Grabbing a Moment with God
The associate rabbi of our shul is my good friend, and she was happy to teach me to wear tefillin. But instead of making an appointment to see Sarah in her office, I suggested we do it on her day off. We would pray while our two-yearold daughters played. A playdate is the easiest way to grab a moment from Sarah’s schedule, I told myself. In truth, I think, I was unwilling to grab a moment from my own schedule.
We set the girls to playing, and Sarah and I each wrapped ourselves in a tallis. Mine felt familiar and warm on my shoulders. When Sarah drew her daughter, Eliana, into her tallis for a moment, I beckoned Shira to me, inspired to engage my daughter as well in our prayers. But Shira had her own ideas; she was engaged with a baby doll. When I looked up, Sarah was fully bedecked, a black box and white kippah crowning her head.
My heart was pounding as I removed my tefillin from their bag. They had once been my husband’s, but he gave them to me. I stared at them: red and black protective boxes, wrapped in leather straps, symbols of masculinity.
Traditionally, the rabbis exempted women from the commandments of tallis and tefillin. Like eating in a sukkah, hearing the shofar, or praying three times a day, tallis and tefillin are time-bound commandments. In the 600-year-old words of Rabbi David Abudraham: “If she were obligated to do time-bound mitzvot, it might happen that in the hour when she needs to fulfill a mitzvah her husband would command her to fulfill his commandment” (Sefer Abudraham 3). Women did not have free moments for time-bound commandments.
Regardless of historical practice or halakhic obligation, today even in the Orthodox community women feel personally compelled to hear the shofar and to eat in the sukkah. In our community most women do pray with a tallis, but a lot of them still don’t see the appeal of tefillin.
Sarah explained that her own tefillin are tied for a lefty, and she checked that mine were tied for a righty.
“Ah, yours goes on your left arm,” I said, quickly, knowingly.
“Actually, it goes on the nondominant arm,” meaning her right arm. My face turned red. Twelve years of day school education, and I don’t know on which arm the tefillin goes.
The underside of the box is covered in a translucent membrane, and I slipped it onto my left arm. Somehow, with Sarah leading me, I got the things wrapped in place. I recited the traditional verses from Hosea, the same verses my husband and I chose to decorate our wedding invitation 13 years ago. “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you in righteousness and justice and kindness and mercy. I will betroth you in faith, and you will know God.”
We each dived into the morning prayers: silently, at first, and too hurriedly. After a few moments I wanted to rejoin Sarah, sing something out loud. But I was too late. Shira had decided that Eliana’s toy was more interesting than her doll. She grabbed the toy, Eliana complained, I rushed over to intervene, and Shira grabbed my leg. “Milka, milka,” she said. She wanted to nurse.
“Look at this box, Shira,” I said, handing her the tefillin’s outer red box. It kept her entertained for three minutes, and then she was back with her demands to nurse. Eliana was playing quietly by herself, and I was cursing myself for not choosing a time when Shira was with her babysitter.
“Is milk a naki body fluid?” I asked Sarah. Traditional rabbinic law requires a guf naki, a clean body, to wear tefillin. The Shulhan Arukh, the code of Jewish law, elaborates: You must not have a bowel movement or even pass gas while wearing tefillin. Urinating while wearing tefillin is questionable. This requirement for a clean body contributed strongly to the taboo against women wearing tefillin, because, in the 800-year old words of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, “Women do not know how to keep themselves clean.”
I had asked my question half jokingly, but Sarah answered seriously, “I think it is.” Out of desperation, I sat down and put Shira to my breast. My tallis brushed her head and belly. The straps of tefillin squeezed my fingers as I cradled her bottom. And for a moment I experienced holiness.
Afterwards, I finished my prayers quickly as Shira continued to demand my attention. And I thought to myself: This is what marriage is really like. The intimacy is in brief moments, tucked in between feeding and whining and rushing and doing. “I will betroth you to me forever,” I thought. I betroth you, my husband, and – differently and yet similarly – I betroth you, my God.
I’ve put on tefillin regularly since then. I stand on my porch, early in the morning, where I can smell the air and hear the absence of children. If the children are home, they soon find me. Shira says, “No want you wear those,” pointing to the tefillin, knowing they mean my withdrawing my attention from her. So I ground myself with two short prayers, then quickly strip off tallis and tefillin.
More and more often, I find myself stealing worktime for prayers. I wait until Shira is with the babysitter and her older brother is at preschool, and before I start my computer I take out my tallis bag. I feel my resistance as I look at the tefillin. “I ought to get to work,” I think, “I can’t afford the time for this.” But once they are on my arm and head, their weight ties me to the moment. I sing my first two prayers. I chant a few more. I find myself adding more and more of the morning service to my personal routine, wanting to prolong the moment with God.
Dr. Ilana Goldhaber-Gordon is the author of Thinking Biochemistry: Biochemical Approaches to Biological Problems (University Science Books). She also teaches at Dongregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto, California.
