Ultra Double Black Retzuous

It took me a while to become convinced of the value of retzuous that were black on both sides. At first I thought it was a gimick. After a while I changed my mind for two reasons. Firstly I reasearched the halacha. I saw that the Rambam considers it a good thing if the back of the retzuzous are the same color as the battim. The Ohr Zeruah sides with this Rambam, as well as the Beis Yosef, the Darchei Moshe, and the Lishkas HaSofer (Reb Shlomo Gansfried). Secondly, I saw that many people who have regular retzuous are wearing posul tefillin. My Ultra Double Black Retzuou are dyed before they are painted so that even if some of the paint comes off, they will still be completly black. Take a look at the picture below. I purposely sanded the retzuah in such a way that had it not been an Ultra Double Black Retzuah it would have become posel, just like in my post entitled, Posel Retzuous. As you can see they are still black, and completly kosher. The price for a set (shel yad & shel ros) is between $85 and $125 depending on which quality leather  is used. These retzuous come with a letter certifying their kashrus. I can put on new retzuous while you wait, so if you are passing through Monsey, and you would like to have me evaluate your current retzuous, give me a call at 845-290-2546. Or if I am doing a Mezuzah House Call in your neighborhood, I can take a look while I’m working on your mezuzos.

Does This Beam Need A Mezuzah?

When I went to this house to do a Mezuzah House Call I noticed that they had a mezuzah on this beam. Although I understood why they thought this spot needed a mezuzah, they were incorrect. Their thinking was: “Two beams, one on either side, and a beam on top, sounds like a doorway to us”. The reason it does not need a mezuzah is because these beams are not there to make a doorway, but rather to hold up the roof (לְהֲחְזָקָת תִקְרָה). Beams contribute to an obligation when they are there to create a doorway, not to hold up a roof. By the way, they mezuzah that they had here was very badly water-damaged, rendering it completely posel (invalid).

Asking a Child

Sometimes we are not sure if a letter is kosher. Since we know what it is supposed to be we cannot rely on our own judgment. In cases like this sometimes the halacha dictates that we ask a child who is neither a fool or a chochom (wise person). This means that the child should know how to read the letters but not understand what he is reading. In a case where there is a 50% chance that the child will read either one of two possibilities we can rely on his ‘psak’ (decision). If you look at the vov in the picture you will see that it is touching the lamed underneath. When we covered up the bottom part of the Lamed (which was necessary) the child read it as a nun. If the sofer would scrape away the part that was touching he would be turning a nun into a vov out of order, rendering the mezuza posel. By the way this would also be chok tochos (creating a letter by carving with a knife instead of by writing with ink).

Father & Son Retzuah Painting Competition

My son Yehuda Zev Michaels thought he could paint retzuous faster and better (no brush marks, even, etc.) than his Abba (me) so I sugested a friendly comptetion. Even though I was willing to show him all my tricks before he started, feeling himself to be a true expert retzuah painter, he declined. Pictured  here is Abba on the left and Yehuda on the right, painting away. I’ll leave it to your imagination who won. Don’t worry, Yehuda, who is not yet Bar Mitzvah was only painting an old retzuah no longer in use.

If you are’n ready for a new set of retzuos and your old ones need to be refreshed and blackened, give me call. I can put a nice fresh coat of paint on them. You’ll notice the improvment as soon as you see them. If you want your retzuous painted call me a (or Yehuda) at 845-290-2546.

Another Reason To Buy Stark Tefillin Battim

If I wanted to produce a commercial to advertise Stark Tefillin Battim I couldn’t ask for more than what happened last night in my office. 

I have a very good customer who purchased a set of tefillin from Eretz Yisroel. He found something for a bit less money than what I was showing him. Since he ordered them without seeing them, there was no way he could properly compare them to what I had shown him. Anyway, his son banged the shel rosh and he brought it to me for repair. He happened to come at the same moment that my battim macher (battim repair expert) was picking up some jobs from me. I showed him the dent and he quietly said to me, “These battim arn’t from you are they?” I replied that indeed they were not. He added, “Yeah, I could see that right away…” I cannot stress enough that to the untrained eye they may look the same as something which sells for $50 or $100 less, but once you start working with battim the difference becomes more clear every day. I want to stress that I am not saying that the battim that he bought are cheap battim, rather, if you are looking to purchase tefillin battim and you want them to be beautiful, strong, mehudar in halachah, and last a lifetime, than you need to be very clear about which tefillin battim you are using.

Heard at the Shiva for Chaya Miriam Proctor A"S

On Sunday the eighth of Sivan tof’shin’samach’tes Chaya Miriam’s neshama was returned to its maker. She was the wife of my dear friend Alan Proctor. Because of Alan’s great work in the world of Kiruv, many great people came over be menachem avel. Among them was Reb Pesach Krohn. He mentioned a conversation he overheard in the streets of the Old City. A baal teshuva asked the son of Rabbi Willig, “Why did Hashem make me a baal teshuva and you an ffb (frum from birth) and not the other way around?” The ffb couldn’t answer the question so the baal teshuva said, “I’ll tell you why. Because Hashem trusted me and he didn’t trust you.

Wow! That was one powerful statement.

