Bedecked in Splendor

Dovid’l Weinberg

For the immediate & complete recovery of yedid nafshi Binyamin Ber ben Chana

In the year 5651/1891 a young man in his mid-twenties, with piercing eyes and a scruffy beard, anonymously published a scholarly kuntres (manuscript pamphlet)—47 pages in length—on the laws of tefillin (phylacteries). It was his fervent hope that the work would bring to light what he felt was a common oversight among some of his co-religionists: namely, the careless and improper placement of the tefillin shel rosh (head phylacteries) either on the forehead, beneath the hairline, or off center, to the right or left side of the skull. That young man was the tzaddik and gaon Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook zy”a. The subtitle of the first edition of the work, aptly entitled Hevash Pe’er, Bedecked in Splendor, clarifies the purpose of the kuntres: “For the multitudes of Hashem’s people who place the head tefillin in the wrong position without knowing, and for the educated among the people who ignore the correction of this mistake, to inspire love to stand in the breach, to save from the stumbling block of sin, and to bring merit to the masses.”

The original printing even included a separate leaflet that indicated the proper placement of the head tefillin (see Shu”t Orah Mishpat, haaros on p. 266). Earlier in his life, while studying in the famed Volozhin Yeshivah, the young Rav Avraham Yitzchak received permission from one of the Roshei Yeshiva, Rav Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin zt”l, to wear tefillin throughout the entire day. He would go on to continue this practice for much of his life.

On Tuesday, July 23^rd, the 17^th of Tamuz, Benji Brown (aged 20) was stationed at Har Dov on Israel’s northern border when a missile struck an army base he was guarding. Although I never studied formally with Benji, he frequented a weekly shiur that I give on Thursday afternoons in the Old City of Yerushalayim that is open to the public. In time, our relationship developed through a mutual love of Penimiyus HaTorah (the inner aspect of Torah). In fact, tragically, at the exact moment the missile struck, Benji was studying from an annotated translation of Rav Kook’s Oros HaTorah (pages 112-113) that I had published earlier last year. He sustained a severe head injury, but miraculously survived the attack. After two major surgeries, Benji was temporarily placed in an induced coma and has, since then, been slowly returning to consciousness and health under the care of his remarkable family and friends as well as a capable staff of doctors, nurses and specialists from the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa. With faith in the Almighty, we continue to draw strength from and plead for the fulfillment of the Gemara’s promise that “the study of Torah shields and protects both during active study and after one has ceased studying” (Sotah 21a).

But there is further cause for optimism. Several weeks ago, I traveled by train to visit Benji and his family at the hospital. Benji’s brother Zach, who I have been in close touch with since the incident, shared something uncanny with me. For some time, Benji has been sending pictures to his family and friends of him holding up his pinky, index finger, and thumb, the universal sign for “I love you” (not to be confused with the ubiquitous “rock on” symbol, which does not include the thumb). Incredibly, one of Benji’s first communications after returning to consciousness was to make his “I love you” symbol. I couldn’t help but be struck by the similarity between that hand gesture and the gesture Jewish men make when they are checking to see that their tefillin are properly in place.

We are not prophets (nor, at this point, the sons of prophets), and it is always unwise to craft a narrative that conflates correlation with causation; still, the words of the sweet Israeli singer Reb Yosef Karduner ring in my ears: “Tismah, yesh tikvah yedidi, tireh simanim ba-derekh—Rejoice, there is hope my friend, for there are signs on the road.” These words, based on a teaching from Rebbe Nahman of Breslov zy”a, invite us to garner strength from the road marks and signposts pointing and beckoning us in the right direction. Can it be coincidental that the tzaddik whose Torah Benji was learning when the missile struck is the same tzaddik who, also in his twenties, sought to awaken the Jewish people to the proper placement of the head tefillin? Let us then turn to—and draw insight from—these simanim ba-derekh.

What is the mysterious meaning of Rav Kook’s deep and abiding connection to the mitzvah of tefillin in general and to the tefillin shel rosh in particular? I have long felt that Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook zy”a was, in so many ways, the embodiment of the tefillin shel rosh. For one thing, the head tefillin—as the title of his sefer suggests—are called pe’er and are, thus, evocative of the pe’er Yisrael, the unrivaled splendor and beauty of Am Yisrael. Examining the contours of this “splendor” was one of the major focuses of Rav Kook’s writing and attention. More strikingly, the tefillin shel rosh contains four passages describing the fundamentals of Jewish faith, housed in four separate compartments. If we compare this phenomenon with the tefillin shel yad, where these same passages are housed in a single compartment, a clear symbolism emerges.

The tefillin shel rosh represents the expansiveness of the Jewish prophetic and visionary traditions, where paradoxical and contradictory views can coexist in the spirit of “Elu va-elu divrei Elokim hayyim—These and these are the words of the Living God.” As such, a single box envelops the four paragraphs that are contained in four different compartments of the head tefillin.

