ARE YOU A THINKER OR A DOER?

At a bar mitzvah, most Jewish boys don tefilin. There is even an old story about it. As the catering staff is clearing up after Benjy’s bar mitzvah party, they notice that one of the glittering gold spoons is missing – and it’s the one from where Rabbi Bloom sat. So they tell the hosts, Timmy and Sarah, of the disappearance.

"Can you believe it, Sarah?" says Tim, "But how can we call our Rabbi a thief? We’ll just have to keep quiet about it."

2 years later, while out buying bagels one Sunday morning, Tim finds himself next to his Rabbi.

"Timmy, I’m glad we’ve met," says Rabbi Bloom, "what’s the problem, why have you been avoiding me for 2 years?"

Timmy replies, "Now that you ask, Rabbi, I’ve been avoiding you ever since we discovered one of our gold spoons missing from Benjy’s party."

Rabbi Bloom says, "But why didn’t you ask me about this. I put the spoon in Benjy’s tefillin bag. He obviously hasn’t opened it since his bar mitzvah day…"

So today, I want to share with you some of the profound messages contained in this tefilin, with the hope that this can inspire us each of us to appreciate this mitzvah with more depth.

The mitzvah of Tefilin is mentioned four times in the Torah—and the first two are in the weekly Torah portion, Bo.

Tefilin is a pair of leather boxes, one worn on the arm opposite the heart, and the second wore on the head above the hairline, aligned with the space between the eyes. Inside the boxes are parchment scrolls inscribed with four sections of the Hebrew Bible, containing the fundamentals of the Jewish faith.  Tefilin is the quintessential Jewish “uniform,” donned by every Jewish male from the age of bar mitzvah. From Sinai to Jerusalem, Babylon to Manhattan, through fire, sword, prosperity, and affluence—we carried it to this day, guarding the chain of transmission with our very lives.

A few obvious questions.

1) Why the need for the two boxes, one on the arm and one on the head? Why not just one of them?

2) According to the explicit order stated in the Torah, we first wrap the tefillin on the arm and only afterward don the tefillin on the head. Why is this order so significant?

3) The tefillin we place upon our head is conspicuously divided into four sections. In contrast, the tefillin we place on our arm is conspicuously made of one chamber, and all the four portions are inscribed on a single piece of parchment placed in one container or box. Why?

The Rebbe offered a beautiful explanation.

Jewish life consists of two aspects—the head and the arm.

The “head” of Judaism represents our love for learning and the workings of the mind. The mitzvah of Torah study is considered one of the greatest mitzvot of the Torah, if not the greatest. This is something unique to Judaism, where learning for the sake of the learning, even without practical relevance, is seen as a Divine commandment, as a way of connecting to G-d. While great Empires and nations were building armies, gymnasiums, cathedrals, and Colosseum, we were sitting in Bet Midrash (synagogues, and yeshivot), studying, arguing, dissecting, and pondering.

We are the people even in times when they lacked all else,  never ceased to value education as a sacred task. In the Warsaw Ghetto, there were classes in the Talmud.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks tells the story of when he fell deathly ill. “Many years ago, I was rushed into the hospital with a life-threatening condition. I was rushed straight from my doctor to hospital, had an operation, that saved my life. I was just waking up from Anesthesia when there’s a knock on my hospital door. There an 80-year-old Jew with a volume of Gemara (Talmud) under his arm. “Oh, I heard you were here Rabbi. I thought we could learn Gemara together!”

“I’m trying to die, and he wants to learn Gemara!”

What a Jewish story! Yes, we live in our brains, sometimes to a fault.

But Judaism has another side to it—its “arm,” representing action and implementation. To be a Jew is not only to exercise the brain but also to be an educated, knowledgeable Jew, a proud member of the “people of the book.” That is important but it’s not all. Judaism’s greatness is that it takes the highest ideals and most exalted visions and turns them into patterns of daily behavior and activities, we call Mitzvot.

Judaism is the dedication of ordinary people to construct, through daily ordinary acts, a fragment of heaven on planet earth. It is a 613-step program toward perfecting ourselves and the world around us—to reflect the image of the Divine.

It is not a coincidence this mitzvah is communicated to us by Moses, on the day we left Egypt, under his leadership.

