; Sephardi custom, following the Shulchan Aruch and the Rambam, leaves it out. It is held against the spot, a blessing is said, and it is fixed. Where the doorway is wide enough, many Ashkenazim tilt it — a compromise proposed by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher between Rashi, who held it should be vertical, and his grandson Rabbeinu Tam, who held it horizontal. Most Sephardi, Mizrahi and other non-Ashkenazi Jews fix it vertically. Many observant Jews have a scribe check the parchments for tears or faded letters at least twice every seven years. Torn or damaged wording invalidates it.",
  "today": "Contested in American housing law, repeatedly, since 2001. A condominium association at Shoreline Towers in Chicago banned objects outside unit doors and management removed tenants' hallway mezuzot; complaints went to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, the Illinois Attorney General and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Alderman Burton Natarus drafted a city ordinance making it illegal to prohibit a religious sign, symbol or relic on a door, doorpost or entrance; it passed that December with a maximum $500 fine, the first such legislation in North America. A federal judge found in 2006 that the rule did not violate the Federal Fair Housing Act, the district court upheld that in 2008, the Seventh Circuit reversed in 2009, and the disputes settled confidentially in 2011. Illinois amended its Condominium Property Act in 2006, effective 1 January 2007; Florida followed in 2008 after a Fort Lauderdale case; Texas passed HB1278 in June 2011 after a Houston couple lost in federal court in 2008. A national bill introduced by Congressman Jerrold Nadler in 2008 never became law."
 },
 "dating": {
  "period": "Biblical commandment, continuous practice",
  "from_year": -299,
  "to_year": null,
  "living": true,
  "label": "commanded in Deuteronomy; in continuous use as a written parchment to the present",
  "method": "textual",
  "circa": true,
  "tier": "inference",
  "source": "s:wp-mezuzah",
  "note": "The cited article gives no first attested physical mezuzah. The floor here is this project's hedge for 'biblical antiquity' and is not a dated find. The article's own dated anchors are the 11th-century cipher inscription among the Hasidei Ashkenaz, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg (c. 1215–1293), and the Byzantine and early Muslim period Samaritan stone plaques."
 },
 "object": {
  "form": "door-piece",
  "materials": [
   "parchment",
   "ink",
   "silver",
   "wood",
   "terracotta"
  ],
  "worn": [
   "door",
   "lintel"
  ],
  "made_by": "a sofer stam — a scribe trained in the laws of the text and in Ktav Stam calligraphy",
  "inscription": "Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and 11:13–21; on the back, Shaddai, and in Ashkenazi custom a one-letter cipher of three words of the Shema",
  "script": "Hebrew",
  "single_use": false,
  "source": "s:wp-mezuzah",
  "note": "Placement is published: right-hand post, upper third, within about 3 inches (8 cm) of the opening. That is the only measurement in this record."
 },
 "against": [
  {
   "harm": "demons",
   "who": "early rabbinic sources named in the cited article — Jerusalem Talmud Megillah 4:12, Babylonian Talmud Bava Metziya 102a, Babylonian Talmud Pesahim 113b — which witness a belief in an anti-demonic function",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": "Jewish law classes the mezuzah as a commandment and not as an amulet; this entry reports a documented reading, not the tradition's own category"
  },
  {
   "harm": "house",
   "who": "about three-quarters of adults in Israel, according to sociological research summarised in the cited article",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "war",
   "who": "the Chabad campaign of the 1970s for systematic checking of mezuzot, begun after a series of attacks at Ma'alot, on the assumption that adhering to the mitzvot would guarantee personal safety",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah",
   "tier": "cited"
  }
 ],
 "holdings": [
  {
   "museum": "israel-museum",
   "what": "Samaritan stone plaques inscribed with the Ten Commandments, from the Byzantine and early Muslim periods, set above house doors",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah"
  }
 ],
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "tefillin",
   "as": "its partner commandment and its partner problem — the other object Jewish law refuses to call an amulet, carrying some of the same verses on the body instead of on the door",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "kamea",
   "as": "the line Maimonides was drawing: write angel names inside a mezuzah and you have made one of these out of a mitzvah",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "ketef-hinnom-scrolls",
   "as": "the oldest surviving Hebrew text-object in the atlas, and the thing every argument about this one eventually reaches for",
   "rel": "origin"
  },
  {
   "to": "jewish-practical-kabbalah",
   "as": "the tradition whose whole practice Maimonides is refusing, in one paragraph, on this object",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "parchment",
   "as": "the material the law specifies, and the reason a printed copy in a silver case is not one",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "hanging-at-door",
   "as": "the practice, in the atlas's most legally defined form — right post, upper third, eight centimetres from the opening",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "divine-name",
   "as": "Shaddai on the back, read as an acronym for the Guardian of Israel's doors",
   "rel": "motif"
