Landlord’s ‘No Mezuzah’ Rule Sparks Lawsuit
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
An Orthodox Jewish man from suburban New York City sued his landlord for demanding that he remove the mezuzah from his apartment’s doorpost.
Arye Sachs of North Babylon on Long Island filed a lawsuit this week in Brooklyn federal court, the New York Post reported.
In the lawsuit, Sachs said his landlord ordered him to remove the mezuzah several times and then evicted him, saying “This is a Christian residence.” The mezuzah was missing after he returned home from a trip last month, according to the Post.
The lawsuit calls the mezuzah, a family heirloom that came from his Holocaust-survivor grandfather, a “priceless, irreplaceable protector.”
Sachs in the lawsuit credits the mezuzah with his successful recovery from three strokes and an amicable divorce.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
