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Where to Place a Mezuzah

Which doorways

People buying their first mezuzah usually assume it is a front-door object. It is not. The obligation applies to the doorways of a dwelling, which in an ordinary house or apartment means the entrance and then most of the rooms inside it: bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, a study, a nursery, and the doorways between them.

A doorway generally needs a mezuzah when it has two doorposts and a lintel above them, and when the space it leads into is used for living. That gives you a rough working test, and a few clear exceptions.

The borderline cases are genuinely borderline. Walk-in wardrobes, laundry rooms, unfinished basements and open-plan thresholds are all argued about, and different communities land in different places. A ten-minute conversation with your rabbi before you buy will tell you how many cases you actually need, which matters, because most people underestimate.

Which side, and how high

The mezuzah goes on the right-hand side as you enter. Entering means moving from the more public space into the more private one — from the street into the house, from the hallway into the bedroom. When a doorway sits between two rooms and neither is obviously the way in, that is a question to ask rather than guess.

Height is measured as a proportion of the doorway rather than in centimetres. Divide the doorframe into three, and the mezuzah belongs in the bottom part of the top third. On a standard two-metre door that puts it at roughly shoulder to eye height for most adults. There is also a lower limit at the top: it should sit at least a handbreadth — about 8 cm — below the lintel, not tucked into the corner.

Practical consequence for choosing a case: a mezuzah at that height is read at close range, by hand and by eye, several times a day. It is not a plaque viewed from across the room. That is why the detail on a case like the Tzfat case in nubuck at $300, or the raised letterwork on the Jerusalem case with silver letters at $1,800, does more work than the overall size does.

The angle

This is the one visitors notice. Ashkenazi practice is to fix the mezuzah at a slant, with the top tilted toward the inside of the room. The reason usually given is a compromise between two earlier opinions — one that it should be vertical, one that it should be horizontal — and rather than choose, the custom split the difference. Sephardi and most Middle Eastern communities hang it vertically.

Neither is a mistake. Follow the practice of your own community, and if you are giving a mezuzah case as a gift, this is worth a moment's thought: a case designed with a strong vertical axis, like the 770 case with phosphoric letter at $650, reads well either way, while a case with an obvious horizon in the artwork can look odd on a slant.

The case is not the mitzvah

Worth stating plainly, because it is the single most common misunderstanding. The mitzvah is the klaf — the parchment scroll, handwritten by a trained scribe, carrying the passages from Deuteronomy that begin Shema Yisrael. The case protects it and marks the doorway. A beautiful case with no scroll inside it, or with a printed facsimile inside it, is decoration.

Our listings describe the case. If you need a kosher klaf supplied alongside it, say so before you order rather than after — it is arranged piece by piece, not added at checkout. There is more on this in Mezuzah Case vs Scroll.

Scrolls are also checked periodically — twice in seven years is the usual guidance — because ink cracks and letters fade. A case that opens cleanly is not a small thing when the scroll has to come out.

Hanging it

A blessing is said when affixing a mezuzah. If you are hanging several in one go, the usual practice is to say the blessing once, before the first, and have the rest in mind. Start with the front door and work inward.

Fixing method depends on the doorframe and on the case. Wooden frames take small nails or screws; on steel, aluminium or tiled reveals, strong double-sided adhesive is standard and is what most modern apartments end up using. Our cases are supplied with a fixing substrate, and the size is listed on every product page — check it against the width of your doorframe reveal before ordering, particularly on the wider pieces like the 235 mm Jerusalem cases.

Outdoor front doors are worth a thought too. A mezuzah on an exposed doorframe takes weather, and a case in stainless steel at $600 or carbon at $1,200 handles rain and sun better than leather does.

Moving house

Outside Israel, the widely followed practice is that a rented home needs mezuzot after thirty days; in Israel, immediately. When you leave a home, you generally leave the mezuzot in place if the next occupants are Jewish — which is why so many people arrive in a new home to find someone else's cases already on the doorframes, often the plain plastic ones.

That is the moment most of our mezuzah orders happen, and it is why the collection runs from $119 to several thousand rather than sitting at one price. A first apartment might take one good case at the front door and simple ones elsewhere. A family house being done properly takes eight or ten. See Mezuzah Cases for New Homes for how people usually split that budget.

Where to start

The full range is in Luxury Mezuzah Cases, and How to Choose a Mezuzah Case walks through materials and sizing.