This was an easy idea to come up with, but became harder to justify. Our initial idea seemed appealing on a very deep level to both of us—that a person becomes whole through donning tefillin. The image of a person literally tying himself together was very natural. The problem comes because we couldn’t find a direct quote to encapsulate our feelings. All the sources we found emphasized the idea that tefillin bind our hearts and our minds to G‑d in one fell swoop, and here our vignette fell short. We didn’t really have a visual connection to G‑d anywhere, or to hearts.

These are the kinds of things that bother us.

But then, when you look at it all together, it make sense. We’re not sure how, but somehow, on a whole, it all kind of works out. It’s already cliché to say we all kind of feel like we’re walking around without our heads sometimes, but we rarely ever feel like we’re walking around without our limbs. And yet, we are all in a sense constrained when we go about our daily lives without attachment. Our actions are always there in front of us, but how many times can we say they’re bound in with who we are? When I’m making an egg or texting someone, they could just as well be tools, detachable parts to put away later. A hand is a hand until it reminds us of our hearts, and even a head is only a head unless it searches for greater meaning. So when you do this thing—when you tie reminders to your hands and set them between your eyes—your hands aren’t just hands, floating out in front of you; they become signs of your connection to G‑d. And that, almost incidentally, is how they make us whole.

DovBer