By Daniel Albert
When I got my first set of tefillin before my Bar Mitzvah, I had such a love. I would put them on to practice multiple times a day. When the day came that I was to do the mitzvah of wearing tefillin for the first time as a Bar Mitzvah, I expertly wrapped them with a smile on my face.
Eight years later, putting them on every morning besides Shabbat, my love and desire to wear the tefillin has significantly worn down. I have missed a lot of days, and when I am able to put them on, I don't usually have the same passion as I did when I was twelve and thirteen years old.
That love, desire, and passion was reignited after making our own tefillin with Rav Noah Greenberg. We took a piece of goat skin that was cut in a certain shape and we stamped the shins onto both sides of the tefillin shel rosh. We then spray painted our tefillin black. While we waited for the paint to dry, we learned a little more of the laws about how to make tefillin. When the paint dried, we started folding the four separate batim of the shel rosh. We then put our tefillin shel rosh aside and folded up our tefillin shel yad. We were careful by every step to say "l'shem kedushat tefillin" to make sure we had the proper intentions. We then folded up folded up the parshiyot that go into the shel rosh, tied them with parchment and cow hair, and then put them in their respective batim in the shel rosh. We then did the same for the parsha for the shel yad. Afterwards, we sewed up our tefillin and started tying the straps on both the shel rosh and shel yad.
All in all, we worked a total of about fifteen hours making our own tefillin. At every step, I made sure to ask and inquire to make sure they were of a high standard of beautification and kosher so that I could wear these on a regular basis. Not only did we get kosher tefillin out of this amazing process, we also got the boxes to put them in and a felt storage bag. And like that, I had a new pair of tefillin, that I personally made and helped in every step of the process of making them. That first bracha I made wearing the tefillin felt that day back eight years ago when I first put on tefillin for the first time. And every day since then that I have had the chance to put on tefillin, I have chosen the pair I made myself. It makes me feel good about wearing them and making the bracha on something I put a lot of work into myself.
