Maybe a flight attendant or passenger could have looked up what “tefillin” is, and saved the passengers on this flight a lot of inconvenience, and the airline a lot of embarrassment. (A flight was diverted when flight attendants became concerned that a teenager’s Jewish ritual object, tefillin was actually some sort of a bomb).
Aside: The English word for tefillin is “phylacteries,” though I don’t think any English speaker actually uses this word. When I was in high school, one of my classmates lost his tefillin (which are expensive) on the subway. He went up and down the aisle asking if anyone had seen his “phylacteries.” Not surprisingly, he didn’t get any “yeses.” Even if there were no other Jews on that subway car, I think he’d have been more likely to succeed by asking about his tefillin.
Old Fart Gamer says:
I first ran across the term in a Dungeons and Dragons game manual. So the late Gary Gygax used it.
January 21, 2010, 5:07 pmChris Travers says:
I use the word. Mostly when discussing historical magical practices, since I would use “amulet” or “talisman” to discuss more contemporary practices.
(Technically, the word “phylactery” usually refers to an item which is worn or carried to protect an individual from harm. Is that the purpose of these objects? Or is it just an attempt to treat Judaism as a bunch of hocus pocus?*)
* hocus pocus from Latin “hoc est poc est” found in the Catholic Mass….
January 21, 2010, 5:10 pmbfwebster says:
Actually, I use the word “phylacteries”, but then again, I’m not Jewish. :-) ..bruce..
(In case you’re wondering, I taught an LDS Sunday school class a few weeks ago on the importance of studying the scriptures. One of the first passages we read in the class was Deuteronomy 6:6-9; I explained about phylacteries as well as mezuzot.)
January 21, 2010, 5:11 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Sorry, I wasn’t aware of the more general meaning, so let me amend: “no English speaker actually uses the word to refer to ‘tefillin.’”
January 21, 2010, 5:12 pmChris Travers says:
Yeah, seems rather prejudiced against Judaism unless the objects are seen as having a function of protecting the bearer from harm.
Could be worse, though. We could be referring to them as pharmakos…..
January 21, 2010, 5:16 pmorca says:
Why would the airline be embarrassed?
Someone pulls out a bomb-sized box on a flight and starts muttering prayers so they divert the flight?
January 21, 2010, 5:19 pmMike S. says:
Of course Phylacteries is not English, but Greek. I suppose it could be a loan word, but I believe it is less common in modern usage than “Tfillin.” The one time a gentile had any reason to mention my t’fillin to me (by coincidence in the Philadelphia airport) she refered to them as “T’fillin.”
January 21, 2010, 5:20 pmChris Travers says:
This makes me wonder….
I generally think that the whole blood libel thing started in Roman-era literature and was used to describe witches. (See The Golden Ass for example.)
I wonder if the attempt to see Jewish ritual objects as MAGICAL objects for purposes of translation was somehow connected to some image of Jews as magic-workers. This would make sense because of the late Hellenistic views of Magicians being from the East (and particularly being Middle Eastern). If so, this might explain the appearance of the blood libel myth as related to Jews.
Just a thought.
January 21, 2010, 5:26 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Because they mistook a Jewish ritual object which actually looks nothing like a bomb for a bomb, even after they questioned the wearer, who assumedly explained it to them?
January 21, 2010, 5:36 pmTNeloms says:
I think it’s funny that the article repeatedly refers to the Tefillin as a “device.” I guess there are some definitions of device that make this appropriate, but it’s kind of like describing the eucharist or a bible as a “device.”
January 21, 2010, 5:38 pmDan Simon says:
He went up and down the aisle asking if anyone had seen his “phylacteries.” Not surprisingly, he didn’t get any “yeses.”
I’m frankly surprised he didn’t get slapped.
January 21, 2010, 5:41 pmorca says:
Google images shows a tefillin looks like a box….that could easily hold a bomb.
What does a bomb “look” like these days, anyway?
January 21, 2010, 5:44 pmjcm says:
The Bible at least spanish transaltions use filacteria as something that Pharisees carried
January 21, 2010, 5:45 pmArmen says:
Interesting. On the one hand, you think the ipse dixit of an expert witness is not enough to clear FRE 702, but that of a passenger is enough to call off a bomb threat.
January 21, 2010, 5:51 pmRon Coleman says:
As someone to whom this very well could have happened while flying, I always wondered why it didn’t. I assumed that tefillin were part of air travel safety training, because otherwise why wasn’t I being asked about them each time they showed up in the x-ray machine? In fact, from time to time, I have seen security supervisors at airports less frequented by Jewish travelers called over — well, first they’re shaken and woken up — and asked to look at what I assumed was the image of these two incomprehensible boxes, surrounded by straps, in the x-ray monitor.
But it never went further than that. David, I’m surprised you would suggest that once “they questioned the wearer, who assumedly explained it to them,” that should have ended the inquiry. I am sure Richard Reid could give quite an explanation about why his shoe had a lit fuse sticking out of it, but that certainly can’t be the end of the inquiry! If you haven’t been exposed to the concept and sight of tefillin, they are absolutely inexplicable — despite any “explanation” from the person you are currently being suspicious of.
The reason the airline should be embarrassed, however, is because its personnel did not have this exposure and familiarity.
January 21, 2010, 5:51 pmohwilleke says:
FWIW, I’m familiar with the “phylacteries” (at least in print, it isn’t the kind of word you use around the dinner table every day although it is used in theater now and again), probably because it is used to refer to similar objects across multiple cultures, but had not encountered the word “tefillin” until today.
In the interest of wider understanding from outsiders, a more self-explanatory name like “prayer boxes” (by analogy to prayer beads and prayer flags) or better yet “scripture boxes” might reduce confusion.
January 21, 2010, 5:54 pmYankev says:
The latter. Term is Greek, has its roots in a pagan outlook, and presumably was chosen as the translation of tefillin by people who did not wear them and, having no idea what they were, assumed they were some kind of amulet.
January 21, 2010, 5:59 pmAmiable Dorsai says:
In at least one D&D usage, phylacteries are similar to the horcruxes used by Lord Voldemort to cache pieces of his soul. I think “tefillin” is less likely to cause unfortunate misunderstanding. ;-)
January 21, 2010, 6:01 pmYankev says:
Yes, and the average paperback book could hold a much larger and more powerful one. Not to mention a hard cover book. And a brief case could hold one larger and more powerful still. So what have you proven?
January 21, 2010, 6:04 pmChris Travers says:
Correction in an above post. Pharmakos is singluar. Pharmakoi would be the plural form. Pharmakoi constituted a category including not only drugs and pharmacological items, but also potions, defixions, magical images (similar to voodoo dolls), etc.
ISTR (will have to re-check my books on the subject) that phylactery is derived from a Greek term relating to protective amulets.
Also on some additional research this seems to be the story behind this part of the translation as far as I can see: Latin “phylacterium” seems to be a liturgical Latin word used to mean “reliquary” (i.e. a container used to hold sacred objects). If anyone is familiar with medieval Christianity, it is immediately apparent that the connection of relics to magical effects is very close in the minds of the Medieval churchmen.* So it would seem to be a simple expansion to use it in this way.
* Gerald of Wales, for example, mentions many cases of people who had committed various sins (usually incest or adultery) having their eyes fall out when touching a reliquary, or having it stick to their hands. His Journey through Wales is quite interesting from this perspective.
However, this doesn’t answer all my doubts. In particular, I would like to know what the Greek sources of the New Testament use to describe these boxes. In other words, the question is whether the Greek sources described these boxes in this way, or whether it was a parallel to the Catholic reliquary idea.
January 21, 2010, 6:05 pmJust Dropping By says:
My two gentile cents: I’ve known and used the word “phylacteries” for years, if not decades, and I’d never heard the term “tefillin” used to describe the articles at issue until reading this post.
January 21, 2010, 6:05 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Well, for one thing, I think if bombs have wires, they aren’t made of leather.
