Ritual Items
- Slips of paper
- Pens/pencils
- Mezuzah (optional – you can do the rest of the ritual without a mezuzah if you don’t have one).
- Jar or basket
This ritual should be done right outside the front door to the home.
Facilitator
Life is a series of comings and goings, entrances and exits. We stand here now outside the doorway of our new home. Throughout this coming year there will be thousands of leavings and returnings, but only this doorway marks the threshold between the world outside and the world of our hearts.
The blessing inside the mezuzah, the V’ahavta, is a poem about love – You shall love the Source of Life with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. This commandment reminds us to enter and exit this home with love in our hearts.
Whatever we encounter on the other side of this door, we choose what comes inside with us, and what we leave on the doorstep. The love shared inside this home can be carried through the doorway as well, a reminder of what awaits us when we return.
To honor this sacred moment, in addition to affixing the mezuzah, we will each write three kavanot – intentions – we’d like to bring to life in our new home. What might we create in this space together? How do we want to feel when we enter and when we exit? What does it mean to each of us when we say “I am coming home?”
Take five minutes to write and reflect individually.
Once everyone has finished, say:
I invite you to share one or more of your blessings/hopes for our new home, and then add it to this jar/basket. We will keep the jar/basket at [a place in your home, perhaps a bookshelf in a central location].
Community shares.
Facilitator:
Thank you, everyone. In the Jewish tradition, HaMakom, The Place, is one of the names of the Divine. May we make this place, our home, holy every day with (list things people offered as blessings), and with laughter, love, and growing.
Affixing the Mezuzah (place scroll in case, recite blessing, then affix):
Traditional:
Blessed are You, God, ruler of the universe who has sanctified us with commandments and commanded us to affix the Mezuzah.
Barukh Atah, Adonay Eloheynu, melekh ha’olam asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu likboa mezuzah.
Recommendation: If you’d like, you may also include “Blessing for a New Beginning” by John O’Donohue.