There are things we do that are bonding experiences. For my wife and me, that means using our precious time off to do things together. This weekend, we’re spending special bonding time with my parents!
Such well-intended plans can have complications! Our challenge: Due to my son’s yeshiva schedule, he wasn’t going to be able to join us. So, I arranged to take him skiing (just he and I) on Sunday. These experiences, as well, create impressions and develop relationships.
Bonding is an important part of living. It’s important in our relationships. It’s also important in connecting to the Creator. Sometimes, simple actions we do daily create these bonds. At the end of Parshas Bo we read about the mitzvah of Tefillin. The pasuk says, “It should be a sign on your hand and totafos (head Tefillin consisting of four compartments) between your eyes, for with a strong hand Hashem took us out of Mitzrayim.”Each day, men wrap Tefillin as a sign that we are bound to Hashem.
The Ramban says we place them on our head and our left arm opposite the heart, since the mind and the heart are the sources of our thoughts and actions which connect us to Hashem.
Regarding the two boxes of Tefillin, the one on the arm and the one on the head, the Maharal notes a distinction between them. “The pasuk says, The nations of the world shall see that the Name of Hashem is ascribed to you…’ The Gemara says that this refers to the Tefillin shel rosh, those of of the head, which separately contains the four parshiyos which reference Hashem’s absolute power and how He performed miracles and wonders for Klal Yisrael during Yetzias Mitzrayim (the Exodus).”
Rashi says that the word totafos is a compound word from two different languages, tat and pas, each of which means “two” in Caspian and African. Rabbi Avrohom Chaim Feuer told me that Rav Gifter explained that the reason the Torah chose words in different languages is specifically to show how the Tefillin of the head indicates to the nations of the world the fact that Hashem is resting His presence upon the Jewish nation.
When we don our head Tefillin, we are acknowledging Hashem’s regard for us, whereas when we wrap the Tefillin on our arms, we are binding our hearts and our actions to Hashem.
The Sfas Emes says that Tefillin is like a document of emancipation, declaring how Hashem freed us from Mitzrayim. But each time we put them on, it also enhances our ability to free ourselves from various enslavements to physical indulgences.
The Gemara says that a person needs to have a clean body in order to wear Tefillin. The Sfas Emes explains further: Just like Tefillin has various halachos regarding the parchment it may be written on, the body of a person who wears Tefillin also needs to be pure. The Sfas Emes also adds that the four scrolls of Tefillin of the head plus the one scroll in the Tefillin of the arm add up to five. The five scrolls then correspond to a Sefer Torah, which we know has five books.
By wrapping the Tefillin each day, every Jewish man transforms his body spiritually and connects himself deeply to Hashem. Let us therefore utilize our daily performance of the mitzvah of Tefillin to be a bonding experience with Hashem, thereby enhancing our daily lives.
Rabbi Baruch Bodenheim is the Rosh Yeshiva of Passaic Torah Institute (PTI)/Yeshiva Ner Boruch. Rabbi Bodenheim can be reached at [email protected]. For more info about PTI and its Torah classes, visit www.pti.shulcloud.com