January 21, 2010, 6:06 pmYankev says:
More accurate, too — the word tefillin is derived from tefilla, the Hebew word for prayer. Hebrew scripture merely refers to them as “a sign on your arm/hand and a totafos (not a Hebrew term, ususally translated as “frontlet” but Rashi disagrees with that translation) between your eyes.”
January 21, 2010, 6:08 pmYankev says:
BTW, looking for this story earlier today on Google, I came across an account of a similar incident in Illinois in 2007 on an Indiana-bound METRA commuter train.
January 21, 2010, 6:11 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Again, the leather straps should be a giveaway that it’s NOT a bomb. And while the questioning perhaps shouldn’t be the end of the inquiry, you’d still think that someone could have called down to ATC or TSA and found out what tefillin (checking the boys’ story) before making all the passengers land in Philly.
BTW, I’m quite confident that flight attendants do not learn about tefillin, or much of anything else not mandated by the FAA.
January 21, 2010, 6:11 pmNowMDJD says:
Neither. They are used when reciting the Jewish weekday morning liturgy as a biblically commanded religious obligation. God’s commandments (Deuteronomy– They shall be a sign upon thy hand and frontlets between thine eyes).
January 21, 2010, 6:13 pmOren says:
While I concur in judgment (as it were), I’m not sure the passenger’s explanation is particularly relevant. Surely when asked to explain, an actual terrorist would not say “oh this, it’s a bomb!”, they would lie. Expecting the flight crew to discern the difference between an earnest answer and a well-concocted lie seems overly ambitious. Moreover, there is no reason that a terrorist could not stuff a legit tefillin with explosives — I wouldn’t expect the crew to discern that from a non-explosive one either.
No, the real embarrassment is that the most powerful nation in the world now cowers when confronted with an unknown object, despite the fact that you could easily mold enough PETN or C4 into any sundry object like a laptop, dvd player, briefcase or even underpants (as we found out). I suppose this is a two-fold ridiculous situation — first the disproportionate fear and second the irrational channeling of that fear.
January 21, 2010, 6:15 pmSeamus says:
I can’t say I regularly work it into my everyday conversation, but if I’m the reader at Mass for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time during Year A of the three-year cycle, I read it as part of Matthew 23:1-12.
January 21, 2010, 6:16 pmOren says:
Why can’t someone put explosives in an otherwise innocent looking tefellin (or any other object) and include the leather straps? Is there something about leather straps that precludes them from being attached to a bomb?
In such a situation, what would the call to ATC or TSA accomplish, other than to verify that he didn’t make the entire concept up but rather took an existing item and filled it with explosives?
January 21, 2010, 6:17 pmYankev says:
Perhaps because in the passenger case, the bomb looked nothing like a bomb (and unlike the shoe bomber, there was no fuse and nothing that remotely resembles a fuse — the straps of tefillin are solid leather, not wires), the threat would not have seemed threatening to anyone familiar with the oldest of the three western religions (and one that the majority religion in the US claims as its own source), and the threat could have been instantly discounted by anyone who took the time to verify the kid’s claim. That’s not the same as an ipse dixit. There’s a big difference between “accept my ipse dixit” and “check out what I’m saying and don’t dismiss it out of hand.” Res ipsa loquitur.
January 21, 2010, 6:18 pmYankev says:
I think he meant was the choice of the term “phylactery” an attempt to treat Judaism as hocus pocus, not whether wearing them was an attemtp to treat Judaism as hocus pocus.
January 21, 2010, 6:20 pmRon Coleman says:
Well, they just did, I guess!
You’re right about another thing, David: Making the passengers land in Philly does appear to be what the UN calls a “disproportionate response.”
January 21, 2010, 6:22 pmYankev says:
But as you pointed out, why should tefillin raise any more suspicion than any other object that could conceal a bomb? Especially something larger. Even fairly sizable tefillin are only about 2″x”2×2″, about 1/2″ more per side at the base, but the base is only 1/2″ or so thick.
I don’t know much about explosives — out of curiosity, can anyone here tell me how much power a bomb that size would have?
January 21, 2010, 6:26 pmOren says:
And if the terrorist is clever enough to conceal the wires or, better yet, borrow them from his headphones that were packed separately?
Asking the flight crew to figure out if an object is or is not a bomb just beyond them. Heck, even the TSA with their million dollar machines and 6 digit salaries miss most of them when they are spot checked!
January 21, 2010, 6:28 pmBarbara Skolaut says:
I’ve never heard or seen the word “tefillin,” but I do know the word “phylacteries” (and know what it means).
And I used to live in Manhattan.
January 21, 2010, 6:44 pmwfjag says:
Unless you agree with W.C. Fields.
January 21, 2010, 6:48 pmEMB says:
Phylacteries? Aren’t those the things Voldemort has in the Harry Potter books?
January 21, 2010, 6:53 pmVultureTX says:
Hopefully that a literate mind is a dangerous weapon ;)
For me the whole praying out loud in an enclosed space is the more annoying aspect.
January 21, 2010, 6:58 pmwfjag says:
Obviously you don’t have all the facts — which would surely raise suspicion under TSA policies. You have a 17 year old male, saying prayers (likely in Hebrew) on an air plane (I mean, how often do you hear anyone praying while flying?), and, here’s the real clincher —
Flight diverted to PA after confusion over prayer, http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=11857658
A teenager with good manners! Elementary my dear Yankey, he must be a foreign trained terrorist.
January 21, 2010, 7:04 pmYankev says:
Sorry about that. There’s out loud and out loud. A Jew is required to say the prayers loudly enough that he can hear them, but there is no requirement (except for the one leading a public service) that he say them louldly enough for anyone else to hear what he is saying. In fact, certain parts are required to be said so that only the one praying can hear them. But someone in the next seat or so would still notice some mubmling. Not much we can do about that, I’m afraid, except to avoid flying during prayer time. Unfortunately, that’s not always an option but believe me, praying on the plane is not our first choice if there are other practical options.
January 21, 2010, 7:05 pmChris Travers says:
Yep. More to the point, now I wonder if it was a development in the Koinic sources for Matthew (to show Judaism was all hocus pocus) or whether it was a borrowing into Latin of a Greek term and then projecting it out into the Latin translation as a functional equivalent to “reliquary.”
Any Biblical scholars know for sure?
January 21, 2010, 7:09 pmYankev says:
LOL! And if he was yeshivish, he was probably also wearing a suit, or at least dark dress slacks and a clean white shirt. Well dressed AND good manners? Definitely cause for suspicion.
January 21, 2010, 7:09 pmjukeboxgrad says:
yankev:
Except that it’s easy for a concerned flight attendant to open a book and verify that it contains nothing but pages. On the other hand, phylacteries are a sealed object. They are formed of leather and then permanently closed with glue and heavy thread. They cannot be opened easily. A flight attendant who was committed to finding out what was inside would only be able to open the object in a manner which destroyed it. Trouble is, it’s expensive to replace ($200 or more). On the other hand, it would have been cheaper for the airline to destroy them and pay for the replacement (as compared with the cost of the unscheduled landing).
That the object cannot be opened for inspection is a relevant fact that hasn’t been mentioned yet.
Roughly as much power as a bomb you could hide in your briefs. That is, not much power. Nevertheless, we are easily rattled. We definitely made a huge fuss about the crotch bomber. Oren made the key point: “the real embarrassment is that the most powerful nation in the world now cowers when confronted with an unknown object.” Even when it’s quite small.
January 21, 2010, 7:14 pmYankev says:
I’m not familiar with Koinic sources or any of the Gospels, but as I recall Christian scripture mentions phylacteries in an unfavorable context, as evidence of the showiness and hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Most people don’t realize how using Pharisee to mean hypocritical or using Talmudic to mean an obsession with meaningless detail is as insulting as saying “Jewish interest” for usury or “Jewed him down” for driving a hard bargain.
January 21, 2010, 7:15 pmohwilleke says:
Sounds like the job audition scene from Men In Black.