The tefillin shel yad, on the other hand, represents a unity of halakhic action, where there can be only one way, in the spirit of the verse “Mishpat ehad yiheyeh lakhem—There is one rule of law for all of you” (Leviticus 24:22). Here, all four paragraphs must be housed in a single compartment. Rav Kook’s soul, like the tefillin shel rosh, was filled with nuance, contradiction, and paradox. On the one hand, he possessed an unshakable faith in the Almighty and the eternal relevance of God’s Torah; on the other, he possessed an unshakable confidence in the strength and holiness of each of the distinct parts of the nation that, although fractured and weakened by the tribulations of a 2,000-year-long exile, found a mutual home in the heart of this once-in-a-generation tzaddik.

But the teachings of Rav Kook, like the teachings of many tzaddikim before him, were ahead of their time. Citing the Gemara’s interpretation of the verse, “They shall be as frontlets between your eyes” (Deuteronomy 6:8)—“So long as the tefillin are between your eyes (i.e., on your head) there must be two (i.e., the hand tefillin must also be worn)” (Menahot 36a)—the Halakhah maintains that the tefillin shel rosh must not be worn without the accompanying tefillin shel yad. This explains the order of putting on tefillin. We first put on the hand tefillin and only then the head tefillin.

The removal of the tefillin is done in the opposite order: first we remove the head tefillin and, only then, the hand tefillin. During Rav Kook’s remarkable career as Chief Rabbi of Zaumel and Boisk in Lithuania and then Jaffa and Jerusalem in Eretz Yisrael, he wrote and taught what would eventually be compiled into the volumes of life-giving Torah that continue to sustain the Jewish people today. These works are unmistakably filled with the complex, visionary thinking that is characteristic of the tefillin shel rosh. But when Rav Kook first wrote many of these words, the Jewish people were still physically and spiritually weak: the majority of world Jewry had not yet returned to the Land of Israel, and large segments of the population were not yet “wearing their tefillin shel yad”—both literally, neglecting to don their phylacteries, and figuratively, in the guise of a tenuous commitment to total mitzvah observance. Still, the tzaddik’s job is to awaken the slumbering spirit of Knesset Yisrael (the Congregation of Israel) with the healing medicine of penimiyut ha-Torah (the inner light of Torah). As such, Rav Kook lovingly prepared his elixir, suffering the slings and arrows of those who could not comprehend the complex and paradoxical nature of his teachings, so that when the time would come, the Jewish people could once again bedeck themselves in the splendor of the tefillin shel rosh.

In the subsequent years, the Jewish people have been slowly returning to complete consciousness and health: we are returning to the Land, and the Land is returning to us. Torah study and mitzvah observance have increased significantly. More and more members of our beautiful nation are wearing tefillin, lighting Shabbat candles, keeping kosher, caring for the poor and the sick, risking life and limb to protect our people, and studying our sacred Torah. Now that the tefillin shel yad is more securely fashioned upon the collective soul of the Jewish people (even if we still have more straps to wind!), we must prepare to return to the message of the tefillin shel rosh.

Some pointed questions are in order: Are we ready to return to the prophetic and visionary thinking associated with the tefillin shel rosh? Do we even want to be ready? Are we prepared to lovingly accept and even rejoice over the crucial distinctions that currently seek to divide the not-so-different streams of our people? Can we accept the reality that, to be sure, our tefillin contain different paragraphs that occupy different compartments, but they must still be housed in a single, unified home? The Gemara in Berakhot (6b) records that Rav Nahman ben Yitzhak once asked Rav Hiyya bar Avin: “What is written in the tefillin of the Holy One, blessed be He?” He replied to him, “Who is like Your people Israel, one nation upon the earth?” Are we ready to be one nation on Earth? But, there is still one more question to ask. It is a question that I have heard Rav Osher Weiss shlit”a ask on a number of occasions: “Who is the perfect Jew?” The answer:   Of course, this “perfect Jew” exists only in potential; but, to the degree that we honor these character traits in one another, we together make up that “perfect Jew.”

Our Sages say that the verse “And all the nations of the earth shall see that the name of G‑d is called upon you, and they shall fear you” (Deuteronomy 28:10) is a reference to the tefillin shel rosh (Menahot 35b). When the nations see the name of   inscribed upon our head tefillin, they will be imbued with fear and awe. When the validity of our head tefillin is compromised by jaundiced vision and thinking, our enemies are not afraid of us; they do not stand in awe of the pe’er Yisrael. But I am the optimistic type. I believe that our head tefillin—with its four different compartments—is more properly aligned than we let on. As Rav Kook put forth more than 120 years ago, our head tefillin just needs a little lifting, a little nudge to the right or to the left, brought about by an uncompromising commitment to one’s own path and one’s own “compartment,” yet stabilized by a radical love and appreciation for the invaluable worth and halakhic necessity of the remaining “compartments.”

I conclude with a prayer in the form of a story: Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev zy”a once saw a Jew accidently drop his head tefillin as he was wrapping it at the end of prayer. Startled, the fellow hastened to bend down and pick up the black box, lovingly showering the tefillin with kisses. Taking in the scene, Reb Levi Yitzhak lifted his eyes to Heaven and said, “Master of the World, when this simple Jew’s tefillin fell to the floor, he immediately picked them up and kissed them. The Gemara says that we, the Jewish people, are Your tefillin. But we have fallen to the floor and have been lying in the dirt, disgraced and trampled over, for many years. Please pick up Your tefillin—the Jewish people—and give them the ‘kiss’ they so well deserve.” Amen.