How Can You Be Moved by Putting on Tefillin Anew Every Day? | Rabbi Asher Perkesh

00:00 We all know what it means to live by a routine. On the one hand, routine is a blessing. A person settles into an orderly rhythm of life: day after day, he knows when he gets up, when he goes to sleep, and what he does during the day. What could be better? On the other hand, we know that sometimes routine dries us out. The same thing every day, the same thing every day. Nothing changes. Sometimes a person loses his vitality, loses his enthusiasm for life, because of that routine. This happens especially when it comes to observing mitzvos. There are mitzvos we do from time to time, and a person gets excited about them. There are the holidays, the occasions throughout the year, Shabbosos—things that don’t happen every day. They bring the excitement of something fresh. But what do we do about mitzvos we perform every single day? Let’s talk about the mitzvah of tefillin. Tefillin is an exceedingly important mitzvah, as we all know. When a boy becomes bar mitzvah, putting on tefillin is the central mitzvah in his life. We all make a point of wishing a bar mitzvah boy that the excitement he feels the first time he puts on tefillin should stay with him throughout his life. It’s a wonderful blessing. We wish it for him, but we know that in reality, that isn’t exactly what happens. After a while, putting on tefillin becomes routine, something we do by habit—what the verse calls “a commandment of men learned by rote.” In other words, we perform the mitzvah, but we do it in a very technical, mechanical way, and it loses its vitality and excitement. How can we bring into the mitzvah of tefillin, into the daily act of putting on tefillin, the excitement and vitality it truly deserves? First, let’s begin with a story about the Alter Rebbe, the author of Tanya. It gives us a window, a starting point, to open our eyes and find new meaning in the whole subject of putting on tefillin. It is told

02:36 that the Alter Rebbe was imprisoned, and during that time he was subjected to all kinds of questioning and interrogation. This was the Alter Rebbe’s well-known imprisonment, whose conclusion chassidim celebrate on the great day of Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus, 19 Kislev. The interrogations were harsh. As was the practice in Russia, when they wanted to extract information and all kinds of things from a prisoner, they would question him at all sorts of unusual hours. For one of these interrogations, they took the Alter Rebbe in the hours before dawn. Since it was before dawn, and the Alter Rebbe understood that the time for reciting Shema would soon arrive, he brought his tefillin bag with him so that, when the time came, he could at least recite Shema at its proper time. The interrogation began, and at a certain point the time to put on tefillin arrived. It is told that the Alter Rebbe asked them to give him a few minutes because he wanted to fulfill the mitzvah of putting on tefillin, and they agreed. The room where the Alter Rebbe stood was full of people—office staff, police officers, various people coming and going, prisoners. The Alter Rebbe went over to a corner and began putting on tefillin. The moment he put on the tefillin shel rosh, a terrible fear fell over everyone in that office, in that whole hall. There were dozens of people there, but suddenly they felt an inexplicable fear. They went into a kind of shock, a state of paralysis. Those who were standing couldn’t sit down; those who were sitting couldn’t stand up. It was simply... And that was how it remained until the Alter Rebbe finished reciting the first paragraph of Shema. Then he took off his tefillin

05:09 and everything returned to normal. As the story goes, this incident made a deep impression on everyone there. They felt an extraordinary sense of awe and began to see that this was a holy man, a tzaddik. It changed the entire course of the trial. Afterward, they asked the Alter Rebbe, “What happened here?” The Rebbe said, “There is a teaching of our Sages. The verse says, ‘And all the peoples of the earth shall see that the name of Hashem is called upon you.’ Rabbi Eliezer the Great said: ‘These are the tefillin in the head.’” The peoples of the earth see that the name of Hashem is called upon you. What does that mean? It refers to the tefillin in the head. When a Jew has tefillin in his head, then “all the peoples of the earth... shall fear you.” That’s what happened. It wasn’t simply a miracle; it was the verse. So they said to the Rebbe, “Wait—many Jews put on tefillin, and this doesn’t happen. The Rebbe put on tefillin, and it happened.” The Alter Rebbe answered them: “It says, ‘the tefillin in the head.’ It doesn’t say ‘the tefillin on the head.’ Many Jews put on tefillin, but they put them on their heads. That means the tefillin remain outside them, up on top of the head, but the person isn’t permeated by them. When we bring the tefillin into the head—when a person has the right intention, or truly lives the act of putting on tefillin, so that they are ‘tefillin in the head’—then it brings about ‘the peoples of the earth... shall fear you.’” So we see that there is putting on tefillin, and then there is putting on tefillin. We want our tefillin to be as they should be: “tefillin in the head.” Chassidus teaches us how to turn tefillin into an experience, how to make putting on tefillin truly “tefillin in the head.” In other words, how we can genuinely unite and connect with the tefillin we put on, so that putting on tefillin is an experience of excitement each and every day. If we understand the depth of tefillin, then of course we’ll be able to put on

