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My company moved into a new building earlier this year after some pretty extensive interior renovations, but the exterior remains about the same as it was back in the 1950's. This weird metal plaque or whatever is screwed into the door frame. I've never seen anything quite like it, and most of the people I've pointed it out to haven't even noticed it. It's about a half to three quarters of an inch wide and a around three inches tall, but I'm just eyeballing it. The symbol at the top looks like it could be a Star of David? The middle is some kind of stylized "V" shape, and the bottom could be a rose or other type of flower. I'm not positive what the building was before us other than being used as a convention center.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:39
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Well the letter in the center is the hebrew letter for 'sh' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_(letter) The article mentions that on its own it's used as an abbreviation for the name of god.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:45
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Its a mezuzah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezuzah
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Oct 7, 2014 18:52
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Armacham posted:Its a mezuzah Wow. Nailed it. I've never heard of that practice, but I'm in North Carolina, so not surprising. Why would that be on the door to the office? The Wiki seems to indicate that they only go on homes. Is this a rare thing?
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Oct 7, 2014 19:08
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New Leaf posted:Why would that be on the door to the office? The Wiki seems to indicate that they only go on homes. Is this a rare thing? Give up your inquiries, which are completely useless. Consider these words a second warning. We hope, for your own good, that this will be sufficient.
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Oct 7, 2014 19:23
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New Leaf posted:Wow. Nailed it. I've never heard of that practice, but I'm in North Carolina, so not surprising. Why would that be on the door to the office? The Wiki seems to indicate that they only go on homes. Is this a rare thing? A friend of mine had her classroom blessed at the beginning of the year once. I imagine it's the same thing- a substantial part of your life happens on that room, why wouldn't you want God's blessing over it?
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Oct 7, 2014 19:29
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New Leaf posted:My company moved into a new building earlier this year after some pretty extensive interior renovations, but the exterior remains about the same as it was back in the 1950's. This right here is your answer. Odds are it was a house at one point in time, or had someone living there. I've never seen them outside of homes (even in Lakewood where there's blessings on everything...gotta keep all them rabbis in business somehow), but its possible, especially somewhere where they are such a minority like NC.
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Oct 7, 2014 21:09
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If you unscrew it and turn it over there should be a little scroll inside too with I think blessings written on it.
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Oct 7, 2014 21:31
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AA is for Quitters posted:This right here is your answer. Odds are it was a house at one point in time, or had someone living there. I've never seen them outside of homes (even in Lakewood where there's blessings on everything...gotta keep all them rabbis in business somehow), but its possible, especially somewhere where they are such a minority like NC. It was a 30,000 square foot convention center (and apparently a grocery store and a Big Lots at some point after asking around) and isn't in a residential area. I doubt anyone ever lived here. We gutted it and turned it into a big cubicle farm for around 300 folks- that's why it's presence is pretty odd to me. I guess it's possible one of the previous owners was Jewish and had his building blessed.
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Oct 7, 2014 21:44
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It wards off anti-semites.
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Oct 7, 2014 23:29
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Your office building is a golem. Write down the names of your enemies and feed them to the paper shredder, they'll be disposed of soon enough.
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Oct 8, 2014 01:26
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Are you seriously a grown man who has never seen Hebrew before? Lol. "Sylized "V""
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Oct 8, 2014 04:49
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What's laughable is thinking Hebrew is anywhere near common that the average person ought to recognize it on sight.
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Oct 8, 2014 07:43
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Basebf555 posted:If you unscrew it and turn it over there should be a little scroll inside too with I think blessings written on it. If you have Jewish friends or colleagues (though if nobody recognised that then I guess you probably don't) it's probably not a good idea to unscrew it and dick about with the scroll. You will likely offend people. His Divine Shadow posted:What's laughable is thinking Hebrew is anywhere near common that the average person ought to recognize it on sight. But anyway your post is meaningless. What do you mean by the average person? The average american person? The average american person in North Carolina? I'd say the 'average person' in the global sense would recognise Hebrew on sight. I grew up in an urban area (London) and most people here would recognise Hebrew.
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Oct 8, 2014 11:02
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In the global sense. Obvious exceptions would be areas with large jewish populations.
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Oct 8, 2014 11:08
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I live in New York and these are quite common. My house had one.
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Oct 8, 2014 13:17
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If I was never active in any sort of church or lived in an area with a large Jewish community, why would I have ever had an opportunity to see Hebrew frequently enough to recognize an individual letter? Did I miss a "grown man" meeting where they went over this or something? I did talk to the one Jewish person I've ever met and he said I shouldn't mess with it. It definitely pre-dates the company being in the building, though.
