Bo
Exodus 10:1-13:16
Jeremiah 46:13-28
Tefillin easily score high on a scale of my own invention that I call the Jewish “bizarre-o-meter”: leather straps attached to boxes of black painted animal hide, with writing inside boxes, strapped to the upper arm and on a specific point just above the hairline and centered between the eyes.
Years ago, a young woman unfamiliar with Judaism who was visiting my roommate once came into our apartment without knocking and found me wearing them as I prayed. It would be difficult to describe the look on her face when she saw me, but you can probably imagine something approximating the expression if you try hard. (Incidentally, just to satisfy my own curiosity, I asked her afterward what she thought they were, and she said “possibly some kind of weird photographic equipment.”) They don’t even have a normal English name, going by the not particularly helpful or descriptive term “phylacteries.” That’s a good one.
Inside every pair of tefillin are parchments inscribed with the four paragraphs in the Torah that mention this mitzvah. Two of those paragraphs are found in the Shema in the book of Deuteronomy, and the other two are found in this week’s Torah reading.
Classically offered explanations link the content of our Torah portion to these holy boxes by focusing on how HaShem took us out of Egypt with “an outstretched arm,” and thus we bind the tefillin around our arms to remember this. At the moment of wrapping the straps, we dedicate our intellect to the beliefs and values of our tradition by placing tefillin on the head, and our actions and emotions through placement on the arm (the arm tefillin are tilted inward toward the heart).
Many years prior to confusing my roommate’s friend, my bar mitzvah teacher had suggested an alternative explanation to me, that tefillin serve as a sort of “spirituality receiver.”
At this very moment there are radio and cellphone and television transmission waves going through the room, yet no one hears them for lack of a receiver. So, too, he suggested, there are “spirituality waves” present around us, but they may require some sort of a “receiver” to bring them to consciousness. He identified tefillin as just this sort of tool that can heighten sensitivity to connection with the infinite.
This seemed to me an interesting idea that could not be proven either way. Then in graduate school I ran across an article on the front page of the New York Times Science Tuesday section. The article had nothing to do with Jewish practices or theology; it was an article about brain mapping.
The narrative portion of the article spoke of the famous case of Phineas Gage. Gage was a foreman who helped to lay track for the Burlington Railroad, and an accidental explosion sent a metal rod up through his jaw and head. To the astonishment of those around him, he not only survived the blast but was reasonably functional afterward. Yet the article noted what interested researchers, namely that he seemed to lose his moral compass and didn’t care about right and wrong anymore. The researchers mentioned were using medical records of cases (including Gage’s) as well as PET scans to ascertain the seat of moral thinking in the brain.
What blew me away were the pictures that accompanied the Times article. They showed from several different angles the spot of Gage’s brain damage that was under consideration, and it was precisely where Jews have been donning tefillin for thousands of years: centered between the eyes and just above the hairline. There before me lay the connection between a spot in the brain noted for the kinds of thoughts that underlie ethical decision-making and my teacher’s concept of a spirituality receiver. I was stunned.
At an earlier time of life, I was much more interested in those Jewish practices that I could rationally explain with ease. I still do gravitate to them, but time and learnings such as these have brought me a deeper respect for the items on the bizarre-o-meter. Trying them, coupled with deeper research, often reveals a deeper wisdom. Shabbat shalom.
Rabbi Judah Dardik is the spiritual leader at Orthodox Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland. He can be reached at [email protected].