07:22 tefillin with an entirely different kind of excitement. Today we’re going to discuss three dimensions of tefillin. Two concern what tefillin accomplish for the person himself, what effect they have on him; the third concerns how tefillin affect the world outside him as well. Tefillin contain four passages. What is the deeper meaning of those four passages? First, let’s look at what the Shulchan Aruch says. The Alter Rebbe writes in Shulchan Aruch, section 25, and he writes the same thing in his siddur: When a Jew puts on tefillin, he should have in mind that Hakadosh Boruch Hu commanded us to write four passages in the tefillin. They speak of the oneness of Hashem—“Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One”—and of the Exodus from Egypt. This is so that we will remember the miracles and wonders Hakadosh Boruch Hu performed for us, and thereby know that Hakadosh Boruch Hu rules over all worlds, above and below. Hakadosh Boruch Hu commanded us to place the tefillin on the arm, opposite the heart, and on the head, opposite the brain, so that we will devote the soul, which is in the brain, and the desires and thoughts of our hearts to His service, to serving Hashem. For by putting on tefillin, a person will remember the Creator and lessen his pursuit of pleasures. These are the Alter Rebbe’s words, based on the rulings of earlier authorities. What should a Jew’s basic intention be when putting on tefillin? Let’s look more deeply at what the four passages in tefillin are. In the tefillin shel rosh, you can see the four compartments, each containing a separate passage. In the tefillin shel yad, all four passages are in a single compartment. What are these four passages, and how do they connect with a Jew’s devotion of his brain and heart to Hakadosh Boruch Hu? We’ll understand this point based on what the Alter Rebbe

09:57 The Alter Rebbe explains in the Tanya: When we speak about a person’s mind, it has three parts, three levels, known in Chabad Chassidus as chochmah, binah, and daas. These aren’t just three words for the same thing; they are three stages in the development of an idea. Chochmah, in brief, is the power of “what”—the initial point. When someone learns something, contemplates something, tries to understand something, there is that first point. Chochmah is the first point of insight, when a person grasps a particular idea that is new to him. “Wow, I’ve got something here!” That is the point of chochmah. The whole idea is there, but in a very, very condensed form. After that comes the power of binah. Binah is related to the word for building. Binah means understanding: taking that point, that new insight, that flash that lit up in my mind, and developing it—understanding it with all its details, examples, analogies, and explanations. That is the power of binah: working out the idea in all its details. Then comes the third stage, an especially important and central one: the power of daas. The Alter Rebbe says in the Tanya that daas is not merely knowing something, what we call having knowledge. Daas is related to the phrase “And Adam knew Chava.” When the Torah speaks of Adam and Chava coming together, it says that Adam “knew” Chava. This is deep, inward knowledge; it means connection and attachment. A person connects with the idea. Often we learn something and grasp it: I’ve had the insight, I’ve understood it, explained it, developed it, analyzed it from every angle—but it remains an intellectual idea, disconnected from my reality. Daas is the power to take the explanation and the whole idea and internalize it, to connect it with my very self, to live it. As the Alter

12:20 Rebbe says in the Tanya, the power of daas means that a person thinks about something and delves into it again and again, even though he has already grasped and understood it. But he thinks about it again and again and again, without taking his mind off it, until it becomes part of who he is. It penetrates him. Daas is the key to the emotions. Once we manage to take an intellectual explanation and bring it into our daas, it becomes something that opens up the world of feeling, the world of the heart: love, awe, and all the other emotional attributes. Generally speaking, the emotions discussed in Kabbalah are seven attributes. Broadly, though, there are two main ones—love of Hashem and awe of Hashem, when we are speaking about feelings toward Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So this divides into four: chochmah, binah, and daas as the key to the emotions, which include love of Hashem on the right and awe of Hashem on the left. That makes four. And from this come the four passages in tefillin. If we look at what is written in those four passages, we can see their connection to these four things. There is a passage called “Kadesh Li Kol Bechor,” which begins with “Kadesh.” Kadesh is related to holiness, and the power of chochmah is a power of holiness. What does “holy” mean? It conveys that something is set apart, separate. Because chochmah is only the initial point, it is a holy point, a point set apart. A person does not yet have a grasp of it through understanding. That is why it is called “Kadesh Li.” The passage of Kadesh speaks of the power of chochmah. The second passage is “And it shall be when Hashem brings you into the land.” Eretz Yisroel is “a good and spacious land.” This is an analogy for binah. As we said, binah is expansiveness. It is called “the breadth of the river.” There is a spring with tiny drops, and there is a broad river. The same is true of chochmah and binah. “Kadesh Li”—

