THIS VOLUME addresses two related dimensions of the Jewish home: the physical and the metaphysical. Calling a house a home suggests an emotional connection to it that has been constituted by the shared history of the building and its occupants. When residents refer to a ‘Jewish home’, they may define their domiciles socially as Jewish because their families live there, but a cultural question is how ‘Jewishness’ is materially expressed to themselves and to others. For many Jews a mezuzah on the exterior doorway will most clearly mark the Jewishness of the home, as it fulfils the mitzvah to inscribe the Jewish prayer Shema yisra'el ‘on the doorposts of your house’ (Deut. 6: 9). Usually an oblong or cylindrical case holding a handwritten Hebrew scroll, the mezuzah's external decoration and material vary and can be home-made, but the object is still recognizable as a mezuzah by its placement on the doorpost. The mezuzah in Figure 1 was created by American artist Shelley Spector for a 2008 exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art entitled ‘A Kiss for the Mezuzah’ (Singer 2007). It shows artistic adaptation of traditional forms reflecting what one of the curators called a modern attraction by Jews to mezuzot that ‘reflect their personality or the style of their home in addition to their commitment to God’ (Agro 2007: 6). Spector's mezuzah is personally significant because it is made out of a cigar-box owned by her father, relating to the parchment's text from Deuteronomy 11: 13–21 to teach God's commandments to ‘your children … when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way and when you lie down and when you rise’. The title of her creation, ‘Honor to Carry’, refers to her Jewishness, of which she says: ‘it is an honor to have inside me something so ancient and spiritual’, and that, like the mezuzah, she is ‘a carrier of tradition, connecting the past to the future’ (quoted in Holzman 2007: 8). The mezuzah is significant as it is usually the only Jewish artefact placed both outside and inside a Jewish home.

Inside the house, artefacts of home religious observance—often designated as specifically for the sabbath, Hanukah, or Passover—are often displayed and described by families as markers of identity, as well as being used for rituals.