Moses continues his speech, with plenty of admonishments to go around. In mid-speech he says something most of us are familiar with:
12. And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13. To keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command you this day for your good? (Deut 10:12-13)
In the chapter after that, once again we find the mitzvah of tefillin:
18. Therefore shall you lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. (11:18)
As I discussed last week, tefillin do have four scriptural citations. These are enumerated in the Talmud:
Our Rabbis taught: What is the order [of the four Scriptural portions in the head-tefillin]? ‘Sanctify unto Me’ (Exodus 13:1-10) and ‘And it shall be when the Lord shall bring thee’ (Exodus 13:11-16) are on the right, while ‘Hear’ (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) and ‘And it shall come to pass if ye shall hearken diligently’ (Deuteronomy 11:13-21) are on the left. [B.Menachot 34b]
This Gemara describes details of head tefillin. Head tefillin, unlike arm tefillin, have individual compartments for the four passages. That of course begs the question for the rabbis: Which order does one place the tefillin in those compartments? The answer is a bit vague: On the left side are the Deuteronomy passages, and the right side the Exodus passages. They are listed here in order of their appearance in the Torah, so probably that’s the order they should be in. But then someone notes a contradiction and Abaye come to the rescue:
But there has been taught just the reverse? — Abaye said, This is no contradiction, for in the one case the reference is to the right of the reader, whereas in the other it is to the right of the one that wears them; the reader thus reads them according to their order.
Apparently another ruling had them backwards: Deuteronomy on the right and Exodus on the left. It’s a matter of orientation, Abaye explains. Two people looking at the order of the passages will have a different order depending on the side of the tefillin they are on. Abaye states it is the order of someone approaching the wearer that is the ruling above. But once again there is an objection:
R. Hananel said in the name of Rab, If a man reversed the order of the Scriptural portions, it is invalid.
R. Hananel insists they still have to be in the right order, and that other things change the order as well. The argument then continues for another half a page about order of the passages and whether transpositions in the order are valid. The vague nature of the text provides a problem: there is no definitive answer to the correct order. What becomes clear is there is only one order to the text and we are not completely sure what it is. The problem comes to a head in the middle ages in an argument between a grandfather and his grandson. The grandfather is the great commentator Rashi. Rashi takes the order literally from the text. That would be from right to left, Exodus 13:1-10, Exodus 13:11-16, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, and Deuteronomy 11:13-21. His grandson, the Tosafist Rabbenu Tam, disagreed with his Grandpa on the order. Rabbenu Tam transposes the Deuteronomy 6 and 11 passages, so that the Shema (Deuteronomy 6) is sitting against the Shin on the outside of the tefillin and the two inner passages both start with “and it will be.” Since a wrong order is invalid, then one of these orders is invalid, but it is still difficult to tell. Some will believe their tefillin are the correct order. Others are not sure what the right order is. So to this day some people have two sets of tefillin, one for the more popular Rashi version, and one for the Rabbenu Tam. They will don one pair then the other or sometimes two pairs together.
For most who do not observe such rules, including me, it seems a little silly. Yet for those who follow these practices, it is no more than to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. This is the way of observance for them, however trivial. For them, Mies van der Rohe was right “God is in the details”
I do not believe that God really cares which way the documents are in a pair of tefillin, though it provides meaning to some. The mitzvah of tefillin for me isn’t an object, but an action. Tefillin are a reminder and a sign, as Exodus 13 reminds us.
Exodus 13:9. And it shall be for a sign to you upon your hand, and for a memorial between your eyes, that the Lord’s Torah may be in your mouth; for with a strong hand has the Lord brought you out of Egypt.
They remind us of many things. But in Hebrew the word for hand does not only mean an anatomical feature, but our power to control things. The mitzvah of Tefillin are a sign not on our hand but a sign concerning what we have the power to do. The word totafot, bindings, is a rare word. It appears in Tanach only in three of our tefillin passages. In rabbinic literature, totafot is only found in discussions regarding tefillin, and the totefet of a woman, which she is prohibited from wearing on Shabbat. Both are things which bind across the whole head [Shabbat 57b] and both have the expression “between the eyes” associated with it. Between the eyes is the focal point of stereoscopic vision, the point we apparently see from. The verses in this interpretation describe our ability to perceive the world and act in it. But what are we seeing and acting on?
There is an apparent contradiction in the text of Deuteronomy 11, just before the tefillin passage:
2. And know this day; for I speak not with your children which have not known, and which have not seen the chastisement of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his stretched out arm, 3. And his miracles, and his acts, which he did in the midst of Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and to all his land; … 7. But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the Lord which he did. (Deuteronomy 11:2-7)
But in Numbers 32:13 and Deuteronomy 2:14 and 2:16 we are told that generation died, a generation that had seen God’s wonders. Who is Moses talking to? One answer is Caleb and Joshua, who did survive. Yet, in each of the four passages of tefillin there is another commandment beyond binding to hands and head. It is to teach the next generation the story of Torah. It is to bind the deeds and the vision of the next generation to the Torah, to our heritage of slavery to freedom, and the wonders of God during that journey. Even in the structure of the tefillin we see this as bookends: The right side of the tefillin according to the Talmud’s reckoning contains the mitzvah of leaving Egypt. The left side the tefillin contains mitzvot of entering and living in the land. The forty years of the journey separate the texts.
In the first passages of tefillin, Exodus 13, we read And you shall tell your son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did to me when I came forth out of Egypt.” In the last ones Deuteronomy 11, and almost identically in Deuteronomy 6, we read And you shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. When Moses states that the generation saw wonders before they were born, he means they were taught in the wilderness about these wonders. Those that weren’t taught were lost in the wilderness, and not there to cross the Jordan.
I may not observe the mitzvah of tefillin, but I think the contents of those compartments are vital. It is not placing them on my arm and head that is important but doing as much as I can to make those words alive for others, to spur them to see within their Jewish identity, and to teach the generations yet to be born.
May we all be successful in that endeavor
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