Word of the Day:
mezuzah
What It Means
A piece of parchment inscribed with specific Hebrew verses from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and 11:13–21) and attached in a case to the doorpost of a house.
An object of similar function in the Samaritan tradition.
Mezuzah in Context
“Slothrop gives him the mandala. He hopes it will work like the mantra that Enzian told him once, mba-kayere (I am passed over), mba-kayere . . . a spell against Marvy tonight, against Tchitcherine. A mezuzah. Safe passage through a bad night. . . .”
Did You Know?
From post-Biblical Hebrew מְזוּזָה (m'zuzá, məzûzâ, “doorpost”), with reference to Deuteronomy 6:9, a mitzvah (Biblical commandment as interpreted in Jewish law) ordering to “write the words of God on the gates and doorposts of your house”.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mezuzah (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “mezuzah.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mezuzah. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