January 21, 2010, 7:18 pmzuch says:
I don’t think anyone has suggested that it’s not a good idea to allow Internet access on planes (except perhaps some short-sighted parents).
One of the delays in implementing this was the requirement for CALEA compliance.
Cheers,
January 21, 2010, 7:30 pmAndy Bolen says:
Non-Jewish English speaker here and I’m familiar with “phylacteries” from Bible study.
January 21, 2010, 7:37 pmresh says:
“He went up and down the aisle asking if anyone had seen his “phylacteries.” Not surprisingly, he didn’t get any “yeses.”
So it’s safe to say that none of the folks he asked were “pro-”phylactic?
January 21, 2010, 7:43 pmDr. Weevil says:
Someone asked for a Biblical scholar. Will a classicist do? Phylacterion (or phulakterion, depending on your transcription) is a fairly common ancient Greek noun. The root is phylax, ‘guard, sentry’, like the character in Sophocles who catches Antigone throwing dirt on her brother’s corpse. Phylacterios is an adjective meaning ‘pertaining to guards’, and phylacterion a neuter noun referring to a variety of things having to do with guarding. It is first attested in Herodotus, where it means “guarded post, fort, castle”, and Thucydides and Xenophon use it with the same meaning. (All definitions quoted from LSJ, Liddell and Scott’s unabridged lexicon revised by Jones.) Plato uses it to mean “safeguard, security”, and Demosthenes “preservative”. Plutarch and others use it to mean “amulet”, and LSJ adds “among the Jews phylacteria were small rolls of parchment with texts from the Law written on them, bound to the forehead by persons praying”. Matthew 23:5, already adduced by Seamus above, is apparently the only Gospel use of the word, and it does not treat them as contemptible in themselves. It specifically criticizes the Pharisees because “They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments” (NKJV). The Arndt-Gingrich lexicon of NT Greek has a third of a column of references, for those who want to know more, including one to “Friedlander, Der Antichrist” (1901), which sounds interesting. Referenced writers include Josephus and Philo, so it looks like it may have been the standard Greek word for tefillin among Jewish writers writing in Greek.
By the way, the only other English derivatives of phylax I can think of at the moment are ‘prophylaxis’ and ‘prophylactic’, which have to do with guarding things beforehand (pro). I’ve seen the latter used for devices of preventative care like toothpaste and dental floss, also as a genteel euphemism for condom.
Update: Looks like ‘resh’ beat me to the ‘prophylactic’ reference while I was composing my comment. (I really like the five-minute editing window.)
January 21, 2010, 7:51 pmRoy says:
Old school Catholics are familar with phylacteries as well, and use that term. Phylactery is a common synonym for scapulars, which catholics wear.
My grandmother called it a phylactery
January 21, 2010, 7:52 pmMossypete says:
My tefillin are about a 2x2x2 cube each which yields volume of 125cc’s
let’s knock off 25 cc’s for wall thickness and ease of calculation
PETN the explosive used in the shoe and Christmas bombing attempts has a density of 1.77 gm/cc. That would be 177 grams each…354 grams for both – 4x as much as the most recent attempt. Wires could easily be concealed in the leather straps as well as a few lithium coin cells for power – some small arms primers or the base of a shotgun shell ignited by nicrome wire (available off the shelf as hobby rocket ignitors) could be the initiator.
Would it be possible to get it past the X-ray??? good question.
I usually travel with a bag full of electronic junk: netbook, cell phone, ipod, bluetooth devices, 2 wall wart chargers for the above, and more if I bring cameras – TSA usually spends a enough time looking through that bag for me to get my shoes and belt back on. (Life would be much simpler if everything used mini USB for power) IF the inside of the tefillot were shielded with lead foil like an airsafe film shield bag could I talk may way through TSA without them opening the tefillin up by claiming it’s a sacred religious item ( which it is)?
I usually have at least 5 batteries on me at any one time, counting cell phone, camera, ipod, laptop, car keys – plenty of power for nefarious tasks.
Hold on – there’s a knock at the door …
January 21, 2010, 7:57 pmChris Travers says:
Nice explanation, but not the question I asked.
The question was whether the use of “phylactery” in the Bible came from Koine Greek sources, or whether it came from Liturgical Latin sources, because the word has fairly different (but tightly linked) meanings in both those languages. In essence, are we talking about an amulet or a reliquary?
Unfortunately such can probably be answered only by someone who has studied the actual early textual forms of the New Testiment.
January 21, 2010, 7:58 pmDr. Weevil says:
Chris Travers:
I don’t understand your question. The Gospels are only available in Greek or translations from the Greek, though I’ve read that Matthew and Mark are thought to be translations of lost Aramaic originals. The Latin word phylacterium is found only much later than the Gospels, for instance in Jerome’s Vulgate. It was undoubtedly borrowed from the Greek word, which could probably refer to an ‘amulet’ or a ‘reliquary’ — it has a wide range of meanings — and doesn’t prove anything about the meaning of tefillin. The etymology implies only that it protects its wearer, and etymologies do not control meanings.
Amusing sidenote: a scholiast on Juvenal uses Latin phylacterium to mean “Chains and medals worn by gladiators around their necks as tokens of victory”. I don’t know if gladiators thought wearing their medals would help protect them, or the word had come to mean anything worn around the neck, whether it was protective or not.
January 21, 2010, 8:13 pmYankev says:
There is an excellent reason for making tefillin large. The scrolls need to be written with absolute precision and have to be kept in good repair; the slightest break or misformation of a letter invalidates the performance of the commandment. As a friend explained in the days when I wore very small tefillin, the smaller the script, the greater the chance of a mistake and the harder to correct any disrepair. So wearing larger tefillin is not so much for show to the outside world (as Matthew charges) as it is a sign that the wearer cares about fulfilling the detail of the commandment.
I have no idea what relevance borders of the garments have to do with anything. I have heard this verse before and I have often wondered if Matthew was referring to the fringes that must be attached to the 4 corners of any four cornered garment. If so, again the reason is not for show but rather to make sure one fulfills the command; the fringes must be of a certain length and tied in a certain way. If two or more threads are torn short of that minimum, it is forbidden to wear the garment until the fringe is replaced. Because the fringes are subject to a certain amount of wear and tear, longer fringes give more margin for error.
January 21, 2010, 8:36 pmYankev says:
This fact used to cause some sniggering among my younger law school classmates whenever the prof referred to a prophylactic rule.
January 21, 2010, 8:38 pmYankev says:
Wow. That’s scary.
January 21, 2010, 8:42 pmI’m not very good at metric. (I do know that 9mm is ca. .35y”, 10mm is ca. 0.40″, and, having gone to U of Wisconsin-Madison during the revolution, that 28 g is ca. 1 oz. and a kilo is ca. 2.2 pounds.) Is 25cc about right for the average thickness of gasos?
Old Fart Gamer says:
so there might be room for a small shaped charge which might have greater effect than a simple unfocussed explosive.
.. and at mine…
January 21, 2010, 8:47 pmJohn smith says:
I’m quite familiar with the word “phylacteries” – but had never heard of “tefillin”.
January 21, 2010, 8:49 pmGrigor says:
Anaphylactic, as in shock.
January 21, 2010, 8:50 pmDr. Weevil says:
Thank you, Grigor. I wrote that those were the only ones I could think of because I had a nagging feeling that there was at least one other very common derivative.
Yankev: If you’re going to object to pejorative uses of ‘Pharisee’ and ‘Talmudic’, I trust you will also object to pejorative uses of ‘Jesuitical’, ‘casuistry’, and ‘propaganda’. (The last comes from the Latin name of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, which is — or was, I think they’ve changed the name — more or less the Public Relations department of the Vatican.)
January 21, 2010, 9:10 pmMike S. says:
While t’fillin cannot be easily opened without damage, the backing is translucent and with a strong flashlight one can see into the box. Also, the box can be opened by cutting the “thread” sewing them shut, but as the must come from a kosher animal, one must generally take them to a Jewish scribe to get them re-sewn.
