I wrote this piece while I was a rabbinical student.
T’fillin Shel Yisrael (some ramblings on phylacteries)
In Memory of Yisroel ben Yekusiel Yitzhok
“Can a Reform rabbi wrap t’fillin?” my grandpa asked me while we were eating lunch after my college graduation. I had just been accepted to HUC. He never quite got Reform Judaism.
“Sure, a Reform rabbi can wrap t’fillin. It’s just that most probably don’t,” I answered.
“Do you have a set?”
“No.”
“Then take some of the money I’m going to give you for graduation and buy a set of t’fillin.”
“Sure,” I replied without thinking that much. Why shouldn’t I have a set of t’fillin?
My grandpa was an active Orthodox Jew. Not fervent, but active. Shabbat was Shabbat, but if the Cardinals were playing on Saturday, the TV would be on. He walked to shul (in his dialect of Yiddish it was pronounced “sheel”) on Shabbat until he got too old, so then he drove and parked in the parking lot of the strip mall next to the synagogue. To him, Judaism was the traditions like t’fillin. He could understand that the Torah may have been written by humans, but he did not understand why Reform Jews, for the most part, didn’t wrap t’fillin.
As soon as I returned to my parents’ house in St. Louis for the summer after college graduation and before the HUC year in Israel, I went online to research t’fillin. I felt I found a good set for a decent price, and I sent away for it. When they arrived (with a mezuzah scroll thrown in for free) I rushed up to my bedroom to try them out like a child with a new toy. I thought I knew what I was doing because I downloaded instructions from a website. T’fillin were harder than I guessed they would be. Those seven wraps around the arm didn’t seem to want to stay on. When I thought about it, it was weird. Only crazies bind themselves in leather. But, I kept with it and practiced everyday.
I practiced in my room because I was a little embarrassed. I thought my mom, who had left Orthodoxy, would find out. It’s as if I was doing something illicit. She did find out, but she didn’t care. My room became my own little synagogue where I wrapped t’fillin and practiced the prayers.
In Jerusalem I was worried that I would stand out as a t’fillin wrapper, but it turned out that several of my classmates were in the same club. I never asked them why they wrapped. I told myself that I did it because of a challenge from my grandpa. I soon realized that it wasn’t because my grandpa challenged me to wrap t’fillin, but I wrapped because I loved my grandpa. I didn’t have to prove my Judaism to him. If I didn’t wrap t’fillin I could still be a good Jew. I kept wrapping because this was something that was meaningful to my grandpa. Who decided for me that t’fillin couldn’t be meaningful for Reform Jews? Wrapping t’fillin was binding us together.
Yisroel ben Yekusiel Yitzhok (Irvin Alper) died on Hashanah Rabba of 5765. I asked if I could have his t’fillin. He told me once that they were his uncle’s before they were his. He didn’t know who gave them to his uncle. When I took them out of their bag they smelled like Grandpa Irv’s cologne. The knot of the t’fillin shel yad was tied in the Hassidic tradition. Irv wasn’t a Hasid. Maybe his uncle was?
I now wear my grandpa’s t’fillin in my room in my apartment. (I use my internet set at school.) They now smell more like me. Someday I will give them to my grandson or granddaughter (something he probably couldn’t fathom). Maybe the t’fillin will bind them to me, Yekutiel Yitzhak, as they bound me to Yisrael ben Yekusiel Yitzhok.
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