TEFILLIN; OUR GPS THROUGH HISTORY
In this week’s Parsha, Bo, the ten plagues are completed and Pharoah relinquished his grip on HaShem’s people. HaShem gave us the mitzvah of Korban Pesach and Bris Milah on whose merits we became worthy to leave Egypt. We were ready to begin our anticipated journey to receive His Torah and become His chosen people. However, before the story continues Ha-Shem breaks to give us the mitzvah of wearing tefillin. What is the immediate relevance of tefillin that it warrants to be introduced before our journey begins?
Our Sages teach us that the purpose of creation was for this material world to be filled with the Presence of HaShem. The responsibility of accomplishing this is the mission of our people. In other words, HaShem created a nation for Himself which He placed on the map of history and directed them to travel through every page of history. On every page they travel they are to carry their testimony that HaShem created the world and continues to main-tain it on a daily basis. By so doing, the world will eventually come to the ultimate recognition and awareness of HaShem.
How was this multi-millenia plan going to work?
Before launching His people, HaShem revealed His absolute Omnipotence to His people. They experienced it first-hand so that they could then testify to the world what they saw and experienced. This was accomplished with the Ten Plagues as well as the splitting of the Red Sea.
There was another detail that had to be addressed if the plan was to work. HaShem had to create a mechanism by which this nation would be able to retain that revelation. Although every member of our people experienced His revelation first-hand, how were they to transmit it to their descendants whom they would never see? The natural so-lution to this concern would be that every member of our people would tell their children and instruct them to tell their children and let the story continue being told until it reaches the last generation. However, given the journey that we were going to travel it would not last.
Even as we think of our most recent history we see how strong winds of change constantly blow across these pages and how hard it is for one generation to hold on to the values and principles of their preceding generation. To re-solve this concern HaShem gave us the mitzvah of tefillin. As mentioned in Rabbi Weiner’s Mitzvah Dilemma, the tefillin are endowed with a sanctity that when one dons them in the proper manner he draws down an influence from Above which fortifies him and protects him from the prevailing winds of change that threaten him.
Before our journey to Sinai continues, we must have the mitzvah of tefillin. It is through this mitzvah that we will be able to maintain the integrity of our transmission to future generations of the revelations we witnessed in Egypt. The tefillin are the vehicles that take us on our passage through history without losing our mission. They provide our people with Genuine Passage Security.
Have a wonderful Shabbos.
Paysach Diskind