January 21, 2010, 10:15 pmMike S. says:
I should add that, while I suppose it might be possible to hide an explosive device in t’fillin and the wires in the straps, it would be a lot easier to do so in a great many objects that are permitted to be carried and used on airplanes, many of which are commonly attached to actual wires while in use on the airplane.
January 21, 2010, 10:22 pmRon Coleman says:
Okay, Mike, but tefillin look like explosive devices, and after all, it does say in the Torah passage they contain: “V’dibarta BOMB….”
January 21, 2010, 10:32 pmgasman says:
Judging from the above discussion it has been decreed that no reasonable airline or tsa employee should question or examine further any device that looks like it might be a tefillin.
So naturally the next actual bomb most easily smuggled onto a plane will be in the form of a tefillin.
January 21, 2010, 11:07 pmcookiemonsta says:
So what I’m hearing here is that the starting presumption of a flight attendant who encounters an unusual object is that “it’s a bomb until proven otherwise, and the object-carrier’s explanations should be ignored.” That’s kind of ridiculous and paranoid. But I guess among the fear crowd that’s the way it goes…
January 21, 2010, 11:15 pmCris says:
Easy enough. Codex Sinaiticus is online; you can see for yourself.
January 21, 2010, 11:28 pmMatthew 23:5 (Far right column, about 2/3 of the way down. The verse begins ΠΑΝΤΑΔΕΤΑ)
Hyman Rosen says:
Many more people are now familiar with the word “phylactery” because the popular role-playing video game Dragon Age: Origins uses that word to refer to small glass vials which hold the spirits of revenants who come to malevolent life when the vials are broken.
Also, I don’t think using “Talmudic” to mean “arcane reasoning” is particularly insulting. The Talmud actually is full of arcane reasoning. See Wikipedia’s discussion of “pilpul” for some insights there.
January 21, 2010, 11:32 pmjukeboxgrad says:
mike:
I think that would depend on the construction. There are different methods of construction. And I think it would not be a reliable way to inspect the contents, especially for a person who had low expertise regarding tefillin and also low expertise regarding bombs.
I think an amateur trying to open it in a hurry would probably do plenty of damage.
This is a good point and I generally agree. However, with many of those objects I can achieve security via other means. For example, I can ask you to turn your laptop on. That doesn’t prove there’s no bomb inside, but it tends to reduce the risk.
January 21, 2010, 11:45 pmOren says:
Roughly speaking, enough to blow a hole in the fuselage which gives the plane as a whole, I dunno, maybe 3:1 odds of landing safely.
Again, why would you listen to an explanation as if an actual terrorist (however unlikely that may be) would give you the right answer? It’s like asking someone if he’s a liar and expecting the answer to have any meaning.
Not to mention set off the light-sensitive secondary trigger installed in case the TSA catches on…
There’s easily enough room for explosives (>100cc) in just the optical drive bay of a laptop, which is not needed for proper function.
January 22, 2010, 12:07 amjukeboxgrad says:
I agree, good point. But I could put a much bigger bomb in there if I could remove the guts entirely (i.e., if for some reason I knew I would not be required to demonstrate that the machine works).
I also think there is a tendency to inflate the effectiveness of these tiny bombs. Yes, PETN is very powerful, but there are a number of variables that matter, other than just the amount of material present. Is it in the form of a shaped charge? If not, the effectiveness is greatly reduced. Is the bomb attached directly to the fuselage, or are there various layers of humans, seats, luggage, floor etc that will absorb the energy before it reaches the fuselage? If I want to create a large hole with a small bomb, these are problems I need to worry about, and they might not be that easy to solve.
January 22, 2010, 1:06 amSnack McSnarkerston says:
Those frickin Liches were always hiding them somewhere clever…
January 22, 2010, 1:41 amneurodoc says:
“propaganda” – didn’t realize that was its origin; “casuisitry” – don’t know its origin, so don’t know who might be offended by a pejorative use, whatever a pejorative use would be; “Jesuitical” – could be wrong, but isn’t that more a Catholic prejudice rather than an anti-Catholic one, reflecting rivalries and resentments within the Church rather than animus from without? “Talmudic” – I think that is used in both positive and negative ways, so can only be judged in context.
January 22, 2010, 2:27 ambfwebster says:
I’m not the scholar that Dr. Weevil is, but, yes, phylakteria is right there in the oldest Koine Greek manuscripts for Matthew 23:5. The King James Bible translates it into the English cognate “phylacteries”; I suspect most other NT translations do as well. So, Chris, this has nothing to do with ‘blood libel’ or anything else pejorative, and it’s certainly not a late gloss. And, yes, there are vast numbers of English speakers who are familiar with the word via the New Testament, though I dare say a lot of them don’t know exactly what it means. :-)
As for the various definitions, the OED gives the Jewish (tefilin) definition as the primary one and the one having the oldest citation (1380). The more general idea of a phylactery as a reliquary (that is, a container holding a holy object) has a citation in 1398. The definition of it as an amulet doesn’t show up until 300 years later (the oldest cite is 1693). ..bruce..
January 22, 2010, 2:33 amMike S. says:
jukeboxgrad,
I travel with a laptop quite a bit. I was asked to turn it on for security exactly once, shortly after 9/11. I have never been asked to turn on any of the other electronic devices I travel with. Presumably the tfillin went through the x-ray where there was at least a chance that hidden wires or detonator circuitry would have been noticed.
January 22, 2010, 7:04 amAlan Polonsky says:
Not to be too picky but Torah does not command the wearing of T’fillin. Rather, it is Talmudic interpretation of the Torah verses of keeping a sign bound to your arm or before your eyes as requiring the use of T’fillin.
January 22, 2010, 7:31 amDavid Chesler says:
I know “phylacteries”. How could I not know a word so close to “prophylactics” — though is that word used anymore? (I last studied D&D in the years soon after my bar mitzvah, but I don’t recall the word there, FWIW.)
Compare this to the professor’s later entry about “Writing Well Matters”. Is a Greek-derived loan-word better than a Hebrew word?
Given that everyone on the plane has gone through screening, shouldn’t we be less likely to assume an unknown device contains explosives?
What does something that doesn’t look at all like a bomb look like?
January 22, 2010, 7:42 amjukeboxgrad says:
mike:
I understand. I don’t dispute that, and I haven’t said anything contrary to that. I’m not saying that we actually use that security method (requiring a person to turn on an electronic device to demonstrate that it’s not a bomb). I’m not even asserting that we should use that method. I’m simply observing that the method is possible, whereas it’s not possible with tefillin.
This observation is relevant to the instant situation, in the following way. Let’s say I’m a flight attendant. Let’s say there is a passenger who already frightens me, because he fits the profile (e.g., maybe his t-shirt says “I [heart] OBL”). Let’s say I now notice him fiddling with his electronic device in some way that makes me suspicious. Maybe he’s shaking it vigorously. Maybe he’s striking it with another object. Maybe he’s attaching something in a way that strikes me as unusual. Maybe there is a powder or liquid leaking from the device. What I can do now is ask him to operate the device. If the device seems to operate normally, that is relevant data. With tefillin, I cannot ask him to operate the device.
I brought up this point because one or more commenters have made the comparison to electronic devices. But from the perspective of someone who is already excessively fearful about such things (that is, America in general right now), the comparison is somewhat invalid, for the reason I have described.
================
alan:
The word Torah is confusing, because it has multiple meanings. Jewish law has a written portion and an oral portion (and to make matters more confusing, the oral portion was ultimately written down, in the form of the Talmud). The word Torah is sometimes used narrowly, as a reference to the Five Books of Moses, also known as the Pentateuch (which is a portion of what Christians call the Old Testament). On the other hand, the word Torah is often used as a reference to the entire body of Jewish law, which encompasses both the written portion and the oral portion.
