tefillin in the news

There is something strange going on with tefillin nowadays. There was Neta Barziliai's hairstyle and Eurovision, with the Eretz Nehederet skit spoofing her hairstyle on "Naftali Bennett" using tefillin boxes. Then there was the professor of culture in the airport harassing a Chabadnik helping someone put on tefillin. And let's not forget a short while ago a number of Chabad street booths being forced to close down for being unlicensed, until pressure was put on authorities to allow them to reopen.

And now today an attendant on a line of the train systems in Israel told a Chabadnik to stop soliciting people to lay tefillin. When challenged, the attendant explained that he received complaints form passengers about him bothering people.

I have seen the Chabadniks in action. They usually don't pester people. They ask briefly and move on. If someone says yes they stop and help them put on tefillin, and if someone says no they move on to the next person. That being said, if people really complained, maybe this specific person was using a more aggressive approach. If people really complained, it is the attendant's job to stop such behavior on the trains. I don't know what happened in the leadup to the incident so I cannot judge it one way or the other.

All I can say is that something strange is going on. Maybe it is some divine plan to keep tefillin in the news and make people more familiar with it, keep people thinking about tefillin. Maybe we are meant to analyze our own relationship with our tefillin and the mitzva of donning them and check ourselves to see if we are doing it properly. I don't know what it is, but all these incidents are happening for a reason..

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