Parsha Va’etchanan - Delivered 13 Av 5774/August 9, 2014 at Congregation Netivot Shalom, in Berkeley, California
Shabbat shalom. A lot happens in this parsha. G!d brings Moses up the mountain of Pisgah to see the land of Israel, and tells him to prepare Joshua as the leader of the people, for Moses will die before they enter the land. We have an admonition from Moses to keep the laws that G!d gave to Moses to give the people. Indeed, this parsha is part of the book of Dvarim, Deuteronomy, which is primarily Moses imploring the Israelites to keep the laws. We get a recounting of the events at Sinai, along with a retelling of the 10 commandments, slightly differently this time. We have the setting aside of three cities of refuge for one who commits manslaughter (not murder, but accidental manslaughter). Then we get the Shema: Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Hear, O Israel, Adonai your G!d, Adonai is one. As well as the veahavta: “And you shall love the Lord your G!d with all your soul, with all your heart and with all your might.” And there, in the midst of the veahavta, we come to my favorite mitzvah.
“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house and when thou walked by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thy eyes.”
What? Are we binding words to our hands? Do we write them down and tie the paper on, or is this more a metaphysical white fire on black fire thing? What is a frontlet, where does it go between my eyes, and how am I going to tie the words between my eyes and not block my view?
This is probably why wrapping tefillin is my favorite mitzvah. It’s a really really werid one. I’ll be the first to tell you, all my friends are weird. (Sorry friends who like to think of yourselves as not weird. I like you because I think you’re weird in a good way.) Or as Robin says, “aardvarks.” Is it any surprise my favorite mitzvah is also an aardvark?
Wrapping tefillin isn’t a mitzvah we talk about much. It has, historically, been a mitzvah primarily done by men, although there are notable exceptions of well-known women who wrapped tefillin, such as Michal, the daughter of king Saul, who the Talmud says in Tractate Eruvin wrapped tefillin “and the sages did not protest”. That said, for the most part, the vast majority of discussion and images of tefillin are of men wrapping them. A few years ago, as I was becoming more observant, and became interested in trying wrapping tefillin, I had never heard of a woman who wrapped tefillin. Now, thanks to the increasing visibility of Women of the Wall, we see a lot more pictures of women wrapping tefillin, but 3 or 4 years ago when I was first interested, images of women wrapping tefillin were sparse, and I hadn’t heard anyone discuss it.
I grew up in a feminist household where Barbie was definitely not allowed. My parents wanted to raise strong, independent women with positive self-images, and Barbie’s unrealistic proportions didn’t fit into that for them. There are still not many women wrapping tefillin yet, and it is still a bit of a radical feminist act to be a woman who wraps tefillin. So it was pretty ironic that my first inclination that there were other women interested in wrapping tefillin, my first invitation to do so was a picture of Jenn Taylor Friedman’s Tefillin Barbie, a Barbie doll wrapped in toy tefillin reading Torah.
So I know there are some people here who have no idea what tefillin are, probably among them, some of our family who are here to celebrate with us today. Thank you guys for coming all this way and coming to celebrate with us including sitting through services in a language you don’t understand in a religion not your own. It means the world to us to have you here today.
The English word usually used for tefillin is “phylacteries”. Given that tefillin are primary thing the word phylacteries refer to, to the point that many dictionaries simply describe tefillin in their definition of phylactery, this is not helpful. Tefillin are two small black leather boxes which contain tiny pieces of parchment on which are written the verses from the Torah which reference binding these words to your arm and between your eyes. One box sits on your bicep on your non-dominant arm, and is held on by a strap which wraps around your arm, and then around your forearm 7 times, and about your hand. The other box sits on your head, above your natural hairline (or where it used to be, for those whose hairline has gone the way of the dodo), and is held on with two leather straps that are tied in a knot at the back of your head, and whose extra length is draped forward over your shoulders like a stole.