  },
  {
   "to": "ofuda",
   "as": "the Japanese paper the household fixes where the house opens, from a tradition that has no objection to calling it protective",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "quran-pendant",
   "as": "scripture in a case, put where a person passes it daily — the same object in another book",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "amulet-or-talisman",
   "as": "the long read; this record is the atlas's sharpest case of a tradition rejecting the word the site is organised by",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Mezuzah — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezuzah"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-mezuzah",
  "s:wp-tefillin",
  "s:wp-practical-kabbalah",
  "s:wp-amulet",
  "s:wp-apotropaic-magic"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah"
  },
  "fields": {
   "dating": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "see dating.note; the floor is a hedge, not a find"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [],
 "x_commons_files": [
  "File:Mezuzah on doorpost.jpg",
  "File:Mezuzah klaf.jpg"
 ],
 "confidence": "high",
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "A strip of parchment, handwritten by a trained scribe in indelible black ink with a quill, carrying Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and 11:13–21.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "levant",
   "name": "The Levant",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "diaspora",
   "name": "Diaspora",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "S",
    "E",
    "W"
   ],
   "note": "a practice carried out of its home region and kept"
  },
  {
   "key": "north-america",
   "name": "North America",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "hemispheres": [
  "E",
  "N",
  "S",
  "W"
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "tefillin",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Tefillin",
   "as": "its partner commandment and its partner problem — the other object Jewish law refuses to call an amulet, carrying some of the same verses on the body instead of on the door",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "kamea",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Kamea",
   "as": "the line Maimonides was drawing: write angel names inside a mezuzah and you have made one of these out of a mitzvah",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "ketef-hinnom-scrolls",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls",
   "as": "the oldest surviving Hebrew text-object in the atlas, and the thing every argument about this one eventually reaches for",
   "rel": "origin"
  },
  {
   "to": "jewish-practical-kabbalah",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Practical Kabbalah",
   "as": "the tradition whose whole practice Maimonides is refusing, in one paragraph, on this object",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "parchment",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Parchment",
   "as": "the material the law specifies, and the reason a printed copy in a silver case is not one",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "hanging-at-door",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Hanging at the door",
   "as": "the practice, in the atlas's most legally defined form — right post, upper third, eight centimetres from the opening",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "divine-name",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The name",
   "as": "Shaddai on the back, read as an acronym for the Guardian of Israel's doors",
   "rel": "motif"
  },
  {
   "to": "ofuda",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Ofuda",
   "as": "the Japanese paper the household fixes where the house opens, from a tradition that has no objection to calling it protective",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "quran-pendant",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Qur'an pendant",
   "as": "scripture in a case, put where a person passes it daily — the same object in another book",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "amulet-or-talisman",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Amulet or talisman?",
   "as": "the long read; this record is the atlas's sharpest case of a tradition rejecting the word the site is organised by",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:wp-mezuzah",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Mezuzah",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezuzah",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-tefillin",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Tefillin",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tefillin",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-practical-kabbalah",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Practical Kabbalah",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practical_Kabbalah",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-amulet",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Amulet",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amulet",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Apotropaic magic",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apotropaic_magic",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah"
  },
  "etymology": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah"
  },
  "dating": {
   "tier": "inference",
   "note": "see dating.note; the floor is a hedge, not a find"
  },
  "object": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "against_facts": [
  {
   "key": "demons",