All Jewish law is ultimately based on the Five Books of Moses, but in many instances the details are found only in the oral law. This is true for tefillin. So it is incorrect to say that “Torah does not command the wearing of T’fillin,” and it’s incorrect in multiple ways. If by ‘Torah’ you mean ‘the Five Books of Moses,’ it’s true that the details aren’t found there, but the underlying commandment is certainly there. And aside from that, “Talmudic interpretation” is definitely considered to be a portion of the “Torah.” This is often misunderstood, and it’s an important misunderstanding.
So the correct statement is this: the underlying command is found in the written law, and the detailed description of tefillin is found in the oral law. This is all part of “Torah.”
================
david:
Yes, but everyone knows that the screening is imperfect in many ways.
January 22, 2010, 8:42 amYankev says:
I didn’t know that. I’ve used the second two, but have never had occassion to use the first. What does the term casuistry come from?
January 22, 2010, 9:12 amYankev says:
You could ask him to put on the tefillin and daven. If the tefillin contained a bomb, they would be posul (invalid) for davening.
January 22, 2010, 9:15 amYankev says:
Great. Now TSA’s next ukase will ban everyone from sitting in the window seats.
January 22, 2010, 9:18 amYankev says:
That’s a matter of several thousand years of perspective. If it came along when Christianity did, of course it’s a late gloss. (Muttering to self:) Danged jonny-come-lately kids!
January 22, 2010, 9:21 amYankev says:
Not to be too picky, but not everything in the Talmud is a rabbinic command. The Oral Torah is every bit as binding as the written Torah, and much of the Talmud is rabbinic instruction as to what the Oral Torah commands.
To put it another way, there is a tremendous differnce between d’Oraisa and d’Rabbonon. The Talmud contains both, and wearing tefillin is the former, as are the details of their construction and contents.
January 22, 2010, 9:24 amYankev says:
I see that you beat me to it. Reminder to self: read to the end of the thread before replying.
January 22, 2010, 9:26 amjukeboxgrad says:
yankev:
Ha! I was trying to think of a joke like that, but I couldn’t think of a good way to say it. So I’m glad you did.
I think it’s true that a bomber would have a preference for a window seat (unless they’re an idiot, and I think many of them are). And I bet that various authorities are aware of this, and might pay a little extra attention to people who request a window seat.
On a related note, I have a hard time understanding why the crotch bomber didn’t try to detonate in the bathroom. There are bathrooms in the tail of the aircraft, and that’s a place where a little damage can have big consequences. I realize he was supposedly sitting near the wing tanks, but I think the cargo area would be between him and those tanks. All that luggage would absorb a lot of force, and a tiny bomb isn’t worth much if any of the force is wasted.
I try to do that, but sometimes it’s hard to do. Anyway, I’m glad that I got it right (since it’s a confusing subject, and hard to explain correctly and concisely). I figured I would hear from you if I didn’t!
January 22, 2010, 10:11 amYankev says:
January 22, 2010, 10:15 amegd says:
I think you mean horcruxes used by Lord Voldemort are similar to the D&D phylactery.
You said it.
January 22, 2010, 10:20 amOren says:
Smart money says you don’t want to make a large hole per se, just break a few critical hydraulic lines and the plane will pretty much crash itself.
Nah, the aisle is better. Then you can mosey on to the back and destroy the lines controlling the tail controls.
Blind spot-checks on the TSA indicate that chance is not as high as imagined.
Thread winner!
January 22, 2010, 10:28 amMaureen says:
Tefillin isn’t necessarily an Orthodox or even Conservative Jewish thing. There are a lot of Jews (and even non-Jews) who just make or buy themselves some tefillin for coolness value. (A few years ago, Livejournal seemed to have a lot of announcements of the “I’m praying with tefillin, because my previous incarnation was a Khazar princess” variety.)
So there’s a lot of people who’d be incoherent when asked to explain….
January 22, 2010, 11:07 amCJColucci says:
An excuse to tell about one of my more embarassing moments. Lonmg ago, I asked a Jewish friend of mine — at least I had thought he was a friend of mine — but these objects were. He told me they were tiffilen, used in prayer. I asked if there was anything in the little box. Perhaps the evil grin on his face should have been a warning, but he said:
January 22, 2010, 11:09 am“You know about circumcision?”
I said I did.
“And how the sacrifice of the foreskin symbolizes Abraham’s covenant with G_d?”
I did.
“Did you ever wonder what happened to the foreskins afterward?”
No, I hadn’t.
“They’re kept in the tiffilen so when we pray we are reminded of the covenant with G_d.”
Made sense to me. Some time later, as my friend must have anticipated I would, I mentioned this bit of arcane religious knowledge in mixed company — to exactly the reaction you’d expect.
I should have known better, because I had already heard the joke about the retired mohel and the wallet.
wfjag says:
Yankev, your question about how the boy was dressed got me to checking. He was dressed as you suggested, and quite neatly and wearing a yarmulke — and traveling with his 16 year old sister (who was wearing a sweat shirt that had the name of High School on it). See,
In-flight prayer brings bomb squad to Pa. airport, http://www.whas11.com/news/In-flight-prayer-brings-bomb-squad-to-Pa-airport-82293987.html
Being with his sister ruled out an audition for Men In Black III. But, he could have been rehearsing for a Fiddler On The Roof revival tour.
I’m sure glad that, given the facts, that the authorities in Philly entered the plane with guns drawn. Maybe W.C. Fields wasn’t right. All things considered, I’d rather not be in Philadelphia.
January 22, 2010, 11:09 amEconGrad says:
I think if people are going to carry odd looking ritual devices on an aircraft, that before getting those odd looking devices out and alarming a bunch of folks, it might be a good idea to call the flight attendant over, and (intentionally allowing oneself to be overheard by nearby passengers) explain that it is time for you to perform a religious ritual and that you need your ritual devices which are in your carry-on and have been through screening.
I’m not Jewish, I’ve never heard of tefillin or phylacteries, nor seen anything like them (and I used to play D&D but apparently not enough), and if I saw someone start unpacking strange-looking black boxes from their luggage and strap those boxes to their body, I’d be a little alarmed (and might respond in a way that would certainly just make things worse).
Admittedly I’m not familiar with these (to me odd) ancient rituals, but does it really have to be done on the plane anyway? I mean if my religion had rituals that made use of oddly shaped chocolate bars that looked somewhat like handguns, I’d probably wait until I was in a private setting before doing my incantations with them. But that’s just me.
January 22, 2010, 11:16 amneurodoc says:
Can we go beyond t’fillin to discuss some other issues when religious people travel…
i) What significance to the “flying imams” case? One of the more deranged and repugnant “progressive” (anti-Israel, if not antisemitic) Jewish bloggers, Richard Silverstein, is holding this t’fillin case up as proof that the imams case was about nothing other than rank bigotry directed at Muslims, and now its the religious Jews’ turn to be “profiled.” What do others think about “profiling” in this context? I would feel no insecurity flying with someone I recognized as a real “schvartze”(?), but then it occurs to me that suicide bombers would board Israeli buses dressed in the fashion of religious Jews because they could hide bombs under long black coats even in the heat of summer.
ii) What about body scanning where exceptionally modest people are concerned? I don’t much care that someone off in another room who can’t see my face may marvel at my awesome body, and want all the security we can practically manage, but how are others to be accommodated? If you are a religious woman, you can skip the body scanner and get patted down? I shouldn’t think the pat down option would be OK with everyone either, though perhaps with women doing women and men doing men. Thoughts?
January 22, 2010, 11:41 amneurodoc says:
Depends on time of day and how long the flight.
January 22, 2010, 11:51 amPubliusFL says:
Add me to the list of non-Jewish English speakers more familiar with the term ‘phylacteries’ as used to refer to ‘tefillin,’ though I have heard the Hebrew term before.
Or to put it in other terms, roughly equivalent to about 1.5 sticks of dynamite. Of course, tefillin jam-packed with PETN would be quite a bit heavier than usual, I would expect.
January 22, 2010, 12:42 pmbfwebster says:
Heh. Point taken.
