Few items from the Jewish world are as symbolic, identifiable and ancient as tefillin.
Tefillin are at the center of countless Jewish stories, appear in timeless images from better days alongside dark times, and have been used over the years in the artistic world as well, sometimes as inspiration and sometimes as an item used for provocations. The first tefillin laying ceremony at the Western Wall, including among many who will not put on tefillin regularly, is also a well-known event in Israeli culture.
Recently something has been going on about the attitude towards tefillin. Something familiar, popping up in increasing cases, reflects a level of almost primordial fear of the Jewish prayer item.
The most recent incident symbolizing this element of fear took place in Tel Aviv, where a passerby photographed two minors who voluntarily placed tefillin at one of the Chabad stands, and explained to the embarrassed boys that they did not have to do so, while referring in a dismissive and degrading manner to a Chabad follower standing at the stand.
A few days earlier, a tweeter who presents himself as an activist for a more enlightened Israel boasted about how he managed to motivate citizens to report on tefillin stands set up in various cities. The operation, according to the tweeter, yielded a handsome output of no less than 43 cases of detection, reporting and complaints about the terrible hazard in nine different cities across the country, most of them characterized by a secular majority.
Another notable incident occurred on Election Day, when a Meretz party activist snatched tefillin from their husbands and attached them to his private parts. The footage of the degradation of the sacred object went viral. Meretz tried to deny in vain that he was a supporter of the party, and the video helped motivate shocked voters who moved in the name of tefillin to the polls.
The quarrel over the legal reform was also rooted in tefillin. Last week, a poster was circulated with a picture of Education Minister Yoav Kish, a strictly secular man, and the warning that if the grounds for reasonableness were reduced, Kish would force all Israeli students to forcibly put on tefillin. Shikma Bressler, one of the leaders of the protest, circulated the absurd and eccentric poster, calling the Education Minister's malicious Jewish intention "the government of Sodom."
It is difficult to understand what motivates the fear of a pair of tefillin, it is difficult to get to its roots. Even among people whose tefillin is not something that is constantly present in their lives, and among those who are not particularly fond of the tefillin stands on the streets of the Jewish state, until recently there were no deep fears and demons in the face of a Jew who chooses to put them on.
But reality proves that both individuals and in a more institutionalized way, such as among the leaders of the protests, tefillin have become a symbol worth fighting, which is supposed to cause people to look at the tefillin and murmur to themselves that if their stay in the public sphere expands, and if more and more people use them, the end will come to us and the State of Israel will deteriorate to depths of darkness and primitiveness.
In the consciousness of the tefillin terrorists, the old world of Judaism must be razed to the ground, with all its customs and symbols. The first goal on the way to building a new world passes through the station of negating tefillin and spreading fear and aversion to them.
The good news is that there have been many throughout history who have tried to follow this path, and all have failed; The bad news is that such an attempt has never come from within the Jewish people.
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