My Mezuza

susanna calimaniBy Susanna Calimani*

The other day I realized that I should put a Mezuza in the flat I am renting, because although it is temporary, although it is not mine, although I’m often travelling, that is, nevertheless, where I live.
When I was a kid, I was told that the Mezuza is there to remind us of the blood sign on the doorposts that Jews had to make so that the Angel of Death seeking for the firstborns could spare them. The Mezuza reminds us that we were spared and saved, that we escaped from death and slavery, that we then crossed an infinite desert of sorrows, to look for a better place, for a future, and a new life. And after 40 years we arrived, as refugees, to the land of milk and honey.

There are still a couple of months to go for Pesah, I know. But the other night I was coming back home, I wanted to open the door, but I had no spare hand for my keys, so I put one of my shopping bags on the ground, and noticed a sticker at the very bottom of my house’s streetdoor: “Refugees Welcome”. It reminded me that we were refugees several times in the past, but we were spared, saved and given the privilege of saving and welcoming, in our turn, other refugees; that sticker was my Mezuza.

We all bear the responsibility of rescuing the others, whether they have crossed a desert or an ocean, whether it is the land of milk and honey or the land of chocolate chip-cookies and peanut butter.

*Susanna Calimani is a wandering economist currently based in Frankfurt.