[Avodah] What’s the Truth about . . . Kissing the Mezuzah?

[Prof. Levine]

 From http://tinyurl.com/cbzkyn4

Misconception: There is a Talmudic source for the common practice of 
kissing the mezuzah upon entering and exiting a room.

Fact: There is no Talmudic source obligating one to kiss the mezuzah, 
although there may be a source for touching the mezuzah. Kissing the 
mezuzah seems to have been introduced by the Arizal (sixteenth 
century), and is thus a relatively recent custom.

<Snip>

Not all halachic authorities endorse the practice of kissing the 
mezuzah. Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin in Eidut Le'Yisrael (p. 159) 
objects to kissing the mezuzah (and sefer Torah) with one's mouth or 
even with a cloth (and most likely with one's hand as well).9 Instead 
he prefers the Sephardic, or more accurately, the Georgian (Soviet)10 
custom of pointing and "blowing" a kiss. He offers two reasons for 
this. Firstly, he feels that kissing implies too much familiarity, a 
level of closeness that one cannot purport to have with a Torah or a 
mezuzah. Secondly, he opines that kissing a mezuzah even via one's 
fingers or hand spreads germs, a hygienic-based halachic problem 
mentioned in Shulchan Aruch, OC 170:15.

See the above URL for the rest of this article.  YL


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This article is written by Rabbi Dr. Ari Zivotofsky who is on the 
faculty of the Brain Science Program at Bar-Ilan University in 
Israel.  See http://halachicadventures.com/?p=90  for more about him 
and his other interesting articles.
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