One of the things I love about tefillin is that it’s a concrete mitzvah, a very physical mitzvah. It’s tough to make the time to get out of bed early to daven. Getting out of bed early to be emotionally present, take stock of where I’m at, and talk to G!d honestly? It’s much easier to hit snooze. But wrapping tefillin is one small action. I tell myself all I have to do is get up and put them on. It’s a different mitzvah than davening, they don’t have to go together. I get up and put on my tefillin, and I’m done. And now, I’m standing here in my tallit and tefillin, might as well at least say the shema, right? And where do you stop? Ani Adonai elohekiem emet? You just slide into the next paragraph, and all of a sudden, you’re at the Amidah, and you might as well say the Amidah, and there you go, you davened this morning.
Is that all tefillin are? A lazy excuse for kinesthetic thinkers like me to drag themselves out of bed to daven in the morning? Of course not.
So what does it mean to wrap yourself in tefillin?
I think the key to this is found in three places. The first is a discussion from Tractate Berachos. In Chapter 1, 6a, it says “Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak asked Rav Chiya bar Avin ‘Those tefillin of the Master of the Universe, what is written in them?’ Rav Chiya bar Avin answered: He said to him ‘And who is like Your people Israel, one nation in the land.’ “ The rabbis go on to discuss what verses might be in the other compartments, and decide that they are several verses which discuss how G!d is special to Israel or Israel is special to G!d. This, in many ways, is what tefillin are all about. They are a reminder of the love and special relationship between G!d and the people Israel. Which is not to say that other peoples do not have special relationships with G!d, but tefillin are a specificly Jewish connection between G!d and the people Israel.
The second key is the verses from Hosea we say as we wrap tefillin. As we wrap the tefillin around our hand, specifically, as we wrap it around the middle finger of our non-dominant hand, we say “V’erastik li l’olam. V’erastik li b’tzedek, u’vmishpat, uv’chesed uv’rachamim. V’erastik li bemunah v’yadaat et Adonai.” I betroth you to me forever. I betroth you to me in righteousness, justice, lovingkindness and mercy. I betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know G!d. Throughout Jewish tradition, we see marital imagery used to describe the relationship between G!d and the people Israel. In wrapping tefillin, we call upon that imagery to bind and commit ourselves to G!d.
Third, and perhaps most interesting and intense lies in the knots of the tefillin. There are different customs of wrapping tefillin, depending on your minhag, so there are slight variations. What I’m about to say doesn’t apply to all methods of wrapping, but does for several. The letter shin is created on the hand out of the leather straps of the arm tefillin. Even for the methods of wrapping which don’t create a shin on your hand, there is a shin on the head tefillin. The knot at the back of the head forms a double or single dalet. Finally, the knot on the arm forms the letter yud. Taken together, shin-dalet-yud, spells Shaddai, a name of G!d. When one wraps tefillin, one literally wraps oneself in the name of G!d.
This, I believe, gets to the core of the mitzvah of tefillin, and why I love them. Why is it easier for me to get up to wrap tefillin than it is to daven? Tefillin is about binding. When we wrap tefillin, we wrap ourselves up in G!d, and we bind ourselves to G!d. When we wrap tefillin, G!d binds G!d’s self to us, in wrapping G!d’s tefillin.
On days when I feel G!d’s presence, and feel close to G!d, I wrap myself in tefillin to be closer to G!d. On days when I feel lost and far from G!d, I wrap myself in tefillin to strive to return to G!d. And on the days when I’m falling apart, I wrap the pieces of myself in tefillin, and bind my pieces back together in binding myself to G!d.
This is why I love tefillin. I love the physicality of binding myself to G!d, of a physical reminder of a commitment to G!d. Engaging my body in davening helps me daven with all my heart, all my soul and all my might, as my might, the strength of my arms, is bound towards G!d as I turn my heart and mind towards G!d. I love the aspects of committing and binding myself to G!d each day.
Plus, it’s a weird mitzvah, and what’s not to like about that?
Shabbat shalom.