You can learn how to do
pretty much anything on YouTube. There are tutorials for decorative fruit carving, moonwalking, building a
turbo jet engine,preparing for the apocalypse and, of course, how to wrap tefillin.
But when Rachel Putterman went to YouTube for instructions on how to don the ritual leather straps worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers, she had a hard time learning from the videos she found. Poor lighting, bad angles — and only one gender.
“I saw all these videos of Orthodox men in their basements,” Putterman said.
Putterman decided to change that with a crowdfunded project whose mission was to encourage all Jews to take on the Jewish rituals that have traditionally seemed to be the province of straight men. “All Genders Wrap,” a series of well-lit, professionally-directed tutorials, features instructors who are male, female, trans and non-binary, as well as Jews of color. The videos went up earlier this month, and have already garnered 3,500 views.
Tefillin are a two-piece set of leather straps attached to leather boxes. Inside the boxes are important Hebrew prayers calligraphed on tiny animal-hide scrolls. One box sits at the bicep, and is held in place by leather straps that encircle the arm down to the hand. The hand is then wrapped in an intricate manner meant to spell out a name of God. The other box sits at the forehead, held in place by straps that wrap around the head and are knotted together at the top of the neck.
The boxes are based on a line from the biblical
Shema prayer, which instructs Jews to “bind” the prayer on their arms and place it between their eyes. Archaeologists have discovered tefillin dating to as early as the
third century BCE. Wrapping tefillin daily (though not on the Sabbath) is considered a
mitzvah, or obligation, that Jews are required to observe. Whether or not women are obligated — or even forbidden — from laying tefillin has been a debate among rabbis for centuries.