By Liora Bernstein
I’ll be honest, before this experience, I had never touched a pair of T’fillin, let alone create them from scratch, wrap them or learn the reason behind why Jews wrap them. I grew up at a Reform Jewish camp and a Conservative synagogue, yet I had never seen any of my Rabbis wrap T’fillin. The first time I heard about T’fillin really being needed was when my brother needed a pair for the Israel program he was participating in one summer. Aside from that, what I just saw as a pair of black boxes with black leather straps was not a part of my life, or a part of my Judaism.
Not every point of the T’fillin making process was comfortable for me. As we sat as a cohort in Rav Noah’s studio, fellows had many interesting questions on the process of making T’fillin and on Rav Noah’s own personal feelings on the Mitzvah. I was continuously reminding myself that this was an amazing educational opportunity that not everyone gets the opportunity to have. Even if I were to never wrap the T’fillin again after the first time trying it, I would have a pair with me when needed or if I ever found somebody I would want to have them. More importantly, I now understood what those “black boxes” are.
Rav Noah Greenberg gave me the opportunity to learn about and make my own pair of kosher T’fillin. We began in Jerusalem by making the boxes that the Parshiot would eventually go in. We folded the boxes and spray painted them black. It was an incredible hands-on art project that turned into an amazing and useful piece of Judaica that every fellow in Cohort Four walked away with at the end of our first Shabbaton together in Tzfat.
I have learned throughout this semester that learning about different expressions of Judaism is incredibly interesting and also really important. Being exposed to different traditions and different practices is what helps me decide what I find most valuable. As a Reform Jew, that is something that is essential to me because my favorite part of Reform Judaism is choosing my values. However, I can’t make informed choices about my Judaism without the necessary resources or education. I look at making T’fillin as another aspect of the Jewish Education that I am always seeking out in order to develop my own Jewish identity and to strengthen my knowledge of Jewish traditions.