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Oct 8, 2014 13:24
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New Leaf posted:If I was never active in any sort of church or lived in an area with a large Jewish community, why would I have ever had an opportunity to see Hebrew frequently enough to recognize an individual letter? Did I miss a "grown man" meeting where they went over this or something? I did talk to the one Jewish person I've ever met and he said I shouldn't mess with it. It definitely pre-dates the company being in the building, though. Same for me on all counts, but I recognized it right away. But then I'm kind of a language nut so I recognize a lot of things I probably shouldn't otherwise.
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Oct 8, 2014 13:44
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I don't want to live in a world where people don't recognize a mezuzah
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Oct 8, 2014 14:06
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New Leaf posted:If I was never active in any sort of church or lived in an area with a large Jewish community, why would I have ever had an opportunity to see Hebrew frequently enough to recognize an individual letter? Did I miss a "grown man" meeting where they went over this or something? I did talk to the one Jewish person I've ever met and he said I shouldn't mess with it. It definitely pre-dates the company being in the building, though. On the other hand, there are only about a dozen alphabets used in the modern world and they all look very different from one another
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Oct 8, 2014 14:09
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Arnold of Soissons posted:On the other hand, there are only about a dozen alphabets used in the modern world and they all look very different from one another And it has a Star of David at the top, not too hard to guess it's Hebrew.
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Oct 8, 2014 14:31
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Aggressive pricing posted:And it has a Star of David at the top, not too hard to guess it's Hebrew. Could also be the sun. 
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Oct 8, 2014 14:33
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New Leaf posted:why would I have ever had an opportunity to see Hebrew frequently enough to recognize an individual letter? You've never seen a dreidil?
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Oct 8, 2014 15:37
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biznatchio posted:You've never seen a dreidil? The last time I looked at one of those was like ten years ago or more.
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Oct 8, 2014 15:51
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unscrew the thing, take out the scroll, and replace it with a torn-out page from your copy of Mein Kampf, in order to successfully subvert the jewry spells that they cast upon your business to alter the interest rates
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Oct 8, 2014 17:17
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The Walking Dad posted:Are you seriously a grown man who has never seen Hebrew before? Lol. "Sylized "V"" You'd be quite surprised, really, especially when you consider people that are not from urban areas. Apparently there are a grand total of like 13 to 15 million Jewish people in the world. In the U.S. there's apparently 1/3 of the total, many of which do not practice the Jewish faith. In a nation of 300,000,000 people it's not a stretch to assume that a lot of them have had minimal or no exposure to Jewish anything, let alone actual Hebrew.
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Oct 9, 2014 07:41
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Aggressive pricing posted:And it has a Star of David at the top, not too hard to guess it's Hebrew. If you're not familiar with Hebrew, it just kind of looks like a Star of David, a stylized V, then maybe a plant? North Carolina isn't exactly known for its large Jewish population, so cut him some slack. I don't think I've ever seen a dreidel outside of TV. Once you leave NYC and LA, there really aren't that many Jews in America. thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 12:10
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ToxicSlurpee posted:You'd be quite surprised, really, especially when you consider people that are not from urban areas. Apparently there are a grand total of like 13 to 15 million Jewish people in the world. In the U.S. there's apparently 1/3 of the total, many of which do not practice the Jewish faith. In a nation of 300,000,000 people it's not a stretch to assume that a lot of them have had minimal or no exposure to Jewish anything, let alone actual Hebrew. 5 million out of 300 million is almost 2%. At that rate if your high school graduating class was 150 people you know 3 Jews
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Oct 10, 2014 15:44
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Doesn't mean you know their alphabet on sight. I sure don't find it distinctive or obvious from any other number of alphabets. I can recognize western and cyrillic and that's it. The star of david at the top though ought to tip anyone off that it's jewish and thus probably hebrew.
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Oct 10, 2014 15:55
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Arnold of Soissons posted:5 million out of 300 million is almost 2%. At that rate if your high school graduating class was 150 people you know 3 Jews To be fair, if you look at the data, the population is concentrated in certain areas, and many southern states have percentages below 0.5%. South Dakota apparently only has 345 Jews in total as of 2012.  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usjewpop.html I'm from New Jersey so I always assumed there were strong Jewish influences everywhere when I was younger.
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Oct 10, 2014 16:25
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Arnold of Soissons posted:5 million out of 300 million is almost 2%. At that rate if your high school graduating class was 150 people you know 3 Jews Assuming they're evenly distributed across the whole nation. They aren't.
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Oct 10, 2014 16:45
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LogisticEarth posted:I'm from New Jersey so I always assumed there were strong Jewish influences everywhere when I was younger. Yea I'm Jewish and grew up in Maryland, so it took me quite a while to realize that there were other areas of the country where there wasn't two synagogues in every town and the graduating high school class wasn't like a third Jewish. I'm very lucky as a Jew that I grew up in a place and time where I didn't even feel like a minority. For all intents and purposes I wasn't. I certainly never experienced any overt anti-Semitism, and I still haven't really at age 30.
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Oct 10, 2014 17:24
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It's a secret Jew recruiting device. You're probably Jewish now and you don't even know it.