If there was anyone who understood the power of the “arm” over the “head” it was Moses, and if there was ever a day it was appreciated—it was on the day of Egyptian Exodus, when the long drama between Moses and Pharaoh came to an end.

As we recall, Pharaoh had decreed death for every male Israelite child. Yocheved, Moses’ mother, had a baby boy. Fearing his certain death if she kept him, she set him afloat on the Nile in a basket, hoping that someone might see him and take pity on him. This is what follows:

Pharaoh’s daughter went to bathe in the Nile, while her maids walked along the Nile’s edge. She saw the box in the reeds and sent out her arm to fetch it. Opening it, she saw the boy. The child began to cry, and she had pity on it. “This is one of the Hebrew boys,” she said.

Note the choice of words. “She sent out her arm!” The natural thing for her to do was to save him only in her head. After all, for her to bring him home was absurd and dangerous. Maybe try to strategize in her brain how she might defy her father’s orders, or to try to make sense of Egyptian madness.

Had she done that, Moses might have never lived. Thank goodness, she did not live in her head. “She sent out her arm!” She translated a noble and heroic gesture into pragmatic action. She stretched out her arm and saved the baby.

The rest is history.

This coming Wednesday, the 10^th of Shevat, marks the 70^th yartzeit of the sixth Rebbe, and the anniversary of the leadership of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1950-2020).

The late Mr. Gordon Zacks was general chairman designate of the National UJA and was a founding member and chairman of the Young Leadership Cabinet of the UJA. In his book Defining Moments he shares details of his audience with the Rebbe in 1969, when the Rebbe tried to encourage him to embrace more of Yiddishkeit and asked him to give Chabad Yeshivot100 million dollars for Jewish education in America.

Zacks writes:

The Rebbe quoted Kazantzakis' book ‘Zorba the Greek’ to me during our conversation. "Do you remember the young man talking with Zorba on the beach, when Zorba asks what the purpose of life is? The young fellow admits he doesn't know. And Zorba comments, 'Well, all those books you read -- what good are they? Why do you read them?' Zorba's friend says he doesn't know. “’That's the trouble with you. A man's head is like a grocer,' Zorba says, 'it keeps accounts... It never breaks the string.' Wise men and grocers weigh everything. They can never cut the cord and be free.

“Your problem, Mr. Zacks, is that you are trying to find G-d's map through your head. You are unlikely to find it that way. You have to experience before you can truly feel and then be free to learn. Let me send a teacher to live with you for a year and teach you how to be Jewish. You will unleash a whole new dimension to your life. If you really want to change the world, change yourself! It's like dropping a stone into a pool of water and watching the concentric circles radiate to the shore. You will influence all the people around you, and they will influence others in turn. That's how you bring about improvement in the world."

Zacks concludes: “He may not have gotten exactly what he wanted from me, but the Rebbe surely taught me the power of changing yourself to influence others. He wanted to enlist me as his fundraiser for Jewish education. While I certainly considered his invitation, I declined it. Still, he may have been the most charismatic man I ever met. He had an incredible aura to him, partly because he was such a combination of charisma and pragmatism. This man came out of the scientific community to return to religious life. Every Israeli prime minister and Israeli chief of staff found his way to the Rebbe's doorstep when they came to the United States.

“The essence of the Rebbe's teaching is a celebration of G-d. The Chabad radiate a wonderful joy of life that is a reverberation of the Rebbe's spirit. I wish I could believe the way they do, with their absolute confidence in their answer. Their sheer love in celebrating the Jewish traditions with singing and dancing is unmatched. Nothing equals the celebration of a Shabbat with a Chabadnik. The food is homemade, delicious -- but it's only the beginning of the positive energy that flows in each Shabbat from celebrating the birthday of the world!”

But tefillin on the arm is not enough.

Judaism is not only about routine, rituals, and behaviors. It may begin this way but should never end this way. G-d wants you to learn, study, reflect, understand and appreciate with your minds whatever you can of the Torah and Mitzvot. The Creator desires not only commitment and actions; He wants you to use our mind to the fullest, to actualize your intellectual potential to its maximum, to learn more and then more, and then some more.

Yigael Yadin (1917–1984) was a well-known Israeli archeologist and politician, and the second Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

The following story he wrote in his book Experiences of a Jewish Archeologist.

