Tefillin – Page 3 – Ben's Tallit Shop

Tefillin Battim: How Big Are the Boxes?

Recently we had a customer who told me he weighs 200 pounds and that standard 32 mm tefillin boxes "look silly" on him. "Let me take a guess," I wrote to him by email, "were your previous set of tefillin – the ones that were stolen from your car last week – Chabad tefillin?" It turned...

Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic Tefillin: What’s the Difference?

If you are buying tefillin for the first time, or are buying tefillin for a bar mitzvah boy, some aspects of tefillin are probably a mystery to you. Some aspects remain a mystery to all of us – as indeed it was meant to be – but certainly basic consumer information for the prospective tefillin...

Tefillin Found After Bulgaria Bombing

A member of the ZAKA team that flew from Israel to Bulgaria following the bombing attack on a bus carrying Israeli tourists found an intact set of tefillin in the wreckage. According to a report on Arutz Sheva, he was deeply moved when he came across the tefillin. “Reuven lifted and kissed them… In...

Tefidanit Tefillin Case Wins Court Case

A Jerusalem court ruled that a tefillin travel case made by Art Judaica is an imitation of Tefidanit, a tefillin case made by Tefillin Beit El, and ordered Art to halt sales of the product. The tefillin cases also have space for a tallit, siddur and other items. They are quite popular among the knitted...

Tefillin on a fading number

I am not 100% supportive of Chabad tefillin-wrapping "mitvto'im," but a post by a Chabad activist who tried to encourage an elderly Holocaust survivor to wrap tefillin really moved me. The Lubavitcher proffers a set of tefillin to an old man at the Western Wall, asking him when was the last time he laid tefillin. "He...

Tefillin and the Power of Ritual

Tefillin can be an extremely powerful tool used to connect to Our Father in Heaven and bind ourselves to Him, body, mind and soul. But unfortunately, many of us find it difficult to gather inspiration when we lay our tefillin every day, and really think about what we're doing. When I lay my tefillin each...

Jewish Wedding Preparation: Tallit & Tefillin

The day before my wedding I kept practicing how to tie my wedding tie. A year later, when my friend Alex got married, I realized there are more lofty preparations to make for a Jewish wedding. He stayed at my apartment the night before the wedding, and at 11:30 p.m. his biggest concern was...

Tefillin Prices: What to Expect

In part because the materials are fairly expensive, but primarily because production is labor intensive and requires a high degree of expertise, tefillin prices are high. I'll start with tefillin gassot, and then discuss options for budget tefillin below. Tefillin Gassot Tefillin are basically comprised of three parts, the boxes, the parchments and the straps. The difference in...

Kosher tefillin you can believe in

Soon after I started selling inexpensive tefillin peshutim, I stopped for a period of six months. I live in an area with a very large number of top sofrim and high-end tefillin makers (i.e. the kind of tefillin that will run you at least $1,100 if you live in the neighborhood, and a lot...

Tefillin Buyers Guide

What's inside the boxes? The box of the head tefillin (tefillin shel rosh) has four separated compartments, each with a specially prepared parchment or vellum (known as klaf) on which a different passage from the Torah is written? The arm tefillin (tefillin shel yad) has one single compartment containing a parchment with verses. How are the...