The Satmar Rebbe, Rav Aharon Teitelbaum, recently delivered a scathing shmuess at his bais medrash in Kiryas Yoel in Monroe in which he instructed his Chassidim to buy mezuzahs only from G-d-fearing sofrim.
“Invalid mezuzahs and tefillin are now being sold,” he said. “People think there is a ‘bargain’ to be had with cheaply sold mezuzahs. Who are the sofrim? The mezuzahs are imported from Eretz Yisroel. It would be a shame and a disgrace to say who from the Eretz Yisroel writes these mezuzahs. ”
According to the Rebbe, “If we looked into the matter, we would be disgusted. These people write mezuzahs [that are unacceptable] and send them to the United States. ”
“Completely invalid mezuzahs come here, and also those that are not completely invalid but are kosher only bedieved,” he said.
{Matzav.com}
This is absolutely true anyone who has even the tiniest bit of info on the Safrus market can tell you this. Unfortunately people think that it’s ok to be cheap in this area. I personally have taken tefillin that were being sold as mehudar to be checked prior to buying them and the first Sofer I brought it to who will usually tell if something is mehudar said he can’t say anything thing about this pair because he sells stuff and he recommended I go to someone else who only checks and is an expert. When I showed it to the expert he said if he was stuck on an island and this was the only pair of tefillin only then would he put these on WITH OUT a Bracha I brought it back to the guy selling them and told him what this expert Sofer said and he just said to me ok if you don’t want it I’ll sell it to someone else. For those curious as to what the issues were with that pair I can’t tell you all of them but one of the major issues was that the lamed wasn’t a chof with a vov on top instead it had a yud and some of them weren’t even a chof on bottom instead it had a reish
Bottom line. Who CAN you trust these days? There are people that support liberal politicians for big bucks. That’s definitely not kosher.
This is nothing new. i was involved in safrus about 30 years ago I worked in two different stores. All types of people came to sell the mezuzos they wrote. For someone that wants to make a quick buck on an unsuspecting consumer a person can write mezuzos. To make it worthwhile they write many mezuzos in a short time.
I used a 3-D printer and it looked great. The 3-D printer has made it possible to have affordable mezzuzot, I feel mehudardik too. The Sofer said it looked good. I’m a happy camper.
It’s a shame that it’s not a mezuzah, just something that resembles a mezuzah. Why ruin your doorposts for something like that when it accomplishes zero??
Commenter #2, Give a 10, you’re entitled to feel that way but don’t you see there’s no parallel! People unsuspectingly are being sold pasul Mezuzot and the Rebbe is calling an alert! Tavo Alav Beracha.