It's Expensive to Be Jewish. Exhibit A: My Tefillin
Cross-posted on Jews By Choice
About a decade ago, when we moved back to the Chicago area and joined a traditional Conservative synagogue, it soon became apparent that I was going to have to buy tefillin. I had never worn tefillin, can't tie a knot to save my life, and wasn't at all sure why or whether this strange behavior was necessary.
But if I was going to attend a morning minyan -- as I was told every good Jew should do (even if you're a woman and not counted in the minyan) -- then I needed tefillin. So a friend took me to a large, reputable Jewish bookstore in Chicago that also sells the requisite storehouse of mandatory Jewish paraphernalia, and I purchased a set.
I have used this set perhaps two dozen times in the decade that I've owned it. First, I was too shy to actually go a morning minyan and be seen accidentally lashed to my chair, murmuring for help. The first few times I did go to minyan, I went half an hour early. This would have been an excellent way to meditate one's way into prayer, but in my case I was just trying to not wind up hanged from the rafters by the straps of the arm tefillin.
Laying tefillin should be a meditation: when you do it, you're preparing for prayer, but you're also physically attaching crucial sets of text your body: you're demarcating the boundary of your physical self with text that cleaves your soul to the transcendental. You are bound into mystical union with the Almighty, embossed (via the letters on the head tefillin and the shin formed by the straps of the arm tefillin as they cross the back of your hand) with one of the Divine names that's loaded with mystical meaning.
You're starting the day with the recitation of prayer accompanied by the continuity of preparation that has existed for thousands of years. To watch someone lay tefillin when they've done it every day all their lives -- to see them muttering the verse assigned to each move of the choreography, and to see how beautifully and evenly they execute each movement -- is to come face-to-face with the ancient truth that laying tefillin is the very essence of the committed religious life: utter nonsense transformed into transcendent meaning. And still managing to be both nonsensical and transcendent at once.
The tefillin contain four sets of verses from the Torah, laid out in parallel rows. These verses must be written in ink, in a specific type of script, on parchment, and calligraphed and knotted to the rigorous and exacting standards that have driven many a Sofer (scribe) round the bend. These four verses are inserted in the arm tefillin's one compartment, and then inserted separately in the four compartments of the tefillin worn on the head.
I'm telling you all this because, in preparation for Gabe's bar mitzvah later this year, we're preparing to buy him his first set of tefillin: he'll be learning what they mean, what they contain, how to put them on, and how to care for them.
We found a local rabbi (Orthodox, of course) who is expert in this matter, and we figured that, while we'd ask him for help getting Gabe outfitted, we'd also have my tefillin checked to be sure they're kosher. I'm told this is something that should be done regularly. Once a decade does not count as "regularly."
Earlier this week, the rabbi called me to inform me that the parchment in my tefillin were not written according to halakha (Jewish law) and that I should seriously consider getting new parchment for them. Cost: around $200. Alternately, I could buy a new set of tefillin, but he insisted that this was not necessary and that he felt it was his ethical and moral obligation not to sell me anything I did not need or want. Oh, and by the way: those would run anywhere from $200 to north of $500.
The rabbi scanned the parchment of my tefillin and e-mailed it to me. To the naked and uneducated eye, there's nothing wrong with these tefillin. And yet I'm troubled:
- Why would one of the Chicago Jewish community's most venerable stores sell a set of tefillin that weren't kosher?
- How -- if at all -- has it changed my life, and my prayer, my meditation, my spiritual growth -- to have been wearing these tefillin?
- The way things have evolved, we are divided into denominations, but trust only the Orthodox to determine the ritual fitness of our kitchens, our phylacteries, the ritual accoutrements of Judaism. Does it have to be this way?
- While I understand that there are people who make their living creating these objects and upholding these standards, it seems that the costs mean that you simply couldn't lead a very observant life and be considered a good Jew (by the people preoccupied with making those distinctions). Does it have to be that way?
- Is the imperfection of my tefillin a symbol of all that's imperfect in my spiritual life? A symptom of my ignorance -- or, perhaps, a cause? Do these tiny flaws open gaps in the space-time fabric that warp my entire experience?
- When my tefillin are made kosher, I'll struggle with them just the same. The words -- the order, the kind of ink, the kind of parchment, the care taken -- will be the same, or nearly so. I will struggle to put them on and take them off without doing mortal harm to myself, just as I do now. But will I be a better Jew?
- What will have changed?
--T.A.
