Tefillin story

The car stopped at the designated address in West Rogers Park. I woke up, rolling out of the passenger seat with a yawn and suddenly shook up.  Are we back in Israel?  There was something stirring about a small house in front of us, the playground across the street, the sign on the house that said to use the side door to see the scribe.  The odd feeling in the chest grew stronger as we approached the side door that plainly announced the name of the sofer, the scribe. 

The man who opened the door has white hair, shiny black eyes, rather shy smile and pleasant voice.  We come down into the wood-paneled basement, where a Torah scroll lies unrolled on a long table, prayer shawls folded on a shelf in the corner, the work tables are filled with leather, wood and some tools. 

The sofer explains to my husband and our almost Bar Mitzvah son how the tefillin is made and what is the difference between simple and more expensive scrolls and boxes.  The tefilin is a small leather box that holds the words of Torah, one for the left, weaker, arm, another for the head, placed right over the prefrontal cortex, the seat of consciousness, the higher self.  The arm tefillin holds four excerpts from the Torah in one scroll.  The head tefillin is more elaborate, with four compartments, each for the separate small scroll with one of the same four excerpts that talk about the commandment to put on tefillin. 

Tefillin is a physical object made by the master scribe to hold the sacred words, tangible that contains the intangible.  Like the ark, aron kodesh, that held the tablets with engraved words of the law, the object of information whose value cannot be estimated in human currency, only by its power over minds and hearts.  Like the human body that contains a beautiful mind, or mother’s body that contains the living and growing embryo. 

The three line letter shin on one side, the four line shin on the opposite sign – what is the difference between the two, why is the same letter written in a different way?  Ah, glad you asked, the four-line shin is the outer wrapping for the inner three-line shin, see how the two lines on the edge wrap around the smaller shin, while the two lines in the middle fill the empty space within.  Outer and inner aspects of divinity - masculine and feminine, visible public and hidden private, mundane and holy. 

The tangible is not just a box.  If we think of the body and mind, the body feeds the mind, provides environment for the mind to function, to create.  A mother’s body supplies the living and growing embryo with nourishment.  The tangible, physical object is not passive, it interacts with the intangible, the sacred, the divine in more ways than we are given to understand.  The house, the basement itself is a box that contains the sacred space where the man creates objects of holiness.  Being in a place like this, listening to the sofer shocks me with the feeling of open-mouthed wonder that makes me loose appetite, starts at the hairline level, going down to form a lump in the throat, shutting down the amygdala driven digestive system.    

A few decades earlier and half the world over I would have been whipped for visiting such basement.  As for the basement owner, if he were discovered, it’s better not to even think about it.  What are they afraid of?  What danger could possibly pose the soft spoken sofer, the high minded rabbi, the beautiful singer, the Kabbalah artist? The power over the heart, the perceived manipulation, fear of irrational.  I may feel threatened by myself taking time out of busy schedule to type up this story, but if I don’t think and write about what Yoni’s tefillin means to me, then what is the meaning of its acquisition, is my purpose in this world only to write the check for it? What is the meaning of our labor under the sun and the hard earned money if we don’t care deeply about the things we spend it on? 

U’kshartam l’ot al yadeha – bind them as a sign upon your arm V’hayu l’totafot bein eineha – and let them be as frontlets between your eyes.  The tangible physical object, designed in holiness, that will connect the little man with the infinitely divine Master of the Universe.