Am ha-Aretz / עם הארץ

More fun with tefillin [ Critique ]

Yisroel Markov writes about the confusion among Rabbinical thinkers on the laws of making tefillin. Here are some of my thoughts:

Tefillin is not mentioned or commanded anywhere in the Torah. Both the commandment to put on tefillin, and all the laws regarding it, come from the Oral Torah (or, more accurately, from the Rabbis, since the Rabbis insist that the actual commandment to put it on is in the Torah, not the Oral Torah).

There are two issues here. The first issue is that Rabbis are creating Divine-like laws, which is forbidden. Actually, they are creating Divine law, by claiming that tefillin is in the Written Torah, which, I suppose, is even more forbidden. But it is the second issue, the laughable issue that struck me as I was reading Markov's post is this. The Oral Torah is supposed to provide more clarity. That is one of the cornerstones of its defence: it is impossible to understand the text of the Tanakh, therefore, there must be an Oral Torah to clarify it. Yet, with these contradicting tefillin laws, we see that the Oral Torah clarifies nothing, but only creates confusion where there was none! Truly, there is good job security for the Rabbis in making things much more complicated than they really are.

Yisroel Markov:

So there I was learning SU HaRAV, hilkhot tefillin, with my friend the accidental rabbi, and we come to the section on how to write the parshiot in the hand tefila (where they're all on the same piece of parchment). Turns out there's a makhloket between Rambam and Rosh on how to write a stuma (closed) parsha - what one calls stuma the other call p'tukha, and vice versa.

So the Alter Rebbe mentions that "in case of doubt, soferim follow Rambam" and then says: "but around here we do not." And then my friend informs me that the actual practice today is to write in yet a third way, which apparently is not codified anywhere!

Is this wild or what? And some say we are too bound to the Shulkhan Arukh...