Welcome to Daily Bitachon (trust in God), a Bitachon related thought to Parashat Bo. Parashat Bo is the parasha that has in it the parashiot of the tefillin (phylacteries), two out of the four. And these are daily lessons that we're supposed to have with us. I'd like to share with you a beautiful thought that I heard last week in Eretz Yisrael, in the Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai synagogue in the Old City Jewish Quarter, given by Rabbi Medina.
And he said as follows: it's a thought based on Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). I'm not an expert in it, but the message is on a simple level. When we wear tefillin, we have our tefillin shel rosh, the head unit, and it has a leather strap that comes out of the front around the head like a crown. And then it has a knot on the back, at the nape of one's neck. And there are two straps that come out over into the front, one hanging over the right and one hanging over the left. The one hanging over the right is longer and the one hanging over the left is shorter, at least in the Sephardic communities. I don't know if that's that way in all communities. That's based on the Arizal. So why is one longer and one shorter?
Because the right side symbolizes God's midat hachesed, God's kindness, and that's longer. And the left side symbolizes God's justice, which is shorter. One is longer, one is shorter. And those two straps come out from the knot that's in the back of one's head. What is the significance of that? And how does that have to do with our tefillin, which is specifically the lessons of Yetziat Mitzrayim (the Exodus from Egypt)?
Moshe Rabbeinu was the messenger of the redemption. And as we know, in the end of Parashat Shemot, the beginning of the next section, Moshe Rabbeinu says, "Why did you do evil to the Jewish people?" And Moshe Rabbeinu, at the end, later on in the story, it's not written specifically, but at the time of the Chet HaEgel (the sin of the golden calf), Moshe asks, "Why is it that sometimes we see that good people are suffering?" It seems Moshe Rabbeinu was bothered by this question.
And the Gemara tells us that Hashem tells Moshe, "You're going to see my back, you're not going to see my front." And what did God show Moshe Rabbeinu when he saw k'vayachol, as if to say God's back? He saw the knot of the tefillin shel rosh in the back. Now simply we understand that it's a lesson. You're going to see my back, and you're not going to see my front. Rabbi Medina quoted someone as explaining that, "Look at my back, don't look at my front." What does it mean, look at my back, don't look at my front? If you look at the front, you see the two straps. One is short, one is long. God has justice, and God has mercy. Two different approaches.
But if you look at the back, as if to say, Kadosh Baruch Hu of course doesn't have a front or a back, but if you look in this message, what do you see in the back? You see the knot. That's the knot of the tefillin. What do you see in the knot? In the knot you see that there are not two separate straps. It's really one strap with a knot in the back. Because in truth, it's only one long strap that is looped around your head, with a knot in the back, and comes down in the front. There are no two straps. There's one strap. Although when we see it, we perceive it as two straps. We perceive it as a justice and a mercy, which is hard to understand. But in truth, they're knotted together in the back.
And that's Hashem's message to Moshe. That's our message: to realize that there is only one trait of God. And we put on our tefillin every single day. It's like an emunah (faith) patch. It's an emunah patch. We put it specifically on the nape in the back of our head. The way we say nape in Hebrew is oref, a nape. Ha-oref, the nape. If you re-scramble the letters, it spells paro. And our rabbis tell us that paro is the force that's against Moshe Rabbeinu. And it's a dichotomy. Moshe Rabbeinu is all about spreading the emunah. And paro is the opposite. Paro is all about no emunah. And everyone has a little paro inside of them that's sitting there at their nape to block all the messages from spreading throughout us.
And we put the emunah patch on our back, the tefillin, to remind us not to pay attention to the paro messages. Pay attention to the Moshe Rabbeinu messages. And believe that even though there are things that look like we can't understand them, they're all coming from the same one God, Hashem. Have a wonderful day and a Shabbat Shalom.