As we’ve explored Shema together for the last few weeks, we keep circling back to all the opportunities Shema presents us to live holy lives, lives infused with meaning and intentionality supported by Jewish ritual.
Of those opportunities to make time for holiness and intentionality, tefilin are perhaps the strangest to our 2015 eyes and sensibilities. So we started with the text and each of our imaginations to see how we might interpret this text ourselves.
Deuteronomy 11:18 (from Shema)
Tie a sign [of Torah] onto your hand and a symbol [of Torah] between your eyes.
We gave each child a paper cut out of a hand and a head to see what they might draw onto the hands and heads that they thought would symbolize what they have already learned of Torah. We brainstormed about how to depict loving our neighbors, keeping people safe, and more. Some students drew a mezuzah, others drew a box that they wanted to put words in. (We hadn’t shown them tefilin yet!)
Then we observed and explored tefilin, noting the differences between the tefilin shel yad (Hand tefilin) and tefilin shel rosh (head tefilin).
- The tefilin shel rosh has 4 compartments and the letter shin on the outside.
- The tefilin she yad has neither.
- Their retzuot (straps) are also set up very differently.
Then the students got really curious about what was INSIDE the tefilin. Rather than opening our tefilin, they got to explore a model of the tefilin shel rosh and tefilin shel yad. They were excited and surprised to find out that they both have the same 4 texts inside—either all as one scroll or as four smaller scrolls.
This week our students are working on making their own model tefilin so they can more fully understand their structure.
We also got to put on tefilin and wear them for tfilah (services) yesterday! (See the video at the top of this blog post.)
Shabbat Shalom!