I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for coming and sharing in my simcha. I want to especially thank Rabbi Teitz . . . Rabbi Eliyahu Teitz and Rabbi Yablonsky, my Rebbes this year at JEC, Rabbi Bomrind, my grandmother, my parents and my friends for being the greatest.

Birshus Rabbi Blau, Rabbi Teitz, my other rebbeim and teachers, birshus avi mori today I would like to speak about tefillin.

There are many laws about how tefilin must be made. You need particular quotes from the Torah. They need to be written on special parchment, in a special way. And then they have to be put in special boxes, and tied to the person in a special way.

But you can’t just take a Torah, and tie it to your arm with leather watchbands. That would be like playing a CD on a record player! It just won’t work.

What do we mean by tefillin that work and don’t work? What is it that happens when I put tefilin on? And the main question: What are tefilin?

Rav Elya Lopian once saw someone holding a small transistor radio. When he heard the sound from it, he was amazed, and asked "Can it really work without being plugged in to the wall?" When they told him yes, he asked "But I’m sure that if even one tiny wire inside got disconnected, then it would stop working for sure, right?" And they told him that he was indeed correct.

So then he said, "Well then, if all this is true, then why is it so hard to believe that I can put a small box over here... (Point to the spot on your head.) and it will pick up a transmission of holiness from above, and without any visible connection to the Broadcaster? And it all works because of what is inside. Namely, those quotes from the Torah which were written in holiness and purity.

And if even one letter is written incorrectly, the whole thing stops working. And then this special holiness which G-d broadcasts, will not be picked up by (Point to your head) this receiver. Is that really so hard to believe?" (Lev Eliyahu, Hebrew edition page 38)

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (pg 264) continues this comparison even further. To really understand how a transistor radio works you need a lot of education in math and science. But even a young child, he says, knows how to turn it on, make it loud, and find a favorite station.

The same goes for tefillin. After a lifetime of study, you might start to understand why each letter must be written exactly this way and that way. But anyone can put them on, and receive the signal.

My grandpa Sandy, , ran a store where he sold and fixed car radios. He was a man who really understood all sorts of electronic gadgets. He knew what makes a radio work, and how it picks up the radio waves from the air, and changes them into music.

Sometimes a customer would come in, someone who did not understand radios, and would ask, "What’s the difference between this $50 radio, and this $100 radio?" After all, they had pretty much the same features - a volume control, a tuner... Some had stereo and some didn’t, but basically they were all the same. It was a very tough question. He usually told the customer that the more expensive one had better "quality", but not every customer could understand what that meant.

Most people understand that even a $20 radio is fine for news and talk shows, but you need something better to get really good music. And the difference between a $50 radio and a $100 radio is like the difference between a 5-piece band and a 50-piece orchestra. Do they both play music? Yes. So what’s the difference?

Well, if you can’t tell the difference by listening, I certainly can’t explain it to you. Only after you train your ear for musical quality will you be able to appreciate the difference between a radio which works, and a radio which works well.

It is the same way with tefillin. What’s the difference between a $200 pair of tefillin, and a pair which cost $500 or $5000? My Grandpa Sandy might say that the difference is in the quality. And then he might say that unless you have trained yourself to feel the holiness -- the way a musician has trained his ear to hear the music -- then it will be very hard to feel the difference between one pair of tefillin and another.

I would like to share with you some of the things I have learned about tefillin. Many Bar Mitzva boys tell us about the message of tefillin, that the tefillin remind us about this or that. I am going to talk about what the tefillin do and how they work. And then, maybe, we might start to understand the difference between good tefillin and great tefillin.

A radio has a power source, and it takes the radio waves from the air, converts them into electrical signals, and send them to the speakers, where they become sounds. Tefillin also have a power source, which lets them take the holiness of heaven, and puts it into the person wearing them. Let’s look at some of the different parts of a pair of tefillin, and see how they work, and what they do.

Like a radio, tefillin has many components. And like a radio, most of the components are so important that the tefillin will not work without them. But still, if we had to point to one part and call it the most important, it would have to be the parshios, the four short quotes from the Torah which are written on parchment with special ink, which are inside the tefillin.

The head tefillin is divided into four sections, and each quote is written on a separate piece of parchment, and kept in a separate section. The arm tefillin has only one section, and those same four paragraphs from the Torah are written together on a single piece of parchment, and kept together in that single section.

When we read those four quotes, we will start to understand the message which the Torah is teaching us about our purpose in this world, and how that purpose relates to our past, our present, and our future.

The first of the four quotes describes tefillin very differently than the other three. It tell us why the tefillin are worn. Namely, "so that you will speak Hashem’s Torah". This is the idea of the first parsha, to give us our purpose as Jews. (Inside, p33)

It begins with the importance of holiness, and the mitzva to treat the firstborn as holy, and continues with the mitzva of telling the story of the Exodus at the seder. Tell the story to your child on that day, saying, "Because of this, Hashem acted for me when I left Egypt."

And Rashi explains, What do we mean by "Because of this"? It means that the Exodus was because of the mitzvos! In other words, "Because of matza and maror, that is why Hashem took me out of Egypt, so that I could do these mitzvos." (Inside, p34) Our purpose as Jews is to do mitzvos, and when someone ties this parsha to his head and his arm, he brings the purpose of the world to reality. (Inside p36)

The second section seems very similar to the first. They both talk about the firstborn, entering the Holy Land, the Hagada, and tefillin. But there are important differences. For example, while the first section just said that the firstborn are holy, the second tells us what to do with that holiness, so that the holiness leaves and becomes a thing of the past.

