Origin 200 BCE to 100 CE
Two black leather boxes containing handwritten scriptural passages, bound by leather straps to the upper arm and the head for weekday morning prayer. The arm box is placed against the bicep facing the heart, the strap wound seven times down the forearm; the head box sits above the hairline between the eyes. They are removed afterward. They are not clothing, which is why they sit here rather than among religious dress.
Obligation traditionally falls on adult men and begins at bar mitzvah. Women's wearing of tefillin has medieval precedent, is normal in Reform, Reconstructionist and much of Conservative practice, and remains contested in Orthodoxy, where a small number of women wear them with rabbinic support and most authorities do not encourage it.
Facts
Use
Who May Handle ItAdherents of the tradition 1 Worn at weekday morning prayer by those obligated to wear them ConsecrationSanctified by the text it carries, not by a rite 1 Origins
Origin Period Learn More
Boxes That Qumran Shows Were Not Yet Standardised
Tefillin are bound to the arm and head for weekday morning prayer, and the finds at Qumran show both how old the practice is and how much it has changed.
What they are
Two black leather boxes contain handwritten scriptural passages: the arm box is placed against the bicep facing the heart, with the strap wound seven times down the forearm, and the head box sits above the hairline. They are removed after prayer, which is one reason they are treated as ritual implements rather than as dress.
The Qumran evidence
Tefillin found at Qumran date to the last centuries before the common era and confirm that the practice is genuinely ancient. They also show that the contents were not yet fully standardised: some of the Qumran sets contain scriptural passages that the later rabbinic form excludes. The object is therefore a case where archaeology documents a religious practice in the process of being fixed, before the rabbinic tradition settled which passages belonged inside. Obligation traditionally falls on adult men from bar mitzvah; the wearing of tefillin by women has medieval precedent, is normal in Reform, Reconstructionist and much of Conservative practice, and remains contested in Orthodoxy.
How the Boxes Are Made, and Who Wears Them
Tefillin are made from a single piece of kosher animal hide formed and dyed black, folded and sewn into small cube shaped boxes, batim, each containing tiny hand copied parchment scrolls with passages of Torah rolled tightly inside.
A specialist craft
The boxes and their leather straps, retzuot, are produced by specially trained artisans rather than a general leatherworker, since the stitching pattern, the exact black dye, and the precise folds are all governed by halakhic requirements, and a flaw in any of them can render the pair unfit for use. This makes a properly made set of tefillin a genuinely expensive object, closer in production cost to a small Torah scroll than to ordinary leatherwork.
Who wears them, and when
In traditional practice, Jewish men begin wearing tefillin around bar mitzvah age, thirteen, binding one box on the upper arm and one on the forehead each weekday morning, though not on Shabbat or festivals, which are considered signs enough in themselves. Egalitarian and some Conservative communities have extended the practice to women as well. The internal parchments are checked periodically by a sofer, and if found damaged beyond repair are buried rather than discarded, the same treatment given to any worn out text bearing the Divine Name.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Tefillin obligation traditionally falls on adult men and begins at bar mitzvah.
Women's wearing of tefillin is normal in Reconstructionist practice.
Belongs to Tradition
Element Of
The public phylactery campaign, begun in 1967, made the laying of them by any Jewish man the movement's most visible outreach and its most recognisable street practice.
Retained as an obligation, and the movement ruled that women who take it on are obligated in it on the same terms as men.
Laid daily from the age of thirteen, and the standards applied to the scribal work and to the boxes themselves are the strictest in use.
Bound on the arm and the head at the weekday morning service, containing the four passages written by hand on parchment.
Rejected Here
Karaite reading takes the commandment to bind the words as a figure for holding them constantly in mind. The leather boxes of rabbinic practice are neither made nor worn, because the text is held not to ask for them.
Held Differently
Reform Judaism, Denominations Classical Reform set the phylacteries aside with the rest of the ceremonial law as a form belonging to another age. Their use has returned in some congregations as a personal practice freely taken rather than an obligation received.
Source The Pittsburgh PlatformCentral Conference of American Rabbis (predecessor gathering)the holders' own account Sources
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