There was no welcome mat for his mezuzah.
An Orthodox Jew claims he was booted by a Long Island landlord who demanded that he remove the treasured religious artifact from his apartment door and declared, “This is a Christian residence.”
Arye Sachs says the mezuzah, a piece of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah and typically hung in a special case at the entrance of a Jewish home, is a precious family heirloom handed down from his grandfather, a victim of the Holocaust.
In a Brooklyn federal lawsuit, Sachs, 53, calls the mezuzah a “priceless, irreplaceable protector” that helped him recover from three strokes and even made his divorce “one of the most amicable and peaceful divorces known to man.”
He claims that landlord Margarita Pascale, 57, repeatedly told him to take the mezuzah down from the door of the North Babylon home where she rented him an apartment and that she then evicted him when he didn’t.
“Pascal [sic] informed me this residence is a Christian residence, and if I will not remove my mezuzah, I will be out ‘on the street,’ ” Sachs alleges.
He says he discovered the mezuzah missing after returning from a trip last month. Pascale did not return a call for comment.