14:41 Kadesh is the power of chochmah in the soul. “A good and spacious land”—“And it shall be when Hashem brings you into the land”—is the power of binah, which takes ideas and expands them with breadth and detail. Then comes the power of daas, represented by the passage of Shema, which says, “And you shall love Hashem your G-d.” Love of Hashem. As we said, the power of daas is the key to the emotions. It is the contemplation in “Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One.” A Jew contemplates the greatness and oneness of Hashem—that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is one above and below, throughout all the worlds—and this awakens feelings of love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. From there comes the next stage, awe. The passage of “Vehayah Im Shamoa”—“And it shall be, if you listen”—speaks about awe. What does it say? “Take care lest your heart be enticed, and you turn away and serve other gods.” The Torah speaks in terms of awe: not wanting to become disconnected, not wanting to grow distant from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So here we have four things, corresponding to the four compartments and four passages of the tefillin. When I place those four passages on my head, what happens? Through putting on tefillin with its four passages, a person gives over his chochmah and binah, and his daas—which includes his love and awe of Hashem—to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This is essentially what the Shulchan Aruch calls subordinating the soul that is in the mind, and the desires of our hearts, to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Chassidus explains that just as a person has two parts—the mind and the heart, what we call the intellectual and emotional sides—and this is true of the G-dly soul, so too this reflects the fact that, so to speak, these two aspects exist in the way Hakadosh Boruch Hu relates to us. The supernal sefiros also consist of these two levels. There are the chochmah, binah, and daas of Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “You made them all with chochmah,” the supernal chochmah. And there are chesed and gevurah—“the great, mighty, and awesome G-d”—which are, so to speak, called the emotional attributes

16:57 of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So when a Jew puts on the arm tefillin, he connects with the attributes of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It is placed beside the heart. When a Jew puts on the head tefillin, he connects with the supernal chochmah of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The two tefillin go together. When we put on the arm tefillin and the head tefillin, with the four passages as we said, this is a way for a Jew to work on himself. That is the inner meaning of putting on tefillin: that my intellect, my mind, my powers of chochmah and binah, should be wholly devoted to Hakadosh Boruch Hu; that my chochmah and binah should accord with Divine wisdom; that my conduct and my understanding should accord with a Divine understanding, as explained in the holy Torah. The same applies to the emotions, to love and awe of Hashem: that the feelings in my heart should be directed toward Hakadosh Boruch Hu. To love Hakadosh Boruch Hu. To love a fellow Jew. To love what Hakadosh Boruch Hu loves. And to have awe and fear of what Hakadosh Boruch Hu regards with awe. This is what we accomplish by putting on tefillin. There is a story connected to this aspect of tefillin: how it affects our mind and heart, so that they are devoted, healthy, connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and functioning properly and healthily. Chassidim tell the story—or rather, the Frierdiker Rebbe told it, having heard it from his father. In 5663, the Rebbe Rashab visited Vienna. He went to see doctors there, and he also met the famous physician Professor Freud, the father of psychology. They say that a very interesting conversation took place between them. Among other things, the question came up: What is Chassidus? The Rebbe Rashab explained that Chassidus is the teaching that shows us how to bridge the mind and the heart: that a person must learn, understand, and contemplate the greatness of Hashem and about

19:24 by the mind, so that it can control the feelings in the heart and direct them to the right place and in the right way. And Freud said to the Rebbe Rashab: “The mind and the heart are two worlds very, very far apart.” He compared them to continents. In those days—we’re talking about more than a hundred years ago—the distance between continents was enormous. The Rebbe Rashab said: “That is precisely the purpose of Chassidus: to build bridges, or to create telegraph lines.” In those years, those were the only things that connected continents. The goal is to connect the mind and the heart. In other words, Chassidus teaches us how a Jew can create a healthy flow between the mind and the heart. True, the world of the mind is a cool, settled world, and sometimes a detached one. The world of the heart is a world of vibrant, warm, enthusiastic feeling, but sometimes it is also frightened. We need both; each needs the other. We bring about the right balance between mind and heart by putting on tefillin. There was also some very interesting correspondence in recent years. The Rebbe wrote to Jews who asked him about a terrible illness called schizophrenia—a type of illness in which a person loses the connection between mind and heart, between feelings, thought, and behavior. There is a kind of split, a kind of conflict; things do not flow in a healthy way. They asked what the Rebbe could say about it and how one could help. Among the things the Rebbe wrote about was putting on tefillin. There is a special power and a special quality in putting on tefillin: since tefillin are about bringing the heart and mind into the service of Hashem, putting on tefillin also helps a person become stable and establish the right balance, the right connection, between mind and heart. So that is the first thing we need to know about the intention behind putting on tefillin: they have a

21:54 wonderful power to help a person bring together intellect and emotion, those two worlds, and enable them to work properly—to bring them both together and direct them toward serving Hashem in a healthy and proper way. Then comes the second stage: why do we put the tefillin on the left arm? What is it about the left arm? This is something wonderful. With all the other mitzvos, the idea is to do them specifically with the right hand. When a Jew takes a lulav, he takes it in his right hand. When he makes Kiddush, he does so with his right hand. We always speak about giving special place to the right hand. The one mitzvah for which we say the opposite—that it must be specifically on the left arm, the weaker arm, as our Sages say—is tefillin. Why specifically the left arm? The Zohar speaks about this. The Zohar says that the left symbolizes the yetzer hara, and tying tefillin on the left arm, says the Zohar, means binding the yetzer hara. When a Jew puts on tefillin, he figuratively binds the yetzer hara so that it will not interfere with him. In the language of Tanya, in the language of Chassidus, it means this: The Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya that every Jew has two souls. There is the divine soul and there is the animal soul. There is the divine soul, which is literally a part of G-d above, and there is the animal soul, from which the yetzer hara also comes—the soul that draws us toward desires, selfishness, and all the bad character traits. The Alter Rebbe says in Tanya: Where are these two souls located? The divine soul is on the right side, and the animal soul is on the left side. This is based on a verse in Koheles: “The heart of a wise man is to his right, and the heart of a fool to his left.” The divine soul, the wise heart, is on the right; the animal soul is on the left.

24:13 So when we speak of tefillin on the left arm, this also alludes to the left chamber of the heart, the place where the animal soul, the yetzer hara, resides. “The blood is the soul”; from there come all the desires, materialism, and selfishness. Binding the tefillin on the left means that when a person puts on tefillin, he does not only draw down upon himself divine light, the supernal sefiros, affecting the divine side of his mind and heart. Tefillin also have the power to affect the animal side of a person, his left side. Interestingly, chassidim tell of a great chossid in the time of the Alter Rebbe named Yekusiel. He was a simple man until he came to the Alter Rebbe. They say he was an extremely simple man who could barely read or write. He came to the Alter Rebbe, and when the Alter Rebbe spoke about Tanya and delivered maamarim explaining the foundations of Chassidus, he heard the Rebbe say that every Jew has two souls, the divine soul and the animal soul. The Rebbe said that the divine soul is on the right side of the heart and the animal soul on the left. The Frierdiker Rebbe related that when Reb Yekusiel heard those words, they penetrated his heart in an extraordinary way. He was deeply moved and stirred, and the next day he could not restrain himself. Without permission from the gabbai, the secretary responsible for admitting people to the Rebbe, he went in. The Rebbe was in the middle of davening. Reb Yekusiel opened the door to the room and cried out to the Rebbe: “Rebbe, cut out my left side!” Chassidim relate that the Alter Rebbe entered a state of deep spiritual absorption for a long time, and then said to him: “Master of the Universe, You give life to them all.” Those were the only words the Alter Rebbe said. That is,