Shortly after the Six-Day War, I purchased an antique object for the Shrine of the Book, a division of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The article I purchased turned out to be an ancient pair of tefillin with all four of its parshiot (tefillin scrolls). This tefillin was later verified to be the oldest known tefillin in existence today, written during the Second Temple era.

The ancient script was exceptionally small. So, one day, carrying photocopies of the tefillin scrolls that had not yet been seen by anybody but myself, I found myself riding the train from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Obviously, what I was holding in my hand—worth millions of dollars—was top secret.

The town of Kfar Chabad is one of the stops on the way from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. At the Kfar Chabad station, some young men boarded the train and started making the rounds through the train’s cars. I was actually used to this scene: the Chabadniks would go from person to person, asking them to put on tefillin.

Soon it was my turn to be approached. I politely refused, but couldn’t help noticing the foreign accent of the young man who asked me to lay tefillin.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

He informed me that he was a recent immigrant from the Soviet Union.

“And did you lay tefillin in the Soviet Union?” I wondered aloud.

“I’ve been laying tefillin every day since my bar mitzvah.”

When I heard that, I reconsidered. “If you did this mitzvah in the repressive Soviet Union, I won’t be the one to refuse you now in the Jewish homeland!”

I put on tefilin with this young Chabadnik from the Soviet Union.

Little did this boy know that Yigal Yadin was one of the most famous figures in Israel and was holding at the time tefilin that was written by a Jew some two thousand or 2500 years earlier, during the era when the Chanukah events transpired!….

Before getting off the train in Tel Aviv, a woman approached Yigal Yadin while still sitting on the train.

 “Professor Yadin, I am glad that you agreed to the request of that young man—who obviously did not recognize who you are.

“You see, my son, also a Chabadnik, was a paratrooper who was mortally wounded in battle near the Suez Canal (in the Six-Day War). Before he died, the members of his platoon visited him in the hospital. His last request for them was that they lay tefillin. In my mind, when you donned tefillin today, you too joined in fulfilling my son’s last request, moments before he died.”

[Although Yigal Yadin did not know this, the fallen hero in this story was Rabbi David Marasow, a resident of Kfar Chabad. Immediately after the Six-Day War, his widow, Shifra, spearheaded the Chabad effort to benefit the widows and orphans of the soldiers who perished during the war. She arranged holiday programs, a camp, and a grand bar and bat mitzvahs for the orphans. Following the war, the family of every slain soldier received a financial compensation package from the government. Mrs. Marasow (Golombovitz) selflessly used this money allotted to her to purchase tefillin for all the orphans, due to her husband’s last request!]

Yigal Yadin continues the story:

I found myself fighting back tears. “What a remarkable chain of events!” I told her. “I have in my pocket photocopies of the oldest known existing tefillin. I cannot think of anything more appropriate than to show them to you at this moment!”

Yigal Yadin took out the tefilin and showed them to Mrs. Marasow.

Think about the story:

Yigal Yadin was a brilliant Jew—dedicated to the security and history of Israel. In his hand, he carried tefillin 2000 years old, for which he dedicated years and years to discover, research and preserve. Yet, it did not dawn at him that he should also put on tefillin!

His deep connection with the tefillin was via his mind!

But on that train ride he met a Soviet Jew who gave his blood, sweat, and tears for Yiddishkeit. Yigal Yadin met a Jew not only in the head but also in his entire body. And this inspired him! He saw not only the head of Judaism but the arm of Judaism. He observed, commitment, sacrifice, and conviction. When he met a Russian Jew and the Chabad widow, his heart melted. His head submitted to action. He donned tefillin with pride, humility, and joy.

This is the power of living Yiddishkeit, not just a Judaism which lives in the brain, but a Judaism which breathes and lives and vibrates through the entire body.

So today, consider donning something of Judaism on your arm. We all learn, come to shul and study. But take on an action!

And there is something else about tefilin. “And all the nations of the world will see that the Name of G-d is upon you and they will fear you, the Torah states.

These are visible to the eye and have the spiritual power to inspire fear in the hearts of our enemies.

May the tefilin protect all of our brothers and sisters the world over, and bring us the redemption speedily in our days, now!

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky