A few weeks ago the Roving Rabbis, Schneur Druk and Mendel Hertz, met a Jew in Idaho Falls. A retired nuclear scientist, he had not participated in much of anything Jewish for decades. He was elderly and ill and wasn’t particularly interested in religion, to say the least. Science was his religion.
When the rabbis knocked on his door, he greeted them suspiciously, but welcomed them in nonetheless. After a long conversation, he warmed up and decided to take up the rabbis on their offer to perform the mitzvah of tefillin, which is discussed in this week’s parsha Va’etchanan. He claimed that if he didn’t understand the ritual there was no use doing it. But, he liked the rabbis so he decided to do it anyway.
He put on the tefillin for the first time in over 60 years! Tears were running down his cheeks when he finished the prayers. He could not explain it, but a reservoir of emotion was unleashed. Suddenly, he began recounting Jewish memories of his youth.
He did not let the rabbis leave until they had also affixed a mezuzah on his door.
A day later I received a phone call from his son in New Jersey, who was astounded at the remarkable event. “My father has not done anything Jewish in decades. You have ignited something within him that I never knew existed,” said his son. “He told me that now he can live out the rest of his life peacefully, knowing that he has returned to his roots.”
The next day I received another phone call from my new friend in New Jersey. “Dad’s infection, which the doctors believed was cancerous, suddenly disappeared! He believes it’s all connected to the tefillin he put on a few days ago.”
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I don’t know the extent of his miraculous medical turnaround. But I do know the extent of his miraculous spiritual turnaround. Just an hour before he met the rabbis, he wasn’t sure if he believed in these rituals. After putting on tefillin, he suddenly agrees to publicly identify as a Jew with a mezuzah on his front door.
Is there something magical about tefillin?
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The Torah instructs us to wear tefillin on both the head and the arm, opposite the heart. The reason, as stated in the Code of Jewish Law, is so that we should submit the soul which is in the brain, as well as the desires and thoughts of our hearts, to His service.
The mind and the heart are opposites. One is objective and the other is subjective. One is cold and indifferent; the other is warm and excited.
The mitzvah of tefillin is magical in the sense that it creates a fusion between opposites. When we dedicate both our minds and hearts to G-d and to perfecting this world, miracles can – and do – happen.
To learn more about tefillin, click here.