Larry David has never worn tefillin.
How do I know? Because a 21-year-old self-starter named Yossi Farro, asked him in front of a crowd of thousands of people, and he said he never had. “I’m trying to think of the amount of money it would take for me to do that,” David replied. Yossi, a Lubavitcher chasid and online influencer, is making a name for himself taking pictures with prominent people putting on tefillin. He’s got Jerry Seinfeld and Mark Zuckerberg on the agenda, while Larry David remains his white whale.
We are quite familiar with the Chabad campaign to encourage Jewish men to put on tefillin. In 1967, preceding the Six Day War, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, introduced what was to be the first of the ten "mitzvah campaigns,” to don tefillin with all Jews. At the time, someone asked him why tefillin and not kosher or charity or something more universal. He replied, "When a Jew in Miami sees pictures of Jews at the Western Wall wearing tefillin, he gets an urge to put on tefillin himself."
I feel having tefillin accessible is an effective way to promote and encourage greater Jewish identity and observance – regardless of whether the tefillin actually get worn. I once stopped at a falael stand on Derech Beit Lechem in Jerusalem. Underneath the Kosher certificate were two signs. One read, “Anyone who leaves their change behind should know that it will go to charity.” The other said, “We have tefillin here for anyone who wishes to put them on.”
On a recent visit to Florida, a place with a high concentration of Jews – especially Israelis, I noticed a number of kosher establishments has “tefillin stands” offering the opportunity to perform the mitzvah without needing to stand around all day and ask. I thought to myself that I need to have one of these. Now, Atlantic Beach doesn’t have as many Jews – or Kosher establishments – as Florida. So I partnered with our friendly neighborhood Atlantic Beach Wine & Whiskey Boutique. Abe Kaner tells me a handful of people put on tefillin there each month. The more, the merrier.
There is something about the act of performing a mitzvah which has a trickle-down effect on religious inspiration and practice, and we can learn this from tefillin.
Learn and then do, or do and then learn? While the natural order is to learn and then put those lessons to use, Jewish tradition doesn’t always play out in order.
This week – like last week, we read about the mitzvah of tefillin. The obligation is mentioned in both the first paragraph of Shema (last week’s parsha) and the second paragraph of Shema which we read this week. Let’s look closely at the text.
Last week, the Torah commanded the mitzvah of tefillin (Devarim 6:7, 8) by stating: “Teach your children. Recite God’s words when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead.”
This week (Devarim 11:18, 19), we read: “And you shall place up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they will be as tefillin between your eyes. And you should teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up”
The Torah reverses the order from one week to the next. First, the Torah mentions teaching followed by tefillin but then switches to first commanding tefillin and only then educating. Why the change?
In the normal course of development, we learn and then we act. The same is true religiously. Teach the children well, fill their minds and hearts with knowledge, and that will provide the solid foundation to perform mitzvot, to do Jewish. But not everyone follows the usual order. Not everyone gets a Jewish education. Not everyone takes the lessons to heart and turns them into actions. Sometimes, we take a leap that leads us to learn and to grow.
That is the lesson of tefillin. Nike is right: Just do it! Sometimes doing will lead to learning and growing.
Years ago, Uri Zohar, the late Israeli entertainer who later became a rabbi, found himself rushing into a café in Rome around sunset. Breathlessly, he went to the first person he saw and asked him “Brother, do you have a pair of tefillin?”
Now, Uri was decked out in leather jacket, jeans and biker boots. The other person was a bit surprised and slow to reply. “Quick its almost sunset” Uri told him. The startled patron then reached under the counter and pulled out his tefillin. Uri rolled up his sleeve, put on the tefillin, and intently recited a short prayer.
The shocked tefillin owner managed to stammer, “How? What? This just did THAT?”
Uri told him that he was a secular Jew, but he has always worn tefillin. A popular television star, he had a week off from the screen in Israel and chose to spend it motorcycling through Europe. “I didn’t want to take my tefillin with me on the Harley, so I made a deal with Hashem. If He wanted me to keep wearing them every day, he needed to give me the chance to do the mitzvah.”
“And how is that working for you?” asked the customer who helped him. Uri replied, “You tell me. Today is the last day, and I still haven’t missed a day.”
And the rest is history. Uri Zohar ultimately became Rabbi Uri Zohar.
Tefillin is one mitzvah among many. It happens to be one that has a deep symbolism and can capture the imagination and inspire beyond the act of wearing them. A tefillin campaign or stand is but one way of conveying the importance of acting. Try a new ritual – engage, participate, study show up, daven, bless, give. We don’t always need to understand or even fully appreciate why we do what we do. We just need to start somewhere in order grow. The rest is commentary.