January 22, 2010, 1:02 pmDavid Chesler says:
1. A detailed enough body scan would indicate if the passenger is cicumsized but that might not be useful in distinguishing between Jews and Moslems.
2. I prefer to be patted down by a woman. If it’s not sexual it shouldn’t make any difference; if it is sexual, I’m sorry, but that’s not the way I swing (not that there’s anything wrong with it.)
January 22, 2010, 1:03 pmGrant Colvin says:
I’m a life-long Roman Catholic, though I suspect I know a good bit more about Judaism than the typical Catholic (or Christian) because of some academic interests (radically summarized: philosophy -> medieval philosophy -> Maimonides -> Judaism) and some close friendships with seriously observant Jews. If I had been on the plane I would have recognized instantly that I was seeing prayer, not threat.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone laying tefillin “live,” but I think that like a great many Gentiles I have seen it depicted in probably a couple dozen scenes in various movies and television shows, so I am surprised that—well, come to think of it, no I’m not.
As to the term “phylactery:” I studied ancient Greek at one point, and the meaning of the word is quite obvious. It is a “thing that guards.” But I always assumed (presumed?) that it guards not the person who is praying (which might indicate or be misunderstood as indicating that it is in the nature of a “magical” amulet), but rather the scriptural scroll that it contains.
As to the potential for tefillin being used to conceal explosives, in my opinion this incident is yet another in the ongoing reductio ad absurdum approach of trying to keep dangerous things off airplanes instead of trying to keep dangerous people off airplanes. I readily admit (indeed, insist) that there is no screening system which would guarantee the apprehension of absolutely every traveler who is a threat, but the notion that we will screen out every thing that is a threat is insane.
When a would-be bomber concealed the explosive in his shoe, we all had to start removing our shoes. I predicted that we would eventually encounter a bomber who hides the explosive in his underwear. And lo, even as I predicted unto you, so it has come to pass. And so we will now be required to remove our underwear–though “virtually.” And everyone knows where the next bomber will conceal the explosives, the response to which will require that, well, I guess all passengers will undergo a CAT scan before boarding. Sheesh.
So here you’ve got a teen-aged Orthodox kid praying, while deploying a ritual device that has been in use for thousands of years, oh, and he is accompanied by his sister. So we divert the plane? Unbelievable.
It would be comical, if it weren’t so absurd.
“Tower, AE 3079. Uhh, we have this passenger, claims he’s a Jew, got these two little black boxes, one on his head, one on his arm, with some straps or maybe wires or something. Please advise. Over.”
Furthermore, according to the prevailing TSA logic, it is entirely possible that tefillin could be banned from carry on bags, since, well, they actually can’t be “opened for inspection,” they could contain enough explosive to bring down a plane, and the straps might conceal wiring. Or perhaps they will need to be limited in size, so as to fit within a one quart plastic bag that can be separately xrayed.
So, we have now seen the first example of someone being hassled for FWJ: Flying while Jewish. With due deference to political correctness, this will rapidly become FWP: Flying while praying—
“Umm, I don’t want to cause any trouble or anything, but that guy sitting in the seat right over the wing pulled this, like, cable with little knobs or something out of his pocket, and I notice that he has it wound around his hand, and he’s been, like, squeezing the knobs, and he’s been muttering something under his breath.”
God help us.
January 22, 2010, 1:04 pmYankev says:
Unless they are made by a Jewish male above the age of thirteen, adhering scrupulously to the complex rules of how tefillin are written, with the appropriate forms to the letters and using the requisite materials (not only proper parchment and hides but also the correct ink and reed pen), what are an extremely skilled scribe using the proper materials, what these people are making are toys, not tefillin, no matter how much they may resemble tefillin.
January 22, 2010, 1:19 pmYankev says:
LOL. Actually, it’s customary to give the mohel a tip.
January 22, 2010, 1:20 pmYankev says:
Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox organization, also thinks that’s a good idea. See their press release posted elsewhere on this thread.
January 22, 2010, 1:22 pmneurodoc says:
Like the gratuity those about to have their heads separated from their shoulders gave the guy with the axe to encourage him to make a quick job of it? (Or do you mean “tip” in another sense?)
January 22, 2010, 1:30 pmjukeboxgrad says:
oren:
Naturally. I agree. But if I’m not that smart about where the lines (and wires) are located, the next best thing is to try to create the largest possible hole. Also, modern aircraft mostly use wires, not hydraulic lines, and there’s also a lot of redundancy in those systems. So the odds of one small hole being terribly dangerous are limited. On the other hand, if I can make a fairly large hole, I can hope that one or more passengers might get blown out.
Good point. My non-expert opinion is that the tail is an area of extra vulnerability, so I don’t know why the crotch bomber didn’t go there.
====================
econograd:
Yes, because it has to happen at a certain time of day. As neurodoc said.
====================
publius
To some extent, but not by a lot. PETN is not terribly dense. That’s reflected in the number that was mentioned: 354 grams for both. That’s 12.5 oz.
====================
grant:
There is a fairly famous photo of Bob Dylan.
There’s another interpretation, that I wear them to ‘guard’ my faith; that is, to reinforce and secure my memory of the text. I know this might sound a little forced, compared to the other interpretations, but I have a feeling it might be more correct. Because the Jewish concept is to focus on the text, and the meaning of the text, rather than the scroll as an object (although the physical object is indeed treated with great care).
There’s a special apparatus for this. It’s called a Drugloo.
This is already true (that they are small enough to be easily x-rayed separately).
====================
yankev:
Good point. On the other hand, what appear to be real tefillin are for sale on eBay.
January 22, 2010, 1:46 pmYankev says:
That’s called ambiguity. Deliberate use of it in an attempt at humor is sometimes called a play on words, or simply a pun.
January 22, 2010, 1:49 pmYankev says:
Or any Jewish bookstore. And Arabs in Israel have been known to steal them and use them as part of a disguise when attmepting to kidnap Jewish hitchhikers.
January 22, 2010, 1:56 pmKen Braithwaite says:
I’m an english speaker and I know what a phylactery is. And I have used the word. But opportunities are few and far between.
January 22, 2010, 3:15 pmMilhouse says:
Yankev wrote:
That would come as a surprise to the editors of the Talmud, which itself uses “pharisee” in exactly the same sense (Sotah 22b). As that passage explains, there are pharisees and pharisees (and several more), and most who give themselves that lofty title are fakers and hypocrites. So yes, while a genuine pharisee was a fine thing to be, when Jesus lashed out at them he may well have had in mind that braita or some ancestor of it.
January 22, 2010, 4:35 pmMilhouse says:
Yankev:
Archaeological evidence shows that the tefillin usually worn at that time were small. Bear in mind that in those days it was common to wear them all day, not just during morning prayers. My tefillin are 4 cm cubes, and I find it difficult to keep them in position for the half-hour or so of the morning prayers; I can’t imagine doing so all day, especially while doing manual labour. Small tefillin are much more practical for such a use, so it’s not surprising that most people used them.
Large tefillin, as you say, would have indicated special care and devotion to the commandment, which might be genuine and laudable, but might equally be for show. Matthew is accusing these pharisees of putting on a great show of piety, by wearing outsized tefillin and extra-long tzitzis, while not carrying a matching piety in their hearts. In other words he was accusing them of יוהרא and of not being תוכו כברו, traits that the Talmud laments as all too common then as now.
January 22, 2010, 5:00 pmOren says:
Always good to see the Judaism Police out in force, ready to ridicule their coreligionists (and everyone else!) and even the mere suggestion that someone might see things differently.
January 22, 2010, 7:30 pmYankev says:
I have not learned Sotah, but taking a quick look at an English translation, it appears the gemorah is Ot’s discussing what is meant by the term “plague of pharisees”, esp. given the concluding statement in the sugyah “King Jannai11 said to his wife’, ‘Fear not the Pharisees and the non-Pharisees but the hypocrites who ape the Pharisees.”
