Tfillin and Marriage Symbols

[debka_notion]

Just noticed this morning that not only do we recite psukim (verses) about being bethrothed to G-d while wrapping tfillin straps around our fingers, we then go on to wrap the strap around the ring where people contemporarily wear wedding rings. I wonder if there was some influence, although I very much doubt it. But it was a striking sort of coincidence.

I wonder if that affects how married Jews feel about their rings and/or about their tfillin. (Input, anyone?)

Comments

[chinchillama.livejournal.com]

Hmm I wonder. I'll have to ask Adam about this one (him being the one with tfillin in this house.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

That finger being the ring finger, or at least identified with love, goes back to at least the 3rd century B.C.E. in Greece (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_ring#Post-wedding_customs), so it's entirely possible that there was some influence.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

The ancient Egyptians believed that the left ring finger contained a "love vein." I don't know if this is contemporaneous with the Greek practice or not.

[tovah623.livejournal.com]

[thevortex.livejournal.com]

But, tovah623, you are also fully left-handed; you could wear a wedding ring and still put on t'filin.

Also, for debka_notion, in the wedding ceremony the ring is placed on the bride's index finger. And, not every married person wears a ring.

Huzzah!

The Vortex

[tovah623.livejournal.com]

[thevortex.livejournal.com]

...though the association with the pasuk is definitely strong

I have also seen it on some wedding invitations/ketubot.

Huzzah!

The Vortex

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

I doubt that they did- as far as I know, it's a fairly new trend (men wearing wedding rings).

I take my watch off also, although I know it isn't required (although originally I learned that it was)- I guess it still feels preferable.

And many women wear their engagement rings (presuming that they have one, unlike my mother) on their right ring finger once their married, so I suppose some of the association might still be there. I don't know.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

I take my watch off also, although I know it isn't required (although originally I learned that it was)- I guess it still feels preferable.

It isn't? I learned that it was, too.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

I learned this summer that it isn't necessary to fulfill the technical mitzvah- for that you need three loops around the arm for long enough to walk I think 3 paces, although it might be 4 paces. It may be necessary to fulfill some other level of the thing- I really don't know.

[nuqotw.livejournal.com]

I don't wrap tefillin on my left hand either! There are numerous customs for how to wrap them on one's hand, so at a guess plenty of folks in fact don't wrap them on that finger at all.

I believe that one is supposed to remove rings, watches and other interference when wearing tefillin.

Also, as you move further "right" an increasing number of men simply don't wear wedding rings at all.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

I'm confused - who wraps tfillin around their ring finger? Or do you just mean the wrapping afterwards, rather than the betrothal part? That would seem to be less significant.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

Usually just from the way things work out, I end up around the ring finger while I'm still ending the "v'yadata et hashem" part of things- so I associate it. I wrap my three times around my middle finger, like everyone else I know. But since I'm still working on the pasuk, it sort of came to mind.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I think I tend to treat each wrap as belonging to a third of the pasuk, and sort of pause for a beat in between each.

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

I wrap tefillin straps first around my middle finger, but then I do wrap around the outside half of my hand which includes my ring finger and wedding/engagement rings (I wear them together, since neither is thick and I'm not a multi-ring person). My engagement ring has a diamond sticking out (it was my husband's great-grandfather's idea), so I usually turn it inwards to make the strap fit smoothly. I don't think about it too much anymore, but it's a nice moment of remembering that I've got the rings on and am therefore, astonishingly, married. Another kind of binding, certainly. (Mind you, nine times out of ten my husband is next to me putting on his own tefillin, so it's not like I'd forget, but still.)

Now, about Hosea... I don't usually say those verses. They're not required, and as it happens I don't like those verses -- I mean, they're fine on their own, but in context they give me a pain. Significant parts of Hosea's view of marriage -- and hence his metaphor for the relationship between God and Israel -- are utterly incompatible with how I understand marriage and for that matter gender roles in Judaism. If I were Hosea's Israel, I'd be checking into the domestic-violence shelter instead of betrothing myself again to Hosea's God. Also, the metaphor pretty well assumes that the speaker is male (as a woman, can I betroth?). While all of that is an interesting discussion for another day, it's not really the one I want to be having first thing in the morning as I tie off my tefillin. So I usually say something else -- sometimes a mishmash of waking-up prayers, sometimes the short form of the blessing for studying Torah if I'm going to have a little time before the minyan starts up and I'm planning to look over the parsha, the beginning of the Psalm for Elul in Elul, and so forth. I'd like to come up with a few equally appropriate but different lines for all occasions, actually, but I haven't yet.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

Also, the metaphor pretty well assumes that the speaker is male (as a woman, can I betroth?).

Who is a male speaker betrothing, then, though? Himself? Presumably one can't reverse the ANE gender arrangement on God, even if God is conceived of as female (though that brings to mind all sorts of interesting theological images and ideas), and an individual can't exactly betroth Israel to himself, either, and wouldn't be doing so in this context anyway.

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, it doesn't make a tremendous amount of grammatical/literal sense either way. :) But I find it odd to vocalize sentiments which are not only grammatically but behaviorally male. In most cases, God's attributes and actions are practically if not grammatically gender-neutral. This one's an exception. And it points to the default assumption that a Jew is male, which is one of my sore points. Add that in to my attitude toward Hosea, and... well, you can see why I think virtually anything, up to and including "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," would do a better job of preparing me for prayer. ;)

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

And it points to the default assumption that a Jew is male, which is one of my sore points.

There's got to be some Purim Torah-type potential there for citing symbolic betrothal between God and the Default Male Jew as precedent for halachic gay marriage, though. Or some really weird theological argument positing the Jewish people as God's possessive, abusive husband.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

I always thought that was G-d talking to us that we were quoting, and it even ends with feminine suffixes- if I were a bit shallower about my halakha, I'd say "what better way to show that women Ought to lay tfillin".

And yes, I hate the context too, and found it pretty shocking when we studied it in class last year. I guess one of the things I liked about using them with tfillin, once I got over that shock, was that this felt like a way of redeeming an otherwise beautiful pasuk from the effects of its lousy original context. THe rabbis recontextualize Constantly (heck, tehy use psukim to prove the opposite of what they actually say sometimes), so why not?

So what sorts of themes are you looking for for your eventual set of psukim? And what sorts of occasions are you aiming at?

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's definitely something odd about the metaphor no matter who's saying it. And reclaiming verses is nice. This one, though, just doesn't do it for me.

(I still remember noticing -- because I was layning it -- that the otherwise lovely congregational response before a Torah reading, "And all of you who have attached yourselves to the Lord your God are alive this day," actually follows from "the Lord your God annihilated every one of you who followed Baal Peor." Oh, dear.)

I've been thinking about this, actually, and I've decided the ideal solution is to find an appropriate pasuk or two from Shir haShirim -- 8:6 ("Bind me as a seal upon your heart") leaps to mind for fairly obvious reasons. Our tradition suggests that this moment is one in which we remember that the relationship between God and Israel is something like the one between a man and a woman, with mutual commitment. But I much prefer the lovers of the Song of Songs -- and especially its articulate female voice -- to any of the sad whores who slink through the prophetic books. And the good news is that I am thoroughly supported by several dozen rabbinic and medieval sources, all informing me that the SoS is fundamentally about the relationship between God and Israel (and that, moreover, that particular verse is all about the mitzvah of tefillin).

Oh, dear, I think I'm creating ritual. Don't tell anyone. ;)

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

You're enhancing existing ritual. I'm a big fan of that as long as it doesn't get too new-age-y. And adding/changing psukim seems pretty staid in that regard. It feels traditional, even when it's making a major behavioral or theological shift.

I could see adding that pasuk right before putting on the tfillah shel yad, honestly. It goes well with a practice I learned from a friend who counts out her 7 arm circlings with "poteakh et yadekha umasbia l'khol khai ratzon"...

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

(I still remember noticing -- because I was layning it -- that the otherwise lovely congregational response before a Torah reading, "And all of you who have attached yourselves to the Lord your God are alive this day," actually follows from "the Lord your God annihilated every one of you who followed Baal Peor." Oh, dear.)

That may be the one that bothers me on the level that the tfillin pasukim bother you. I can just never think of anything else, and even if you remove the immediate context, it still seems to imply unavoidably to me that someone somewhere didn't sufficiently attach themselves to God and is as a result dead. And the fraction of people I care deeply about who don't spend most or any mornings in shul is pretty substantial.

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

I guess I figure "attachment to God" is a lot broader category than "people in shul today," much less "people in shul today who managed to spit out that line in the two seconds the baal koreh left for them to do so." But possibly we should have a contest for Most Annoying Pasuk In The Siddur or something. ;

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that's definitely a better way of looking at it. I think my level of discomfort arose in part because I achieved familarity with the verse while acting as gabbai, and felt like I was addressing the congregation!

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

Hmm- I think I'll put up that contest and see what people suggest...

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

The recitation of the "betrothal verses" while wrapping tefillin around the middle finger is a custom of relatively recent innovation (300 or 400 years old), and probably due to Kabbalistic influence. (In fact, my own practice is not to say those verses.) Yet the practice of doing the actual wrapping around the finger is much older. In fact, there's a passage in either the Bavli or the Yerushalmi (I forget which, and am too lazy to check right now) which defines the minimum length for the tefillin-strap as "long enough to reach down to the hand and wrap around the middle finger three times".

Anyway, I would hazard to guess that the Kabbalists noticed the similarity between this practice and that of wedding rings, and that it was this association that led them to institute the recitation of the verses. (Not that it's a bad association-- it makes sense in light of the earlier ideas that the tefillin "show" the nations of the world that Israel is the people "belonging" to God.)

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

Neat! Between that and tirerim's comment, maybe I actually noticed something that was intentional.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

I wore my wedding ring on my right hand for a while, out of convenience. It didn't get in the way of the strap (which can be uncomfortable, at least with my hands and ring) and wasn't exactly countercultural since European men wear their wedding rings on their right hands. Eventually I was made aware that it was really bothering my mother in law, and decided it wasn't worth the argument. Now I just move it to the other hand when I put on tefillin.

I've thought quite a bit about the symbology of having the ring on one hand and the tefillah on the other. Not that I've come to any conclusions, mind you.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

European men wear their wedding rings on their right hands.

Really?

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

So I'm told by some European (which includes Israeli) men.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I remember someone or other telling me that in the U.S. wearing the ring on one's right hand represents a homosexual commitment that one is upset the law doesn't recognize.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

I think I remember you telling me about this before, along with the context. In any case, this is probably a fairly (read: extremely) recent innovation and not likely to be widely known.