Ask anyone in a Jewish audience to create a mental image of a “pious Jew” and chances are good that vision will be male, wear a head covering and a tallit. Chances are also good that he’ll be wearing tefillin, the leather boxes containing four biblical passages (including the Shema) that are worn on the forehead and are wrapped around the arm.
The first reference to those holy items is found in today’s Torah portion. Speaking about the miraculous liberation of the Israelite slaves, the Torah recounts God’s instruction to “explain to your child on that day, ‘it is because of what Adonai did for me when I went free from Egypt.’” Each of us is to view this act of freedom as a personal gift, from the Creator of the universe directly to us.
Immediately following this instruction, the Torah then relates, “And this shall serve you as a sign on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead—in order that the Teaching of Adonai may be in your mouth—that with a mighty hand Adonai freed you from Egypt. You shall keep this institution at its set times from year to year.”
The simple reading of this verse doesn’t sound like it is referring to Tefillin at all. Instead, it seems like the Torah is instituting the observance of Pesah and instructing us that teaching our children about the miracle of Passover is to be a permanent part of the Festival’s celebration. In fact, the Torah continues by next insisting that the celebration of Pesah continue after the wandering in the wilderness has concluded with the successful conquest of the Land of Israel, and then again reiterates, “And so it shall be a sign upon your hand and as a symbol on your forehead that with a mighty hand Adonai freed us from Egypt.”
However much it might seem that the Torah is merely using metaphorical language to say that the Pesah story is fundamental to Jewish identity, rabbinic tradition expanded its meaning in a rather literal direction. Thus, Targum Onkelos, the ancient Aramaic translation of the Torah, renders the Hebrew word for symbol (totafot) as “tefillin.” Similarly, the Talmud (Massekhet Menahot) quotes Mar as saying that the first reference to a sign refers to the Tefillin placed on the head and the second refers to the Tefillin worn on the arm.
Hizkuni, a great medieval rabbi, specifies that the Tefillin of the head “memorializes the signs and wonders which the Holy Blessing One did in our sight” and the Tefillin of the arm “memorializes God’s strength.” Others have understood that wearing the Tefillin on forehead and arm represents our pledge to use both mind and strength in the service of God.
Why have Tefillin remained as such lasting symbols of Jewish piety, in fact of Jewish identity itself? To answer that question moves us beyond the words of Torah, causing us to look at what the practice creates.
Each morning (other than a Shabbat or Festival), after waking, dressing, and washing, I go downstairs and wrap myself in my Tallit and bind myself with my Tefillin. As I perform these mitzvot, I say the ancient words that have regularly accompanied the deed: I speak of God also being wrapped in a Tallit of light, and then I close with the stirring words of our prophet Hosea: “I will betroth you to Me forever. I will betroth you with righteousness, with justice, with love, and with compassion. I will betroth you to Me with faithfulness, and you shall love Adonai.”
The combination of the words and the deed create a sacred space—both physically, by carving out the space within the Tallit and bound by the Tefillin that is now devoted to prayer, and mentally, by focusing my mind and soul on God’s loving betrothal of the Jewish people, of which I am a part and an embodiment.
There is an awe and a strangeness about the Tefillin. I could see that by the way my then 2-year-old twins looked at the tefillin and asked to touch them, by the way they liked to be in the room watching as I davened, by the way they called out “Bye-Bye, Tefillin” as I packed them away.
And I knew that those Tefillin would be etched into their young minds as a powerful symbol of Jewish wholeness. Morning, in their experience, was Tefillin time. The rising of the sun and its setting are linked, inextricably, to the rhythms of Jewish ritual, to the faithful response to a mitzvah.
For thousands of years, we Jews have worn those Tefillin to testify to our liberation from slavery and our betrothal to God. Generations of Jewish children have learned to love their heritage and to revere their God by watching their fathers wearing those tefillin to start out the new day.
Do we owe our children any less? Don’t we also deserve as much?
Shabbat shalom.