   "label": "Demons and night-hags",
   "who": "early rabbinic sources named in the cited article — Jerusalem Talmud Megillah 4:12, Babylonian Talmud Bava Metziya 102a, Babylonian Talmud Pesahim 113b — which witness a belief in an anti-demonic function",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": "Jewish law classes the mezuzah as a commandment and not as an amulet; this entry reports a documented reading, not the tradition's own category"
  },
  {
   "key": "house",
   "label": "Harm to a house or a field",
   "who": "about three-quarters of adults in Israel, according to sociological research summarised in the cited article",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "war",
   "label": "War",
   "who": "the Chabad campaign of the 1970s for systematic checking of mezuzot, begun after a series of attacks at Ma'alot, on the assumption that adhering to the mitzvot would guarantee personal safety",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  }
 ],
 "material_facts": [
  {
   "key": "parchment",
   "label": "Parchment and vellum",
   "kind": "written"
  },
  {
   "key": "ink",
   "label": "Ink",
   "kind": "written"
  },
  {
   "key": "silver",
   "label": "Silver",
   "kind": "metal"
  },
  {
   "key": "wood",
   "label": "Wood",
   "kind": "plant"
  },
  {
   "key": "terracotta",
   "label": "Fired clay",
   "kind": "fired"
  }
 ],
 "worn_facts": [
  {
   "key": "door",
   "label": "At the door",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "lintel",
   "label": "Above the lintel",
   "group": "placed"
  }
 ],
 "form_fact": {
  "key": "door-piece",
  "label": "Door or lintel piece"
 },
 "holding_facts": [
  {
   "key": "israel-museum",
   "label": "The Israel Museum",
   "city": "Jerusalem",
   "country": "IL",
   "url": "",
   "what": "Samaritan stone plaques inscribed with the Ten Commandments, from the Byzantine and early Muslim periods, set above house doors",
   "accession": "",
   "source": "s:wp-mezuzah"
  }
 ],
 "span": "300 BCE to now",
 "country_names": [
  {
   "iso": "IL",
   "name": "Israel"
  },
  {
   "iso": "US",
   "name": "United States of America"
  }
 ],
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "hirz-pouch",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Hirz",
   "as": "the other Abrahamic case with a written text sealed inside it, fixed to a doorpost rather than hung at a neck",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "from": "kamea",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Kamea",
   "as": "the object Maimonides used to draw the line — write angel names inside one and you have turned a commandment into this",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "ketef-hinnom-scrolls",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls",
   "as": "the other Jewish text-in-a-container, fixed to a doorpost instead of worn",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "ladanka",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Ladanka",
   "as": "the other container this atlas holds whose contents are a named text and whose rules are about placement",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "from": "ofuda",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Ofuda",
   "as": "the other household text fixed at a doorway and inspected on a cycle, four thousand miles west",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "from": "quran-pendant",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Qur'an pendant",
   "as": "scripture in a case, fixed where a person passes it — the same object in another book, with the opposite ruling about what to call it",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "from": "tefillin",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Tefillin",
   "as": "the partner commandment, carrying two of the same four passages, fixed to the door instead of bound to the body — and the object Maimonides used to say what happens when a mitzvah is treated as a talisman",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "jewish-practical-kabbalah",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Practical Kabbalah",
   "as": "the object Maimonides used to state the boundary — a commandment stops being one when it is turned into a talisman for the owner's benefit",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "divine-name",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The name",
   "as": "the doorpost case with Shaddai written on the outside of its parchment",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "parchment",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Parchment",
   "as": "the parchment itself is the object; the case is decoration, and a paper copy in a case is not one",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "folding",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Folding",
   "as": "parchment rolled into a case at the door — and unrolled again by a scribe twice in seven years",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "hanging-at-door",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Hanging at the door",
   "as": "the door charm with a measured position, a blessing at fixing and a deadline for putting it up",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "inscribing",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Inscribing",
   "as": "the parchment a scribe writes and another scribe checks twice in seven years",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "from": "renewing-yearly",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Renewing yearly",
   "as": "the opposite clock: checked by a scribe twice in seven years, and meant to last",
   "rel": "contrast"
  }
 ]
}