[Avodah] The Protection Offered by a Mezuza

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Dec 25, 2017 at 05:58am IST, Ben Waxman wrote:
: On 12/25/2017 12:10 AM, Zev Sero wrote:
:> But the *mitzvah* of mezuzah protects regardless of how those
:> within the house "shape their lives".

: I seriously doubt that anyone could come up with any statistical
: analysis showing this point to be true.

(I won't bother arguing against Zev's inability to acknowledge the
existence of other shitos than his. "[I]t contradicts Chazal and millennia
of Jewish belief and practise." "Judaism tell us it's true" indeed. It's
a machloqes of the Rambam and the Ramach, with various teirutzim given
for the Rambam. Not open-and-shut at all.)

You want to statistically decide which hashkafah is true???

I lean the way you do. But it's a machloqes. I already pointed to
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol35/v35n142.shtml#07>, a
discussion of sources both ways. It would be weird to think it
boils down to a machloqes in metzi'us.


You remind me of a problem I have saying a particular line of Tehillim
(37:25) with kavanah, and it comes up at the appendix to bentching,
"Naar hayisi..." But I have seen a tzadiq whose kids miss meals and have
to beg. Haven't you?

The best I can do, rather than tamper with the minhag of saying it,
is to focus on the word "ne'ezav" -- so, his kids don't have food,
but it's not because HQBH abandoned the tzadiq. But I can't really feel
that's peshat in the pasuq. It allows me to saven with qavanah, but as
an answer -- the question is better than this resolution.

Bitachon and emunah that actually fit the data can be more challenging
than if we just shut off critical thought.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "As long as the candle is still burning,
micha at aishdas.org        it is still possible to accomplish and to
http://www.aishdas.org   mend."
Fax: (270) 514-1507          - Anonymous shoemaker to R' Yisrael Salanter