December 2010 – Ben's Tallit Shop

Spanish Prison Allows Inmate to Lay Tefillin

By Dan Slobodkin After three weeks without tefillin or kosher food, arrangements have now been made to allow Eli H., who was charged with smuggling drugs into Spain, wear tefillin every day. According to a Chabad website, the fundraiser en route to Costa Rica was tricked into taking...

Types of Tefillin: The Parchments

There are three different types of writing customs for the parchments inside tefillin: Beit Yosef, Arizal, and Vellish. Beit Yosef is the same script that Torahs are written in. Arizal script is only slightly different from Beit Yosef (seven letters differ), and is the preferred script of the Hassidic community. Vellish script is bolder,...

On Tefillin Prices

The main factor in determining the price of a set of tefillin is the quality of the writing on the parchments. The writing on tefillin parchments is considerably smaller than the writing on a mezuzah (in most cases) or a Sefer Torah. Small writing is hard to do well, so a set of tefillin parchments...

Tefillin – What’s Inside?

The tefillin boxes (called battim) house strips of parchment with four passages from the Torah written by a specially trained scribe, known as a sofer. Tefillin contain the following biblical verses: God spoke to Moses, saying, "Sanctify to Me every firstborn that initiates the womb among the Israelites. Among both man and beast, it is...

Tefillin construction: The four types of tefillin

There are a number of ways to construct the two leather boxes - the shel yad and the shel rosh. The best and most difficult way is to mold a single piece of leather into a box shape. Another technique is to cut and glue leather into a box shape. Tefillin - Pricing and Details>>> Molded...

Tefillin Laying Device for Amputees

IDF engineers designed a device that enables amputees to lay tefillin independently. "First I had to learn how to put on tefillin," said one of the MILBAT (Israel Center for Technology and Accessibility) workers. "It took me months to put together this device." Since then it...

Tefillin Scare on New Zealand Ferry

An Israeli putting on tefillin set off a bomb scare on a New Zealand ferry, the TVNZ website reported. The captain of the inter-island ferry, who believed the tefillin's boxes and leather straps resembled a bomb, reported his concerns to police during Sunday's...

Women and Tefillin

According to R. Meir of Rottenberg (as quoted by his disciple, R. Shimshon bar Tzadok), women are exempt from laying tefillin because it is a positive, time-bound mitzvah since tefillin are not worn on Shabbat. However, "one should not protest against their wrapping themselves in tzizit and reciting the blessing because they can accept...

Tying Tzitzit Before Bar Mitzvah

Can a young man spin tzitzit or tie tzitzit on his own tallit before his bar mitzvah?

Is a Tallit Katan Mandatory?

According to the late Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, in ancient times – as late as the classical Greek period – many garments were four-cornered. Rather than tailored, clothing generally consisted of a simple rectangle of cloth, straight from the loom and worn as a shawl, cape, tunic or toga. Similar garments were worn in Talmudic...