Tefillin

For an excellent and detailed description of the function and manufacture of tefillin, the reader is recommended to www.stam.net and Machon Ott. The Wikipedia entry is also extensive, although one should bear in mind that Wikipedia is not an authoritative source.

Practical info

Tefillin need to be fitted properly. Here, at Tefillin Beit-El, is an explanation of how they ought to fit. When you buy tefillin, borrow tefillin, or get a drastic haircut, you should check whether the knots need adjusting. (N.B. If you borrow tefillin and adjust the knots, it is good manners to adjust them back again before returning them.)

• Here is a step-by-step illustration of how to tie the knot of the shel rosh
• Here is how to adjust the knot, if it is already tied but too tight or loose. There is also a movie version, complete with hearty music.
• Beit-El don't have instructions on how to tie the knot for the shel yad. You don't usually need to know how to do this, except if you borrow tefillin from someone of different handedness.
• Tefillin do not like changes in humidity or temperature. Putting them on top of a radiator is not a good idea. Neither is wearing them when you have wet hair, or when you are very sweaty. Also, ideally don't carry them in a backpack with an unreliable water bottle.

Tefillin Beit-El also sell miscellaneous maintenance supplies.

Buying tefillin

Tefillin are tricky to make, so they are not cheap. The housings are complicated, and the writing on the parchments inside is extremely small and subject to an awful lot of rules. Thus, if someone is offering very cheap tefillin, there is something wrong somewhere - either corners are being cut or someone is being exploited.

I would trust Tefillin Beit-El, stam.net, and Oraita to sell you kosher tefillin (even to women). This is based on contact I have had with them; they seem to me to know their stuff.

I will write tefillin parchments, which go inside the housings. I do not make tefillin housings, chiefly because it is a process which cannot be described in a book. One must be shown how to make them, and the people who know how to make them are men who do not approve of women doing such things, so there is no way for me to learn to make them properly. But housings may be acquired separately and united with the parchments.

Borrowing tefillin

If you want to take on the mitzvah of tefillin but can't afford them, or if you want to try it for a while in order to decide whether you want to invest in a pair of your own, it is possible to borrow a set. Further details here.

Women and tefillin

Tefillin are one of the mitzvot from which women are traditionally exempt. There is a lot of discussion as to whether women may wear tefillin, and a lot of discussion as to whether they should wear tefillin. You will have to make up your own mind. I give my own perspective in an essay entitled Should All Barbies Wear Tefillin?, which originally appeared at my blog, Hatam Soferet.

Jen Taylor Friedman, 2008