12. The Phylactery of the Head

Wake up. Wash your hands. Get dressed. Put on your teffilin.

Slip on your shoes and your coat. Get the car keys. Drive to shul.

After prayers, leave your teffilin on.

Sit and learn until you have to leave. Then get back in your car and drive to work. When you get there, make yourself a coffee and toast a bagel. You’ve never eaten anything while wearing teffilin. Call your rabbi, make sure it’s okay.

Wash for the bagel. You decide not to bother your rabbi with this one: you undo your hand teffilin and do it back up once you’ve dried your hands.

When you go to the bathroom, leave your teffilin outside. When you put them back on afterwards, do you say a bracha? Probably not, you think. Call your rabbi to be sure.

Sit at your desk. You’re having a hard time concentrating. Your head teffilin are starting to give you a headache. You’ve been wearing them for almost three hours. Not to mention, your hand teffilin make it very difficult to type.

A temp spills orange juice on your new suit. You almost swear under your breath, but you bump your hand teffilin against your desk as you turn around. You figure you’re not supposed to swear with teffilin on.

You feel the need to sneeze but can’t remember if you’re allowed to sneeze while phylacteried (phylacterized?). You call your rabbi.

You have a meeting with a female coworker. You find her attractive. You call your rabbi to see if your teffilin prohibit you from attending the meeting but you get his voicemail. You decide to go through with the meeting, taking special care to stay focused.

On your lunch break, you take your regular walk around the park. You sit down on a bench and watch the clouds. You feel yourself falling asleep. You force yourself awake. Can you sleep with teffilin on?

You return to your office. Someone is eating fish and the smell bothers you. Do you have to go somewhere else? You vaguely remember reading something once about bothersome scents and teffilin (you call it the ‘Olfactory-Phylactery Connection’).

You call your rabbi. And you call him several more times throughout the rest of the day:

It’s raining when you leave work—can you get the teffilin wet?

In the car, you put the radio on—can you listen to music? Are kol isha laws more stringent with teffilin on?

Later, you wonder if television poses additional problems. “Rabbi, can I watch television with my teffilin on?” “I never said you could watch television without your teffilin on.” (You regret this phone call.)

You get to shul in time for mincha. After mincha, you go home. You hang the car keys on the hook, slip off your coat and your shoes, and take off your teffilin. The marks on your arm are more pronounced than usual. Your head is relieved.

You think about the fact that this is how it would be regularly if we still maintained the practice of wearing teffilin all day. Questions start filling your head:

What did they do on Rosh Chodesh? Today, we wear teffilin only until mussaf. Could this be what they did in ancient times? Does that make sense if you generally wear teffilin all day?

What about those who have the custom of wearing two different types of teffilin, to satisfy multiple opinions? Today, they take one pair off and put the second pair on. If the obligation were to wear teffilin all day, how could this be accomplished?

We get our teffilin checked now and then to make sure they’re still kosher. Did people have a second pair of teffilin to wear during the examination period?

And many other questions are imaginable.

But is there a place for such questions? We don’t wear our teffilin all day anymore. Should theoretical discussions be entertained? What good does it do for us to understand our world in a light that may never be cast?

The Gemara is filled with speculative tales and hypothetical considerations. The reality we live within is essential. Our bodies are bound by this reality. But God is not. Nor, to a lesser degree, are our minds. It is certainly simpler to put all of our attention on the world that is before us. But perceptions can be flawed, no matter how sincere the intentions. We have never believed that the ideal is found by blocking out from our consciousness the unrealized or undiscovered.

Those who put their teffilin on each morning must be aware that they will be taking their teffilin off far sooner than should be the case. To fully understand this, the mind is allowed to venture where the body cannot. It is in this way that we grow. To have dreams without reality is to escape. To have reality without dreams is to surrender. Judaism cannot survive—was not designed to exist—without reverie. One day, perhaps in our lifetime, we will be part of a reality in which we are wearing teffilin again as we used to. Like all good realities, though, if it is to exist at all, it must first exist intangibly.