Day Five: Menorah on the Left, Mezuzah on the Right
The tremendous power of the menorah to shine its light into the world comes from its connection to our inner space. For this reason, Chazal tell us that the best place for the menorah is at our door, on the left side, opposite the mezuzah. In this way, the two mitzvot work together. The mezuzah, on our right when we enter our home, is a message for us as we go into our home. The menorah, on our right when we leave our house, is a message for us as we go out into the world.
The mezuzah is a wake-up call, a message to be alert when we enter our home. Crossing from the public domain of the street to the private domain over our home is not simply a matter of walking through the door. It is a complete change of state. In our home, we are connected to higher worlds. The power of our private domain comes from our ability within our home to connect to the private space of our soul. When we see the mezuzah on our doorway, we encounter both Hashem’s Unity and His love for us. It’s a reminder that we are at one with that reality. When we enter the doorway to our home, but we are also entering our own higher reality, the part of us that is connected to shamayim. Because of that connection, the words of Yaacov (Bereisheit 28:17) apply to every Jewish home “It is nothing but only the House of the Lord and this is the gateway to heaven.”
Public space has an entirely different spiritual reality. It is useful, purposeful space, where humanity can come together. It is the realm of science, natural law and Greek wisdom, but it is also the realm of the lowest common denominator. Halachically, the space of our private domain reaches up to the sky. The public domain does not rise higher than 10 tefachim, beyond that the air is just considered empty space.
Today, the private and public is often blurred. We walk into our homes, and we bring the outside world with us. This is the opposite of what it says about the Navi Shmuel (Berachos 10b; Shmuel I 7:17), that wherever he would go, his home was with him. His “dalet amot” kept him connected constantly to a higher reality.
We were created to be individuals, and our true individuality lies in our connection to the highest part of ourselves, the place we reach alone, the place where no one can join us. The mezuzah is a wake-up call, reminding us to nourish this part of ourselves, to illuminate our private world. The menorah reflects the light that we nurture within and allows it to shine outward into the world. The message from the Menorah, when we leave our home, is to take our personal light with us. This is our triumph over the Greeks. It is the triumph of the private light over the public domain.
To explore this idea further in the sefer, see pages 71-74.