Safrut, Egalitarianism, and Community

By Jen Talyor Friedman

I write tefillin.

This means that most mornings, I sit down with a long thin strip of parchment, and a quill pen cut very narrow, and I write the texts of tefillin in teeny-tiny letters. When they’re done, I roll the strips up and make them into little packages with lengths of calf hair and narrow parchment ribbons, and set them into the tefillin housings, which I buy from Israel. I sew them closed, sand and paint the join. I attach retzuot and send them off to their new owner.

Image of tefillin via Jen's Etsy shop

Learning to write tefillin takes a long time. It’s not the complex rules of writing, although that takes a long time to master. It’s not even the calligraphy, really, although good calligraphy helps. What takes the time is learning to do calligraphy according to a complex set of rules on a miniature scale. I’d written four complete Torah scrolls before I felt like a good enough calligrapher to start doing tefillin.

Learning to write tefillin also isn’t easy when you’re a woman. Traditionally, women have not been allowed to be scribes, and there are not so many teachers who are willing to teach women. As it happens, I’m the first woman since the advent of egalitarian Judaism to have written a Torah scroll (or four). I happened onto the scene just as yeshiva learning was becoming more accessible to women, and when you combine yeshiva learning with calligraphy, you can get the sacred scrolls. I still had to teach myself most of the details of the scribe’s craft, but I was lucky to have access to a few broad-minded teachers, who helped me just enough.

Why have women not been allowed to be scribes? “Those who don’t lay may not write,” says the Talmud (Gittin 45b). Those who are not commanded to lay tefillin are not permitted to write any of the sacred scrolls—not tefillin, not mezuzot, and not Torah scrolls—and women, in the classical view, are not commanded to lay tefillin.

So women aren’t allowed to participate in the constant rebirth and transmission of our sacred texts. The Talmud says that writing a Torah is an experience equivalent to receiving it yourself like Moses on Sinai. Women aren’t allowed to have that experience. Even though women are required to have mezuzot on their doors, they aren’t allowed to write those mezuzot. And they certainly may not write tefillin. This is the classical view.

At the time I became interested in writing sacred scrolls, I was on the fringe of Modern Orthodoxy, which takes gender barriers seriously. You can’t be a Modern Orthodox woman and write Torah scrolls. I struggled for a while, but ultimately I realized that I simply didn’t want to be part of a world which is okay with that. I tried telling myself that I didn’t really mind; I tried convincing Orthodox communities that it was time to change that rule, and I found peace when I quit trying and became part of an egalitarian Conservative community, which took as axiomatic the equal rights and obligations of men and women within the framework of Jewish ritual.

So now I live in a world which sees me as an equal citizen, and my job in that world is the creation and repair of sacred scrolls.

This I like very much. I no longer bother trying to justify myself to people who insist that “Women have no obligation in tefillin” or “Why don’t you do all the women’s mitzvot perfectly before you start doing men’s mitzvot” or all the other things people say. It’s like I don’t bother trying to justify political ideas to people whose politics are radically different to mine. Life became much simpler and more enjoyable when I decided to make communities with people who share my outlook, rather than trying to convince everyone around me to change theirs.

Some readers here aren’t yet able to do that. The trick then, I find, is to not engage with people who are only interested in telling you that you’re doing it wrong. Politely assure them that you’re not interested in making them change their practice, and ask that they extend the same courtesy to you. Repeat as necessary. Have interesting discussions with interesting people, by all means, but don’t bother with the people who want to make you stop doing your thing.

The hard thing for me at the moment is connecting with women who are still in an Orthodox framework, but who want me to write them tefillin. There is no way for an Orthodox person, male or female, to have kosher tefillin written by women. It’s not like Kiddush or tallit or Kabbalat Shabbat or Torah reading, where it’s mostly about custom and a flexible reading of the halakha lets women in. There really is no way to justify women writing sacred scrolls in an Orthodox framework. So I can’t write tefillin for Orthodox women, in good conscience, because I’m not about making people stop being Orthodox. 

It’s hard because as a female tefillin scribe, many of my clients are women, who feel particularly drawn to the idea of having a woman create their tefillin. Most of them are first-generation tefillin-wearers, making their own space in a men’s ritual. For some of them, tefillin written by a woman are a kind of support, a reminder that they aren’t alone.

I also sometimes talk with women who feel odd wearing ordinary tefillin because it feels like wearing a man’s garment—after all, the person who wrote it almost certainly had no idea a woman was going to be wearing it. Some women feel better if they know their tefillin have been written with women in mind. I can’t give that support and reassurance to Orthodox women, and that’s a pity.

As a female tefillin scribe, I’m also exploring the possibility of giving a more feminine feel to the straps. I have heard of leather-stamping being used to beautify tefillin in Italy, several hundred years ago, and it does not make the straps non-kosher provided they remain black, so why not have a pattern of flowers, or leaves, or anything at all, stamped into the straps? In addition, the insides of the straps can be any colour apart from red; I’m learning how to dye leather so that I can make tefillin with straps which are black on the outside and fun colours on the inside. Some women will find this idea completely repellent, and some will love it. That’s okay. There’s plenty of room for us all.

 
Jen Taylor Friedman is an egalitarian feminist Jewish ritual scribe and scholar. She is notorious for having created Tefillin Barbie, and notable for being the first woman in modern times known to have written a sefer Torah. She has written four Torah scrolls and her students have written several more. She lives in Montreal, writes tefillin, mezuzot, and ketubot, and teaches aspiring scribes all over the world. Her website is at www.HaSoferet.com.