Ritual on the Threshold: Mezuzah and the Crafting of Domestic and Civic Space

Abstract

This article examines the mezuzah’s role in the construction of social spaces in antiquity. Located on the threshold, the mezuzah could be associated with a house’s interior or exterior. Philo and the tannaitic rabbis envisioned different social constituencies engaging the mezuzah on different sides of the threshold. Philo imagines a broad public including Jews and gentiles interacting with the mezuzah, such that the mezuzah adds a distinctively Jewish moral and aesthetic presence to an already culturally and ethnically diverse urban environment. The tannaitic rabbis, on the other hand, stress the importance of the mezuzah for a Jewish householder’s dependents (women, slaves, and minors), embedding him in the center of a community of his dependents.

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