Online Mezuzah

A while back Laurel wrote about why you should get yourself a mezuzah for your home. It’s definitely a key item for any home. But mezuzahs, which signify that God is watching over our doorposts, and which serve as a constant reminder of God’s presence, are appropriate for other places besides your house or apartment. You can, for instance, get yourself a mezuzah for your car, which is especially appropriate if you have a long commute or spend tons of time on the road. If you work in an office that won’t be freaked out by a mezuzah, it makes sense to have one at work, too. But many of us spend hours every day in a place that doesn’t seem to allow for a mezuzah: the internet. When I’m not attending classes I often spend most of the day at home, working from my dining room table, and clicking through hundreds of web pages in a few hours. In the sense that the internet has become a place we go to, it seems like it should have it’s own mezuzah. Years ago I got an e-mail with a suggestion for an internet mezuzah, and though I’ve been googling like mad I haven’t found a site with a text of the e-mail, or an mention of the rabbi who wrote the e-mail. So if it was you who came up with the idea for an internet mezuzah, or you know who it was, please let me know. In the meantime, set your homepage to The Hunger Site. You’ve probably been to the Hunger Site a few times. Someone sent you a link reminding you, so you went and clicked on the little yellow button. Later, because of you 1.1 cups of food were donated to an organization devoted to fighting hunger. Maybe you also clicked on the tabs for the other associated sites, The Breast Cancer Site, The Child Health Site, The Literacy Site, The Rainforest Site and the Animal Rescue Site. It took, at most, two minutes to do all of this. Two minutes to make a fairly substantial tzedakah donation every single day. Not bad, right? And if you set it as your entrance point to the internet then you’re making tzedakah your entrance into the virtual world. Making the Hunger Site your online mezuzah is the kind of spiritual action you can do without thinking. It’s a painless way of engaging with tzedakah and with God. Make it a part of your daily practice today.