Photo Friday: On the Doorframes of Your Houses

Stand for Israel  |  June 22, 2023

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

In 1945, Jewish immigrants to the Holy Land—Jews who had escaped Europe before the Holocaust—founded a kibbutz called Masu’ot Yitzhak in southern Israel near Ashkelon. During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, however, the farming community was captured by Arab enemies, its residents imprisoned in Jordan.

But after Israel won her independence and the people of Masu’ot Yitzhak were freed, they built a new community with the same name. In this photo from 1949, Israeli Interior Minister Moshe Shapira listens to God’s command in Deuteronomy to write His Word on doorframes, hanging a mezuzah on a doorpost of a home in Masu’ot Yitzhak. Shabbat shalom, friends.