January 24, 2010, 11:12 amYankev says:
Oren, tefillin are objects prescribed by the Torah and must meet certain requirements, and despite the best of intentions, cannot be created without following those requirement, any more than l’havdil someone who wants to create an S corporation cannot create one without following the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code, IRS regulations, and the laws of the state of incorporation. You have said in past threads that you do not recognize the written or oral Torah as coming from G-d, but for anyone who considers Torah every bit as real (if not moreso) as the Internal Revenue Code, the analogy is obvious. If someone tells me that the Internal Revenue Code is non-binding and income taxes are voluntary, I would not go to him for advice about tax shelters and would not let him structure one for me, no matter how familiar he was with the tax code — especially if he had a history of ridiculing those who think that the tax laws matter.
January 24, 2010, 11:24 amOren says:
Absolutely, no disagreement there. My dispute is only that you presume to place yourself in a position of judgment with respect to how and when those requirements are met.
If two Jews earnestly read the same commandment and differ on what it means, it falls only on God to judge them. For an earthly body to assume this authority strikes me as arrogance just short of blasphemy. I see no justification for anyone to speak for God.
(Of course, insofar as earthly bodies recognize that their interpretation of the commandments does not speak for God, they are doing His work. The act of interpretation is itself a mitvzah so long as one does arrogate the authority of God onto oneself.)
And how am I to react to someone not affiliated with the IRS that presumes to sit as a Tax Judge and issues ‘rulings’ about what it means? Am I bound to accept his interpretations? The IRS code was created by the Federal gov’t and it is only for the Federal Gov’t to judge our compliance. The Law of Moses was created by God and it is only for Him to judge our compliance.
If this is what you think my argument is then either I am exceedingly poor at writing or you are intentionally misreading what I’ve said.
My assertion is not that Jewish Law is not binding or voluntary, only that there is exists no earthly body with the authority to definitively interpret it. A Jew must follow Jewish Law, that much is for certain, what is disputed is where the authority to interpret that Law is. You claim a variety of earthly bodies as being the final arbiters of the meaning of that Law, I claim that the judgment of those bodies is simply not final.
Once again, I do not disparage those sources. A Jew has every duty to read and understand what they wrote as an important exegesis of Jewish Law. It is a far cry, however, from saying that the Shulchan Aruch (for instance) is important or even indispensable to saying that is a final and indisputable authority.
Finally, I want to comment that rhetorically (whether this is intentional or not), it is disappointing to see you assert that if I do not believe that the SA (again, e.g.) is indisputable I must therefore believe that it is worthless or meaningless. This is the fallacy of the excluded middle — asserting that either I accept it in toto or I must reject it in toto. I believe that the SA is quite important, very worthy and, in fact, indispensable — those beliefs do not logically require me to accept that it is indisputably correct in its entirety. There is also a shade of falsum in uno, falsum in omnibus thinking that if I reject one particular conclusion I must therefore believe the entire thing unreliable.
[ This is a lot of words for a rather simple point. [
January 24, 2010, 1:25 pmYankev says:
Wrong. They are not my standards. They are the Shulchan Aruch’s standards. I am not so conceited as to think that I get to set the standards or that I can issue waivers from them.
January 24, 2010, 5:30 pmYankev says:
If a commenter described people who were purporting to set up S corporations with 900 shareholders and without making a shareholder election and another commenter pointed out that there are limits on the number of shareholder and that there are filing requirements to be met, I doubt that you would accuse the second commenter of trying to act as a tax court judge, or use the same condescendion and disparagement that you aimed at me.
January 24, 2010, 5:39 pmA Jew must follow Jewish Law, that much is for certain, what is disputed is where the authority to interpret that Law is. You claim a variety of earthly bodies as being the final arbiters of the meaning of that Law, I claim that the judgment of those bodies is simply not final.
Yankev says:
There’s my old habit of clicking submit instead of quote.
The written and oral Torah are both very clear that the authority rests with the sages of each generation. That’s understood by the sages of the oral Torah to mean the rabbis of each generation.
There is a common red herring that one sometimes hears that there are other valid opinions that predate the SA and do not appear in the SA, and that Torah was not frozen with the writing of the SA. That’s certainly true, as far as it goes, but largely irrelevant here. Do you purport to have legitimate authority that tefillin can be written by a non-Jew, a katan, or a woman? Or that the forms of the letters can be disregarded? Or that proper klaf, ink and pen are not required, or that they can written out of order? Where in the gemorah do you purport to find such authority? Can you point me to any legitimate authority who disagrees with the SA on these issues?
I’m not claiming to judge women or non-Jews who who think they make tefillin. Or people who think they can select whatever verses they find meaningful to put in them, or can write them any way they choose. I am sure they are well meaning. I am making the observation that they appear to be either profoundly uninformed or unconcerned about Jewish law. And that what they are making is not tefillin. For you to say that I am being judgmental by forming such an opinion is, if you will forgive me, silly.
January 24, 2010, 5:53 pmOren says:
Self-appointed sages, no doubt.
It’s odd that you ask me to point to an authority when I thought I was clear I recognize no legitimate authority capable of rendering final judgment (as opposed to persuasive interpretation) on these matters. You ask me to substitute one middleman for another as if my problem was with the particulars of the interpretation.
Maybe I’ll answer a question with a question: do you believe that God will judge worthless the mitzvah of a Jew who wears t’fillin with a smudge or a minor transposition of letters?
Or perhaps, having been informed and quite concerned, they have simply come to a different interpretation of the requirement.
Your words betray you — you have judged their actions to be in noncompliance with Jewish Law as if you had the authority to declare objectively what is and is not t’fillin.
You have no represented your position as an opinion, you have represented it as being fact. You have stated that an object that does not conform to your particular opinion on what Jewish Law requires is objectively not a t’fillin (again, as if you were the Judaism Police set on a mission to judge their compliance with the Law).
January 24, 2010, 10:35 pmBill Stewart in Silicon Valley says:
When I get on an airplane, I occasionally take a black object out of my bag and strap it to my arm and attach wires from it to things you can’t see well under my hair, but it’s an iPod so nobody freaks out, because they’ve seen them before. I’m surprised a flight attendant who goes to LaGuardia hasn’t seen enough Orthodox Jews to recognize pretty much all the variants on traditional clothing and accessories.
Back in the early 90s, after the Lockerbie bombings, there were a few years that the airport safety inspectors wanted people carrying laptops to turn them on to demonstrate that they weren’t crudely constructed bombs. (Obviously it didn’t do anything to demonstrate that they weren’t well-constructed bombs, and engineers would have been too willing to explain that to Feds if we were pushed, but fortunately most of us had more sense.) They eventually stopped doing that when laptops became a universally carried business tool, but I do remember once being asked at San Jose Airport whether I was carrying a laptop, and having to restrain myself from saying “Am I at the wrong airport? I think this is San Jose, and *everybody* there has a laptop, that’s what we *do* here.”
January 25, 2010, 2:52 amsilverpie says:
According to Blue Letter Bible, the Textus Receptus also has it as φυλακτήρια (filaktéria).
January 25, 2010, 9:49 amYankev says:
No,
I have formed an opinion — an informed opinion — based on a review, albeit cursory, of the recognized authorities who are unanimous on the subject. Given your anti-nomian perspective, you have judged my actions as being judgmental.
Now I will form a judgment — you are engaged in a juvenile exercise in name calling.
I have no idea how He would judge that. As a human being, I can only know as much of His thought as he revealed to us through the gift of His Torah. But that Torah is pretty explicit that we do not have the privilege of making it up as we go along, or that anything is okay a long as we deem it “meaningful” to us. It is also clear that on matters of Torah we are expected both to do our best to study and understand, AND to defer to the judgment of the recognized authorities — whose authority you do not recognize.
If you think that I am putting myself on their level by reporting their conclusions, then West Publishing Company is l’havdil putting itself on the level of the US Supreme Court, or that a liquor distiller is practicing medicine by printing the Surgeon General’s warning on its labels. But you have already said that you also do not recognize the authority of the Mechabair, the poskim, and presumably the tannaim and amoraim. Presumably you consider them — whose position I am merely summarizing — as self appointed.