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Oct 10, 2014 18:40
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New Leaf posted:Wow. Nailed it. I've never heard of that practice, but I'm in North Carolina, so not surprising. Why would that be on the door to the office? The Wiki seems to indicate that they only go on homes. Is this a rare thing? In inexact and possibly offensive terms: If you as a Jew put one of those on a door you get a mitzvah for everyone that comes through the door.* Mitzvahs are things that you cash in when you meet god so that you can get an upgrade to four star afterlife instead of entry level afterlife. You can get mitzvahs lots of ways -- marrying another Jew is one. Getting a gentile to wear a yarmulke is another. Some actual substantive good deeds (saving a life) count too. I don't know if they all count the same or not, probably there are disagreements about that, maybe everyone agrees that there are greater and lesser ways to rack up bonus points. *Sects vary on how much they think these things are worthwhile. In a building owned by certain sorts of Jews literally every doorframe will have one. raton fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 20:08
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bobula posted:I don't want to live in a world where people don't recognize a mezuzah I had never seen one until I moved to New York. Also I had never seen gay Halloween in April. I did know a drunk who got really excited about a hut he built in someone's yard though. raton fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 20:14
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Sheep-Goats posted:In inexact and possibly offensive terms: Nah, not really. Not at all actually. A Mitzvah is really just a good deed that you do, and Judaism emphasizes doing as many as you can on general principle. Its possible extremely religious Hasidim view doing a Mitzvah in the way that you describe, but 99 out of 100 Jews you will meet on the street don't think about it that way at all. Also "getting a gentile to wear a yarmulke" isn't a mitzvah at all as far as I know, and Judaism does not involve any sort of active recruitment whatsoever. I've never heard of any sort of tactic where you try to get gentiles to wear yarmulkes, I'm pretty certain that's just nonsense. Doing good deeds in Judaism isn't based on meeting god after you die and getting some sort of special treatment, its about doing good for others because that's the best way to live your life. I'm sure there are some passages in the Old Testament you can find about god judging a person for how many mitzvoth they did, but that's another thing about (the vast majority of)Judaism. Its been interpreted and re-interpreted over the centuries by various respected rabbis, so for the most part the Torah isn't treated as a literal text. That leads to less bullshit like what you described. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 20:32
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I technically know all of that but that post is for goyim. I don't think the yarmulke thing is recruitment. Is the same system as the scroll by the door. The same folks who were told it's a mitzvah for you whenever anyone (Jewish or not) walk through the door think it's a mitzvah for you whenever you can get someone to be humble before god by wearing a little hat (Jewish or not). There are areas in Brooklyn where if you jokingly say you'll try on a yarmulke there's a stampede of people coming to offer you theirs -- not Hasidim, but certainly religiously serious people.
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Oct 10, 2014 20:39
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Sheep-Goats posted:I technically know all of that but that post is for goyim. Well I've never heard of that or experienced it, but I have had very little interaction with Hasidic Jews. Are you certain they weren't Hasidim? I live very near an almost entirely Jewish area outside Baltimore called Pikesville, and I spent my entire childhood in Jewish day school, so I think I'd have heard about it before now. But yea, fanatically religious Jews are just as weird and out-there as any other religion. I'm really not a fan of any organized religion, Judaism included.
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Oct 10, 2014 20:43
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The Grumbles posted:I grew up in an urban area (London) and most people here would recognise Hebrew. Yeah, London is a major global metropolis, and also has a sizeable Jewish population and actual Jewish neighborhoods. Of course people there recognize Hebrew. It's pretty reasonable that someone from North Carolina, especially if they aren't in a city, would not have seen it before. Arnold of Soissons posted:5 million out of 300 million is almost 2%. At that rate if your high school graduating class was 150 people you know 3 Jews Except Jewish people are not remotely distributed evenly throughout the country, if you are in the northeast US it's going to be a much higher ratio, in other areas it would be very common for a typical high school class to contain 0 Jews. Sheep-Goats posted:I don't think the yarmulke thing is recruitment. Is the same system as the scroll by the door. The same folks who were told it's a mitzvah for you whenever anyone (Jewish or not) walk through the door think it's a mitzvah for you whenever you can get someone to be humble before god by wearing a little hat (Jewish or not). There are areas in Brooklyn where if you jokingly say you'll try on a yarmulke there's a stampede of people coming to offer you theirs -- not Hasidim, but certainly religiously serious people. What neighborhood is this? It's pretty common for non-Jewish people to wear a yarmulke when attending a ceremony like a Jewish wedding or funeral, I've never heard that getting them to do so was a mitzvah for anyone. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Oct 12, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2014 01:37
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Like Coney Island Ave and Ave R. I don't know the Brooklyn neighborhood names very well because Queens. If they were hasidim they weren't in uniform. raton fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Oct 12, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2014 07:23
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