Orthodox Flap Rages Over Tefillin Straps
Several recent rabbinic rulings that have invalidated certain kinds of tefillin straps as unfit for use are causing an uproar in the Orthodox community.
A number of rabbis in Jerusalem, Chicago, Brooklyn and Lakewood, N.J., have issued rulings prohibiting the use of tefillin straps (retzuot in Hebrew) that peel, and so-called leatherboard straps, according to Yeshiva World News. One community newspaper in New York, the Five Towns Jewish Times, reportedly has been paying for laboratory tests to determine whether newly manufactured straps – which according to Jewish law must be leather and painted black – contain any laminates or other foreign materials.
The straps at issue are relatively recent innovations and have been on the market only in the past year and a half or so, according to the reports.
At issue with the peelable straps is whether the black peel is made of dye and is part of the strap, or whether it is a fabricated laminate. Some rabbis have ruled that the peelable straps are kosher, the Orthodox website Vos Iz Neias reported.
At issue with the leatherboard straps is whether the material used in the strap was made expressly for use in tefillin, or phylacteries.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
