Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of tefillin, leather boxes and straps used in prayer by observant Jews.
Tefillin
The Latest
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Life Why Is It So Hard to Get Used to a Woman Wearing a Tallit?
When I was a kid, we had a famous riddle that I heard/told dozens of times. It involved a man and his son who were in a car accident. The man dies instantly, and the son is rushed to the hospital. The surgeon is about to operate on the boy, and suddenly exclaims, “I can’t…
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Opinion Tefillin Stand Near Paris Siege Draws Mixed Response
A Lubavitch Jew had passersby put on tefillin yards from the besieged kosher market / Twitter (JTA) — Standing for hours behind that yellow police line Friday, many of us could feel our patience running out as we waited idly near the Porte de Vincennes metro station for news from the hostage situation that was going…
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Fast Forward Lost Tefillin Owner Identified as Israeli Man Whose Bags Were Misplaced
The owner of the last of seven pairs of tefillin discovered by a Florida rabbi at a store that sells the contents of unclaimed airline baggage has been located. The religious item belongs to an Israeli man who was traveling last December between Mexico and Denver when his suitcase went missing, the news website Vos…
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Fast Forward Rabbi Finds 7 Tefillin Sets in Lost-Luggage Store
A Florida rabbi discovered seven pairs of tefillin at a store that sells the contents of unclaimed airline baggage. Rabbi Uri Pilichowski was on vacation with his family when he visited the store in Scottsboro, Ala., looking for cheap cell phones, the New York Daily News reported. The rabbi bought the religious items, worth hundreds…
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News Observant Women Make Tzitzit — and Stir Controversy
Since biblical times, male authorities have been debating the issue of whether women should sport tzitzit. Now, thanks to a freshman from Princeton University, a group of young women are — quite literally — taking this fiddly law into their own hands. Maya Rosen, 19, has been wearing tzitzit for three years, making her own…
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Fast Forward Women of the Wall Bring Tefillin to the Streets of Tel Aviv
They were standing in a public square in a major Israeli city, laying tefillin on women amidst shouts of protest and quizzical looks from nearby men in black hats. It’s become an occasional morning routine for Women of the Wall. Except this time, they weren’t at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. They were at the…
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Opinion Forget Tefillin — Orthodox Women Need Empowerment in Daily Lives
(Haaretz) — It never ceases to amaze us, the Orthodox plebeians, how quickly hordes of bloggers can skew matters out of proportion. Skim the blogs and you will discover the din of rumbling male voices expounding on Orthodox gender roles. Perhaps the voices are predominantly male because men are usually better versed than us women in…
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News High School Tefillin Debate Just Tip of Iceberg for Orthodox Jewish Women
(JTA) — The announcement this week that SAR, a modern Orthodox high school in New York, is allowing girls to lay tefillin is helping expose an increasingly sharp fault line within Orthodoxy. For decades, it has been difficult to sort out the precise dividing lines between the varieties of Orthodoxy — ultra, haredi, centrist, modern,…
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