Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday. It is also known as World Wide Wrap by the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs. It is an opportunity to “teach our children diligently” and explain the commandment to “bind them as a sign upon your arm and as a sign before your eyes.” What does that phrase mean? To put on tefilin, phylacteries, strips of leather with these very words in little boxes. To wrap yourself.

At Congregation Kneseth Israel, we wrapped. The men did tefilin and the older Hebrew School students, 4th through 8th grade did tallit. Why? Because we are commanded to wrap ourselves in fringed garments too. Most kids will wear a tallit for their Bar or Bat Mitzvah. They may never attend a weekday morning service where tefilin are used.

I struggle with this event every year. While I like the commandment to wrap yourself with fringes (tzitzit), tefilin just don’t speak to me. So much so, that when I was applying to rabbinical school after college I ruled out Jewish Theological Seminary because they were going to require women to wear tefilin.

Let’s be clear. As I read halacha, women are exempt from the commandment to wear tefilin but they are not prohibited from wearing them. If a woman wants to, she can and should be able to. One year for the World Wide Wrap I began my discussion with a picture of Tefilin Barbie. http://www.hasoferet.com/bar/barbie.shtml What does this doll say about where we are in American Jewish society? That we have made it? Is it good for the Jews or bad for the Jews? That it is OK for women to wear tallit and tefilin? That I want to be like Barbie? Because usually the answer to the last one is, “No, I don’t want to be like Barbie.” Ultimately I think it is mixed.

This year there has been a lot of chatter about Orthodox girls being allowed to wear tefilin. At one Jewish day school in Riverdale, two high school girls have now been permitted to wear tefilin. http://forward.com/articles/191256/modern-orthodox-high-school-in-new-york-allows-gir/ Rabbi Lookstein, at Ramaz on the Upper East Side has said that girls would be granted the opportunity to daven with tefilin if so requested, but he has yet to receive such a request. http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.571258

This is exciting big news. 

However, these decisions have come with quite a bit of controversy in the Orthodox community. One of the best pieces of writings was in Ha’aretz: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.571258

I have seen these arguments before, used on both sides. While I like the intellectual stimulation and challenge of following these arguments, I don’t like what it does to spirituality. It actually breaks the spirit. Here are some girls, who want to do something that has been permitted in the past arguing for their halachic rights. If it enhances their spirituality and their meaning and doesn’t really break halacha, let them do it. Similarly, the Men’s Club looked a series of videos on youtube about how to correctly wrap tefillin–and how not to! The language employed in some bashing the other methods were cruel and bullying. That can never be appropriate. That can never be halachic.

Neither is calling a woman an abomination. Several years ago, Noa Raz was physically assaulted by an ultra-Orthodx man in Beersheva’s Central Bus Station. According to the press release, the man asked Raz twice if the imprints were from tefillin. When she told him they were, he began to kick and strangle her while screaming “women are an abomination.” Raz, who practices Conservative Judaism, and is studying at the Fuchsberg Center, broke free from the man and boarded her bus. http://jta.org/news/article/2010/05/13/2394791/conservative-woman-attacked-for-tefillin-imprint

Traditionally, it is clear that tefilin have been the domain of men. Something men are obligated to do, required to do. Women can–as long as they are consistent with it, take it on as a commandment. And from the earliest times we know that some have. We learn in the Talmud that “Michal, daughter of the Cushite wore tefilin and the sages did not protest.” (Eruvin 96a) In another place it states that “Michal, daughter of King Saul laid tefilin.” (JT Eruvin 10:1, 26a) But just as quickly we are told that “Women, slaves and minors are exempt from the recitation of Sh’ma and from tefilin but are obligated for the Amida prayer, mezuza and birkat hamazon.” (Berachot 3:3). This last mishnah plus the idea that tefilin are men’s clothing (also prohibited) is what gives credence, despite the references to Michal, to the prohibition of women donning tefilin according to the Shulchan Arukh and other sources.

Maggie Anton contends in her wonderful series of books, Rashi’s Daughters, that Rashi’s own daughters wore tefilin. I love these books. They are great novels and Maggie has done substantial historical and textual research. They make medieval Jewish France and Germany come alive. Nonetheless, while stories of Rashi’s daughters wearing tefilin existed before Maggie Anton’s novels, apparently there is no good historical evidence of their accuracy. Other women in the time period did.  Fazonia, the first wife of Rabbi Haim ben Attar, wore tallit and tefillin, as did Rabbi Haim’s second wife. The Maid of Ludomir (Hanna Rachel Werbermacher) in the 19th century also wore tefillin.