BROOKLYN (JNS)- In a bitter-cold day in early January, Mary Jarada, a Syrian Jewish woman from Brooklyn, N.Y., stood beaming at Machon Stam, a small scribal workshop in the Crown Heights neighborhood of the New York City borough that specializes in writing tefillin, mezuzot and Torah scrolls. Jarada, 23, was there to pick up the 200th pair of tefillin that she had sponsored through her foundation, Ein Od Milvado (“There is no other besides Him”), which has raised some $135,000.
To Jarada’s surprise, the staff at the shop had bought a cake and had placed large black balloons, which displayed the number “200” to mark the milestone.
“This is a special pair,” she told JNS. “This man I am sending them to has a family member in jail who was recently denied parole. When he got the news, he was so devastated and felt like he needed to do something to strengthen himself spiritually.”
She added that “when he reached out to me online asking for a pair of tefillin, I was so excited to help him out.”
JNS spent a morning in January with Jarada as she stood among stacks of black leather straps and tefillin batim (“houses”) filled with parchment that lined shelves. The scent of ink and parchment was heavy in the air.
The charity work is unlikely for a woman, as women don’t tend to wrap tefillin in Orthodox communities, so Jarada, whom some have dubbed the “tefillin queen,” is providing a religious devotional object to others that she would not use herself.
“Some people don’t understand that this ‘Tefillin on Us’ campaign isn’t just about giving tefillin to those who can’t afford it,” she told JNS. “Some of the people who ask are at rock bottom—not just financially but spiritually.”
“Yes, some genuinely can’t afford it, but others technically could and just don’t see the value in spending $600 or $700 on tefillin,” she added. “They’re so disconnected from their soul that they wouldn’t take that step on their own.”
That, she told JNS, is where she comes in.
“It’s like when a baby is learning to walk and they keep falling, getting back up and falling again,” she said. “Giving someone tefillin isn’t just handing them an object. It helps open up a whole world to them, and once they take that step, it changes everything.”
The men whom she provides with tefillin “have the most incredible, heartbreaking and inspiring stories,” she added. “You never know what this mitzvah,” religious commandment, “can spark in someone’s life.”
A whole different thing’
The Torah instructs “tying” a “sign” on one’s arms and placing something between one’s eyes. Rabbinic tradition has interpreted that to mean small, leather boxes containing biblical texts written on parchment, which men tend to wear during weekday morning prayers.
Phylacteries are made by hand, and as such, can cost thousands of dollars per pair. Jarada told JNS that she prefers to buy the $675 pshutim tefillin from Machon Stam (Stam is an acronym for Torah, tefillin and mezuzah), which she trusts for its quality and reliability.
Some of the first pairs she purchased—before she was referred to Machon Stam—turned out to have flaws, so she solicited recommendations on social media.
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