Also, the second section has a different version of the Hagada, one which gives the details of this story from the past. (Inside, p 45-46) And it is in this section that the Torah uses an unusual spelling for the word "your arm", teaching us that tefillin go on the weaker arm of the two. (Inside, 48) The second parsha teaches me the importance of knowing my history, but when I put it on my weaker arm, I know that the past is gone, and its only value is if I learn from it.

The third section is the Shema. "These words, which I command you today, shall be in your heart." Teach them... Speak of them... Tie them... and Write them... The theme of the third section is now. These are the things which I do. (Inside 49-50) And when I put my tefillin on, I know what I am doing, and at that very moment I am together with my G-d Who has told me to do this.

And finally, what do we find in the fourth section? "If you listen to My mitzvos" then these good things will happen, but "watch yourselves", or else these bad things will result. Do these mitzvos, so that you and your children will have a good, long future.

The mitzva to teach Torah to one’s children appears in both the third and fourth sections, but with a tremendous difference. In the third section, it says "Teach your children V’dibarta bam - AND speak about it". But in the fourth, "Teach your children L’daber bam - TO speak about it".

The goal of the fourth section is to work towards the future, and when someone wears tefillin, the fourth parsha ties him to it. (Inside, p52) So, one of the many ways we can understand these four sections is in how they refer to our Purpose, our Past, our Present, and our Future.

But this does not contradict other ideas, such as how the sections represent the different books of the Torah.

The first section refers to the first book of the Torah, Genesis, Bereshis, which contains the history of both the creation of the world, and the creation of the Jews as a nation. Only by knowing our Creation can we know our Purpose.

The second section refers to the second book, the book of the Exodus, Sefer Yetzias Mitzraim, which details our past. The third section corresponds to the third book, Leviticus, Sefer Toras Kohanim, which details many of the laws which ought to be part of our daily life in the present. Fourth is the book of Numbers, Sefer Pekudim, much of which is devoted to stories of reward and punishment, in the hopes that it will put our future back on the right path.

And just like there are five books of the Torah, there are five scrolls in the tefillin. The head tefillin has all four quotes, each written on its own scroll. The fifth scroll is in the arm tefillin, and it contains all four quotes written on a single parchment scroll. This, of course, corresponds to the fifth book of the Torah, which is often called Sefer Mishneh Torah, because it can be considered as including everything of the first four books.

So in a very real way, when a person wears tefillin, he is not just wearing parts of the Torah, -- he is wearing the Torah!

Is it so surprising that someone who wears a Torah would be tuned in to receive the holiness being broadcast from heaven?

We have seen different ideas in each of the four quotes. Hashem told us to make the head tefillin with separate compartments, so that our minds can think about different things in different ways, and with different points of view all together. And then Hashem told us to put all of them together in one box on the arm tefillin, so that when the time comes for action, our arms will not be confused, but will act clearly and with a single thought and goal.

The scrolls are then put into their boxes, and then they are sewn shut. This also has to be done in a special way, or else the tefillin will not work. Twelve holes are drilled through the tefillin in a perfect square. When they are sewn closed, there will be twelve stitches, three on each of the four sides of the square.

It becomes a model of the Camp Of Israel in the desert, during the Exodus. In the center of the Jews was the Holy Ark and Tabernacle, the Aron and Mishkan, surrounded by three tribes on each side - north, east, south and west. And just as Hashem’s Presence lived in the middle of the Camp, He is also with us when we wear the tefillin. (Illus Guide, p95; Inside 259)

The head tefillin has the letter shin inscribed on it twice, one on the left side, and one on the right. There are several unusual things about these shins, the most obvious being that a normal shin looks sort of like an english "W", with three points on top. But the shin on the left side of the tefillin has four points.

The three-headed shin on the right side represents the three patriarchs Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. The four-headed shin on the left represents the four matriarchs Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah. When a person wears tefillin, the power of the fathers are on his right side, and the power of the mothers are on the left. (Illus Guide p94, from Baruch Sheamar 11)

But there is another strange thing about these shins. Normally, for a letter written in a Torah or in tefillin to be kosher, it has to be totally surrounded by white parchment. On both shins of the head tefillin, the shin is not centered, but the bottom of the shin goes all the way down and meets the base of the tefillin. Why?

Could it be so that (point to the right side of your forehead) the power of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, and (point to the left side of your forehead) the power of Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah, would be plugged in to me, so that I can tune in to all the mitzvos I do in my life, and make me be a better Jew.

Like all our mitzvos, tefillin has millions of ideas behind it, most still waiting to be discovered. I could go on and on. Instead, I would like to close by pointing out another similarity between radios and tefillin.

The music from just about any radio can usually be improved, at least a little bit, by pointing the antenna in a better direction. I think we can say the same thing about tefillin.

May Hashem help us to point our minds and hearts in a better direction, so that our tefillin will bring even more kedusha and holiness down to earth. And may we use that holiness properly and effectively, so that we will succeed in being better servants to Hashem, and in return, He will send us Moshiach Tzidkenu, bim’hera b’yamenu. Amen.