26:19 it was a kind of prayer that Hakadosh Boruch Hu should give this Jew vitality. And indeed, they relate that from that yechidus, from that encounter, Reb Yekusiel underwent a complete transformation. He became an enthusiastic, lively, vibrant person in whom the divine light began to live. Afterward he devoted himself to studying Chassidus and became one of the great chassidim, one of the great figures of Chassidus. So this is the second stage of tefillin: how they also affect the left side. Tefillin are placed specifically on the left arm so that the connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu reaches the left side as well—the animal soul and the yetzer hara. And here we come to the third stage in putting on tefillin: the effect of tefillin on the world. As we began with the story of the Alter Rebbe: “And all the peoples of the earth will see that the name of Hashem is called upon you, and they will fear you.” This refers to the tefillin of the head. When a Jew puts on the tefillin of the head, his tefillin become a way of connecting with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He contemplates Hashem’s oneness—“Hear, O Israel”—the words written inside the tefillin, Hashem’s oneness and the Exodus from Egypt. He contemplates “Hear, O Israel: Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is one and unique, and there is nothing besides Him. He awakens love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “And you shall love Hashem your G-d.” He contemplates the Exodus from Egypt and the wondrous miracles through which Hakadosh Boruch Hu guides the world. So when the tefillin are on a person’s head, this also affects the peoples of the earth all around him: they all sense it and humble themselves before it, and it inspires in them great awe and deep submission to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This was in 5727, nineteen sixty-seven, during the Six-Day War. At that time there was great fear. All the countries surrounding the Land of Israel wanted, G-d forbid, to wipe out our Holy Land. It was a difficult time.

28:39 Greatly. There was tremendous fear. Many people wanted to flee the Land of Israel; they did not know what would happen. Then, as is well known, the Rebbe stood before a crowd on Lag BaOmer, a few days before the war, and said: “Our brothers in the Land of Israel are in distress.” He cited the words of the verses: “If you walk in My statutes,” “You will lie down with none to frighten you,” and “I will grant peace in the land.” He said clearly: There is nothing to fear; no one should flee the Land of Israel. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is with us. The Land of Israel is “a land that the eyes of Hashem your G-d are always upon, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.” There is nothing to fear. The Land of Israel is the safest place in the world. At that time, the Rebbe launched the well-known campaign called Mivtza Tefillin: to go everywhere, stand in the streets, and give Jews the opportunity to put on tefillin. People asked: What good does it do for a Jew to put on tefillin just once? Among the things the Rebbe said then were several points on this subject. One was the verse, “All the peoples of the earth will see that the name of Hashem is called upon you, and they will fear you.” Tefillin have a remarkable power: when a Jew puts on tefillin, they affect the entire world—“and they will fear you.” When a non-Jew sees a Jew putting on tefillin, it has an effect on him: he is subdued. He cannot interfere with the Jew or do him any harm. There is also the principle that one mitzvah leads to another. When a Jew puts on tefillin, the power of the mitzvah draws him in and makes him want to do another mitzvah, and another. The Rebbe spoke then about several other points as well. In the blessing that Moshe Rabbeinu gave the tribe of Gad, the Torah says, “He tears off the arm, even the crown of the head.” The tribe of Gad were the vanguard who went ahead of the people in battle, as the Torah tells us in Parshas Matos-Masei and Parshas Devarim. They were

30:52 the vanguard who went out to war. So it says of Gad, “He tears off the arm, even the crown of the head.” The Midrash asks: Why “the arm, even the crown of the head”? Because that was how they would strike down their enemies. This is connected with tefillin: in the merit of being meticulous in fulfilling the mitzvah of tefillin, the words “He tears off the arm” are fulfilled. The arm is where the tefillin of the hand are placed, and the crown of the head is where the tefillin of the head are placed. Through this, we overcome our enemies and bring deliverance and rescue wherever the Jewish people need them in the world. So when we put on tefillin each day, we think about their special power. First, we think about the four passages and their message: to take wisdom and understanding, love and awe—the powers of the mind and the emotions—and devote them to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And not only that, but to bring this to the left arm, the left side, and subdue the yetzer hara as well. The tefillin straps also teach us that this should not remain only in the mind and heart; it must be brought into action. A person is made up of thoughts, feelings, and actions, represented by the straps we wind around the arm, the hand, and the fingers. And the straps of the tefillin of the head hang down toward the feet, signifying that the entire person becomes permeated with this motivation, with the vitality of tefillin. That is the first stage. The second stage is to bring this to the yetzer hara and the animal soul, too, binding them to the service of Hashem. They, too, should be devoted to serving Hashem. Then we affect the world around us, illuminating it and making it a more G-dly world, a world in which the name of Hashem shines. A world in which all the peoples of the earth see that “the name of Hashem is called upon you, and they will fear you.” This brings peace to the world, peace in the Land of Israel, and peace

33:01 throughout the world. This is what protects us from all wars and troubles. And when all of us, each one of us, strengthen our observance of the mitzvah of putting on tefillin and give another Jew the opportunity to put on tefillin, it will bring about that, soon in our days, we will all reach our holy Land safe and whole. As it says in the passages we are reading now, “And you who cleave to Hashem your G-d are all alive today.” May all the Jewish people reach the complete and true Geulah through our righteous Moshiach.