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Parshat Bo
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron

בס"ד

לשכנו תדרשו

Cleaving to the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land

"והיה לאות על ידך ולזכרון בין עיניך"

"Blessed are You HaShem our God King of the Universe Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to put on tefilin."

According to our Sages, Tefilin put on in the Diaspora is meant to serve a type of reminder for their fuller observance in the Holy Land. So they say in the Sifri to explain the juxtaposition of the commandment on tefilin to the verse talking about Exile in the 2nd portion of Shema found in the book of Dvarim. The Sages also base this concept on a verse from the Prophets: "make yourself reminders/omens". Interestingly, the word for reminders/omens in the Prophets is 'tziunim', which startlingly resembles the word 'Zion', as if to say, 'when you put on these omens of tefilin remember that the ultimate goal is commit this mitzvah in the Holy Land.' However, according to the Arizal this message is even deeper.

On the verse in the Song of Songs 'put me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm' the Arizal interprets to refer to the tefilin put on the arm, meant to 'tie' so-to-speak the Holy Presence to the man who wears them. According to the teachings of the Arizal this Holy Presence runs parallel to the Holy Presence of the Land, which explains beautifully why 'Zion' takes such an important place in this mitzvah. This and more. In the past we have paralleled (also according to the Arizal) Zion and Hebron to the Holy Presence related to Rachel and Jerusalem to the Holy Presence related to Leah (of course different spiritual manifestations of the One God). The Arizal also explains that tefilin of the arm correspond to 'Rachel', while tefilin of the head correspond to 'Leah'.

Following this parallelism we come to the conclusion that tefilin of the arm correspond to Hebron and Zion while tefilin of the head correspond to Jerusalem. This is the source of what we have stated in the past that Hebron corresponds to the heart center, just as the verse says 'put me as a seal upon your heart as a seal upon your arm' (this analogy is also based on the Arizal), and also halacha mandates that the tefilin be put directly opposite the heart on the left arm. Only after the tefilin of the arm are fastened then can one place the tefilin of the head, which corresponds to Jerusalem, the 'brain-center' of the Holy Land, as we noted in the past.

This remarkably explains why all the Patriarchs and David first developed Hebron before proceeding to Jerusalem. This is Hebron, bought by 'Avraham my lover (lover of God)', to continue the verse "as a seal upon your arm - For love is strong as death the flashes thereof are flashes of fire, the very flame of God."   This is Hebron, the original tie to the Holy Presence in the Holy Land, pumping its vitality to the consciousness of Jerusalem, to the Holy Temple. 

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Real Stories from the Holy Land #152

"I parked my car at the garage for a few days to be repaired, so from then on I started to hitchhike. Just about 10 minutes later, several kilometers away, the garage repair-man 'happened' to give me a ride just to where I needed, for the first time in my life (he did not notice at first that I had just talked to him on the phone 10 minutes before)."

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