January 25, 2010, 4:34 pmOren says:
When you use the phrase “recognized authorities”, I assume you mean “authorities recognized as binding by me”. I am disinclined, however, to let slide the rhetorical trick here wherein you want to assert that because I do not recognize them as inerrant, I must therefore not recognize them at all.
I recognize their interpretive value, I just don’t take “defer” to mean “accept”. I do defer to the sages except where, after due analysis, I believe they have erred. Their words are due no less and no more.
You are right about one thing, my use of the phrase ‘self-appointed’ was hasty and incorrect. None of the sages (that I have read) had the chutzpah to claim that his words were inerrant or that future generations must accept them in order to fulfill the requirements of His Law. It is only much later that they have been appointed to a position of infallibility.
One that, incidentally, does not prescribe a form for the letters to be written ( at least not in my copy of Deut. Ch11 ). The requirements for a particular form comes from the sages, and as such is due deference, not obedience.
I try to presume a level of intellectual sincerity in others. If you think that those that disagree with you believe that “whatever I do is OK because I think it’s OK”, that’s disappointing.
There has not been a Supreme Court of Judaism for well over 1500 years (the Sanhedrin last met in the 4th century CE IIRC). One misrepresents the facts, therefore, when one cites as binding the subsequent developments or represents them as decisions as opposed to opinions and interpretation.
Finally, it’s no insult that I intend, incidentally, nor do I consider this juvenile — it is a concern of the utmost order when presenting Judiams to the rest of the world.
January 26, 2010, 6:53 pmRon Coleman says:
That’s nice, Oren, but if anyone is still reading this thread, presumably it is because they have some interest in the issues of concerning tefillin as a matter of Judaism, as opposed to Orenism.
When I say Judaism I mean, if it is not clear, what is called “orthodox Judaism,” whose adherents are the only ones who wear tefillin six days a week (the number exceptions to this generalization being statistically insignificant.) One of the premises of that religion, which evidently distinguishes it from Orenism, is that there is no person alive today, nor has there been one for better part of the last two millennia, who may decide that his “analysis” is sufficiently “due” such as to conclude that the Sages have “erred.”
Not so!, you say:
Of course not. Assuming that you have “read” bunches of “sages,” however, you certainly would be familiar enough with talmudic literature and the ethic on which it is premised to know that every single Sage would say that the words of the Sages that preceded him are to be accepted by the Jewish people — even where expressing an opinion that is “rejected” in the Talmud — as divrei elokim chaim — “the words of the Living God.”
This reverence for the words of the Sages as well as complete deference to their halachic authority is the premise of traditional or “orthodox” Judaism. No recognized scholar says otherwise, at least regarding orthodox Judaism; again, the premises of Orenism still remain murky to any but its adherents. But if you don’t like the word “recognized,” why don’t you move the ball and tell us on whom you are relying in framing your view of the matter?
In fact, it is clear that you are discussing Orenism, and not Judaism, when you write (second sentence):
This makes it pretty clear that (i) can’t possibly have any basis for understanding what tefillin actually look like, what color they should be painted, what they are made of, and how and where you where them , (ii) more broadly, you don’t remotely comprehend the role of the Oral Law in Judaism; and (iii) more significantly, you should be the last one to arrogate to yourself to role of who will decide what is “of the utmost order when presenting Judaism to the rest of the world.”
But keep it up with the Orenism. I am sure it will catch on.
January 26, 2010, 9:19 pmOren says:
[ This post got malformed when trying to edit. See below. ]
January 27, 2010, 12:24 amOren says:
I bet I can predict the next part of this post — someone presuming to dictate what Judaism is. Until the Temple is rebuilt and the and you are (naturally) appointed the Av Beit Din of the newly-reconvened Sanhedrin, however, you might consider tempering your words to match your authority.
One of the uneviable facts about our current state of affairs is that questions “as a matter of Judaism” are not susceptible to such simple answers.
Karo lived in the 16th century and did quite a bit of renovation and analysis — surely you don’t mean to disparage him (or the Rambam back in the 11th either) in your zeal to denounce me. The process of understanding and expanding our knowledge of God did not stop 2000 years ago, 1000 years ago or 100 years ago. God willing, it will continue forever.
[ Of course, neither Karo nor the Rambam would blaspheme to call his own book inerrant -- to do so he would have to assert that he spoke for God. I can only imagine his response if someone in his day told him he would be deified in such a fashion after his death. ]
One also wonders, of course, what it could mean to “study the Torah day and night” if one is constrained to come to a set of preordained conclusions. It would be an empty gesture, to say the least — studying without engaging the reason* that God gave us. Large portions of the Talmud are given in the form of debate — questions and answers — on the (apparently mistaken, if we are to believe you) notion that one arrives at the truth through reasoned analysis.
* Reason isn’t quite the word I’m looking for here, maybe ‘discernment’ — sechel or Da’at are good but don’t not have an exact English analogue. The relationship in Hebrew between Dat and Da’at is part of what I’m getting at here.
Accepted as persuasive guidance, surely not accepted as Divine Truth simply because a man set about to write it down at some point. This goes to the central question of whether Judaism is a religion of reasoned study and analysis or one of dogmatic rigidity.
Elohim Chaim did not disappear 2000 years ago, if you would care to listen you would hear his words uttered to this very day.
Is there a difference between “complete deference” and a belief that they are actually inerrant?
I was tempted to look through my links for a citation before I realized that you will likely not recognize as a scholar anyone with views different from your own. Thus one conveniently arrives at a point in which all “recognized scholars” agree with you.
I see some progress though, instead of speaking for Judaism you are now speaking only for Orthodox Judaism. Aside from your epistemological claims with which I disagree (but of course, neither I nor anyone else is a position to tell you what to to believe), I would be satisfied to leave it there. I have no quarrel with anyone explaining things “as a matter of Orthodox Judaism” since that clearly specifies by what earthly authority (roughly speaking) the claim is made.
I have no problem with the word, so long as you clearly identify who is doing to the recognizing. As to my view on the matter, one ought to ‘recognize’ and understand the indispensable wisdom of all of those that came before us and follow in their example of scholarly study. A devotion to scholarly study seems to me fundamentally incompatible with the kind of unquestioning deference that you have posited — it requires (again, seems to me) an active willingness to debate and disagree — to form opinion by reasoned persuasion.
Or perhaps the commandment is fulfilled irrespective of such details. A brown box is just as satisfactory as a black box for the purposes of “bind[ing] [these words] for a sign upon your hand, that [these words] may be as totafot between your eyes.”
The Oral Law can neither add nor subtract from the requirements of the Written Law — it’s quite clear on that score (Deut 4:2).
The Oral Law can certainly provide guidance on how to fulfill the commandment to wear t’fillin but it cannot add a requirement (vis the color of the box, the form of the letters or the klaf on which it is written) to the Law itself.
Indeed. On that we agree — I’m only one voice and Judaism is manifold.
January 27, 2010, 2:06 amTitus says:
Just for anecdotal purposes, I (life-long Catholic) knew more or less what the instrument in question is, and know the word “phylactery,” but never can remember the word teffilin. My impression is that outside northern urban areas, the number of people on the street who would know either word is about nill.
January 27, 2010, 10:30 amOren says:
I’ve been debating for the better part of the day how to respond to this particular invective. It nags me because I’m not sure why you would call attention to the fact that most Jews have, in fact, accepted that we can issue Takkanot to the Halacha where appropriate. The USCJ and CCAR have both adopted the main premise of “Orenism”, to wit that the sages are to be revered but not as inerrant.
In fact, the UCJ and the CCAR account for more than 2/3rds (and maybe 3/4ths) of Jews. Now, principles of faith are not up for popular vote — everyone must decide for himself what to believe — so this hardly proves me right. What is does strongly suggest, however, is that either your scorn for my beliefs is misplaced or so widely cast that I can scarcely believe it.
January 27, 2010, 8:09 pm