By Marco Del Monte
Translated and adapted from a shiur by Rav Yona Metzger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97XrL092iv0
At the end of the Parashah we find the Mitzvah of tefillin, as it is said: "And these words shall be as a sign upon your hand and as frontlets between your eyes."
It is written in the Talmud tractate Rosh Hashanah, page 17a: "Who are the Jews who sin with their body? Rav said this category refers to the head that has never worn Tefillin." What does the Gemara mean when it says that someone who has never worn tefillin is a sinner with "their own body"?
Rabbi Metzger also asks: why is this category of "sin with the body" referred to tefillin and not to another mitzvah such as the Tallit, the Matzah, the Four Species, etc.? Another question raised by the Rabbi is the following: is there a specific age for the Mitzvah of Chinuch, that is, the education of children? That is, even before they reach the age of Bar Mitzvah—meaning the religious obligation to fulfil the precepts of the Torah—do they already begin to practise Mitzvot such as the lulav, for example, something that does not happen with Tefillin? A child is not made to wear tefillin at an age when they can already understand the action well (7, 8, 9 years old), but only when they are close to Bar Mitzvah. Why is this? It is written in the Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim, section 25, paragraph 5: "One should keep in mind, when putting them on (Tefillin), that G-d commanded us to put these four passages—which contain the Unity of His Name and the Exodus—on the arm in relation to the heart and on the head in relation to the brain, so that we may remember the miracles and wonders He did for us, which indicate His Unity and His omnipotence in heaven and on earth to do with them as He pleases. And [also to] subjugate to G-d one's soul, which resides in the brain, as well as one's heart, which houses one's main physical desires and thoughts." The Vilna Gaon explains something very interesting to us: In the head tefillin there are four compartments, each containing a parashah, a passage, for a total of four parashot, whereas on the arm tefillin the same parashot are united in a single compartment. This structure of the head tefillin corresponds to the four senses that are in the face: Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, with each parashah relating to one of the senses, while the arm represents only one sense, touch. Precisely for this reason, all the Parashot are in a single compartment. All this means that through the tefillin we bind ourselves with all our five senses to the Holy One, Blessed Be He, and we dedicate ourselves completely to Hashem. The Rebbe of Tolna explains in his book *Emma Yenachamuni* that the particularity of the Mitzvah of tefillin compared to all the mitzvot of the Torah is that in every Mitzvah there is the human being (Gavra) and there is an object (Cheftza)—that is, the human being performs the mitzvah with an object such as the Mezuzah, the Matzah, the Shofar. In Tefillin, man himself becomes the object of the Mitzvah. It is true that one ties the tefillin, but at that moment man himself also becomes the "object" of the Mitzvah. To perform this Mitzvah, a clean body is necessary, which is why halachah suggests not having tefillin worn by children who are too young. Therefore, by dedicating all our senses, our entire body, our very selves to Hashem, we ourselves become a "Mitzvah". This is why the Gemara tells us that whoever has never worn tefillin is called someone who sins with their own body—that is, they have not transformed their own body from something material into something spiritual, namely into a Mitzvah.
Shabbat Shalom
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.