Jack* is a hotshot big-city lawyer. You know the type—the one who has the biggest firm, takes the most profitable cases, and charges the most per hour.
We’ve been in touch by email since November, when he attended our Belev Echad gala. He was enamored with the evening, but we didn’t have a chance to say more than a quick hello since there were 1,200 people there!
Then, he offered to treat our soldiers to dinner at a restaurant one night, which finally gave us a chance to really talk. He was thrilled to get to know our soldiers better and we bonded throughout the evening. It was the perfect opportunity to put on tefillin with him, except it was nighttime and tefillin is a daytime-only mitzvah.
I wanted to meet again during the day, but the opportunity never arose—I was busy, he was busy … we couldn’t seem to coordinate.
Then, I visited another of our wounded soldiers who was recovering from surgery in a local hotel, bringing my tefillin along. When he asked if he could keep my tefillin for the duration of his time in NYC, I happily agreed.
Straight from there, I headed to a Midtown meeting with Amir, a friend and real estate developer. I walked in, and lo and behold, who was sitting there? Jack!
Finally, we were in the same place at the same time and it was daytime—perfect tefillin conditions! But with one significant problem: I had just given my tefillin away.
I turned to Shimon* and asked, “Shimon, do you have tefillin in your office by any chance?”
“Rabbi,” he said, “remember a few months ago one of my workers came to your office for tefillin? The ones you gave him are right here!”
Problem solved.
I asked Jack to put on tefillin and he readily agreed.
“Is it your first time?” I asked.
“Nope, it’s my second!”
“What? When was your first?”
“A month ago, I was flying from Florida to NY and found myself sitting next to a Chabad rabbi. He’s a rabbi in a small town with fewer than 300 Jews. For three hours we talked, and at that point I couldn’t refuse—so I agreed to put on tefillin for the first time in my life.
I smiled and helped Jack put on tefillin for the second time, but a small part of me couldn’t avoid feeling disappointed.
Doing any mitzvah for the first time is a special moment—but tefillin has its own significance. A person who has never put on tefillin in his life has the spiritual status of “karkafta”—which affects their soul in the afterlife. So helping someone put tefillin on for the first time gives me the honor and merit of lifting them out of that status.
But every mitzvah is important and valuable, and I was happy to be able to put tefillin on with Jack a second time and hope there will be many more times in his future.
Now, it’s true that as a rabbi I’m always on the lookout for Jews to do mitzvahs with—tefillin, Shabbat candles, shul, etc. But you don’t need to be a rabbi to reach out to others. Take your tefillin with you—to the office, on a road trip, on vacation … anywhere you might bump into other Jews. Take them out and offer to help people put them on—you’ll be pleasantly surprised how many people say yes and how enriching the encounter is.
It seems G-d was looking out for me, because the following Sunday, at a breakfast with some of our wounded soldiers, I met an 82-year-old man who had never put on tefillin in his life. Of course, I whipped out a pair and we had a spontaneous and joyous celebration—his “bar mitzvah.”
In my head, I whispered: Thank you, G-d, for giving me the opportunity to light up a Jewish soul for the very first time.
*Names changed to protect privacy.