Tephillin are a set of two leather boxes filled with parchments on which a scribe has written specific verses from the Torah, then attached the boxes to leather straps, each knotted so that one can go around your head and one around your weaker [non-dominant] arm. It is quite complex to make Tephillin, and one is best served by buying good quality ones made by a scribe.
I didn't spend a penny on my last trip to Canada and so I noted that on the customs form. The smiling agent stamps a big red word "Extest" onto my form and sends me around the corner where all the people with large suspicious boxes go. Ugh. A zillion overseas trips and today, winging my way back to my beloved, to get stuck in bureaucracy.
As a child of maybe seven, while exploring the basement of our suburban home, I found a curious item, a velvet bag containing little boxes with long black leather straps attached to them. Hauling them upstairs I asked my father if I could use the straps for a craft project.
Provides the tools and understanding necessary to create a conscious Bar/Bat Mitzvah experience infused with spirituality and meaning. The original purpose of this important rite of passage is carefully reclaimed: Ensuring a healthy Jewish lens for living is conveyed to each student; a lens that supports love of life and respect for life.
