Shomer Negiah again

[qatarperegrine]

We moved into our new house today. By coincidence, the geographic area that met our location requirements (walking distance to the park, the grocery store, the library, major bus routes) is coterminous with the area that is walking distance to Squirrel Hill's various Orthodox synagogues, so we seem to have become the token Gentiles on the block.

There's something kind of funny to me about leaving a land of modestly dressed women and men who won't shake my hand, only to move into a neighborhood full of modestly dressed women and men who won't shake my hand.

Today's interesting cultural interaction occurred when our movers, who are Israeli, arrived at the new house. Bringing in the first load of boxes, one of them noticed the mezuzah on our front doorway and said, "Oh! You're Jewish?"

"No," I said, "The former owners left that there."

The next time I walked through the doorway, I noticed the mezuzah was gone.

I was somewhat relieved, since I didn't know what I was supposed to do with it -- I think it's supposed to be buried, like an old Torah, but I wasn't sure.

However, then the former owners called to say they'd come by to collect their mezuzot today. So, awkwardly, we had to ask the mover if he'd taken it. He replied that it was obligatory to remove the mezuzah if the new houseowners weren't Jewish, and did not offer to give it back to us. So, I hope the former owners were just coming by to make sure the mezuzot were correctly disposed of, and not because they had any particular sentimental value!

Comments

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

Yeah the community-owned-ness thing makes a ton sense to me as an explanation for why it feels weird: my expectations are completely within the framework of strict secular personal property. If you leave it in the house, it's mine, and it certainly doesn't belong to some movers that you never met. But conceptualizing the Jewish community as something that owns mezuzot (and even kinda owns the house itself in a lingering sort of way after the last family moves out) makes those actions pretty sensible.

Then again, of course if this actually happened to me I would totally be like "oh ok sure have it" since I have no use for a mezuzah.