Tefillin – Page 5 – Ben's Tallit Shop

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...

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...

Phylacteries in Philly

Who can forget when a US Airways commuter flight made an emergency landing (January 2010) after a crew panicked at the sight of a 17-year-old laying tefillin? The young man and his sister were headed for a four-day visit with their grandmother, but instead were greeted in the City of Brotherly Love by bomb-sniffing dogs,...

‘Tefillin-fest’ for Secular Jews

Dozens of secular Jews from around Israel gathered in Bnei Brak to receive a blessing from an elderly sage and to put on their own tefillin for the first time, Arutz Sheva reported this week. “Many of the sets of tefillin were donated by a generous Jew in...

Tefillin: Mind, Heart and Soul

Tefillin, also known as phylacteries, are passages from the Torah written on parchments and placed in leather battim (receptacles or “houses”), with leather straps attached. These straps are used to bind the battim on the arm and head. A Bond Between You and the Torah The source of the commandment of tefillin...