Reb Ephriam Waxman was also there. He was trying to answer a question that was bothering Chaya Miriam’s mother. “If I understands that everything is for the best, and that there is a reason why I had to bury my daughter, so why am I so broken? Reb Waxman responded, “The Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim explains that when a person takes a baby bird out of the nest in front of the mother bird, that mother bird is in the same exact emotional pain that a person is in when their child is taken away from them. It doesn’t matter that the bird’s intellect is minuscule compared to that of a person, because the pain of losing a child is not an intellectual pain, it is an emotional pain. The intellect and the emotions are two different systems. You can’t squelch the emotions with an intellectual understanding.

Posul Retzuous

Retzuous must be black. This is a halachah l’Moshe m’sini (a law passed down from Moshe but not written in the Torah). Pictured above is a retzuah that is posel because of the brown line going from one side to the other. The person who was wearing them was completely unaware that his retzuous were posel. He may have been wearing them for years like this. He happens to be a well know rabbi and educator. He is learned, and knowledgeable about the halachos of tefillin. So how could he be wearing retzuous like this? Because the spot wear it is brown was not visable to him unless he turned them over and inspected them. There is an easy solution to this common problem (besides checking your straps from time to time (which you’re  probably not going to do anyway)). You should buy Ultra Double Black Retzuous. They are dyed before they are painted, so even if some of the paint comes off, they will still be black (and kosher).

Whats' Wrong With Cheap Tefillin Battim?

One of the challenges facing the consumer looking to purchase quality tefillin at a reasonable price is that an uncaring battim manufacturer can hide inferior work under an appealing paint job. A little extra effort during the painting, and all the flaws disappear from view. In the bayis pictured above you can see how the pieces were barely glued together. In reality these battim are really paper thin. Halachicly speaking, they are nothing more than peshutos. It is far more sensible to spend a small amount more money in order to buy quality battim that have hashgachah from the beginning of production until the end of painting.

Mezuzos Packaged in a Plastic Bag With Blue Hebrew Writing are not Kosher!

The mezuza that you see in the picture below was sealed in the plastic bag just as it appears. The mezuzah itself is a poor attempt at scribble. It has literally dozens of posul letters. It is not possible that even a semi-knowledgeable sefer could mistakenly think that it is acceptable even on a b’dieved (after the fact) level. Yet, the blue stamp on the bag says, “Checked by the Vaad for the kushrus (kosher certification) of STaM (sefer torah, tefillin, and mezuza). I myself have seen hundreds of mezuzos in these bags, many of them as poor as this. There must be hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of these mezuzos out there preventing people from performing the mitzvah. This is pure genaiva (theft)! No, its worse than theft because it is causing other people to not fulfill the mitzvah of mezuza. Its like putting up a kosher certificate in a Red Lobster restaurant. As a rule, very small mezuzos are very often not kosher. If you have the real small ones you really need to check into this. By ‘small’ I mean anything less than three inches. This doesn’t mean that there  aren’t some good very small mezuzos out there, just that you really need to check it out. It also doesn’t mean that all mezuzos that are bigger than three inches are kosher. I would say that this particular style (blue stamp on bag with menorah symbol) are all less than three inches.

Warning: Steer Clear of Synagogue Gift Shops When Purchasing Mezuzos

A customer walks in to my office to purchase two used mezuzos. She’s in  her mid to late sixties, her life is upside down, she tells me, and the mezuzah which was on her door (for the past forty four years) was also upside down. “I’m superstitious and I believe in G-d so I need kosher mezuzos” After picking out a few mezuzah cases she asks, “Are these used mezuzos not as good as new mezuzos?” “Of course not, I tell her.” “Should I get new ones?” “Of course you should”, I reply. As you may know, I sell used mezuzos because I think that under certain circumstances they are a valid option. But for somebody that can afford new mezuzos, and they are for the house that they live in, and they are only buying two mezuzos, no, I don’t think they should buy used mezuzos.

I offered her a new mezuzahh that was much nicer (better taggim, neater, etc) for $42.00. Her response? “Let me get back to you, I need to speak with someone”. I asked her, “Is it the price?” Yes, it was the price. It turns out she is going to check her Reform synagogue’s gift shop. My question for you is: If a person wants better than a used mezuza, why of all places would they even think to look in a Reform synagogue gift shop? Do they expect the sales person to be able to tell them, “Yes Mrs. Goldstein, this is a kosher mezuza, I know that the sofer had s’michah, and that it was checked over by a reliable sofer who knows how to check mezuzos.” Lets be realistic. It is not a priority of Reform synagogue gift shops to be sure that the mezuzos they sell are kosher. In fact, we all know that the case is more important to them than the scroll that is in it.

Could there be an exception out there? Sure, but we all know that what I am saying is the norm. So don’t buy mezuzos from somebody who is not an expert, and especially from a synagogue gift shop! If you do go into a gift shop to buy a mezuzah, ask them where the mezuza is from, who wrote it, does he have s’michah, who checked it, is it computer scanned, and what quality level is it. After you see that your question were not answered to your satisfaction, give me a call.

By they way, where do these gift shops get their mezuzos from? Often they are the mezuzos that knowledgeable soferim rejected from wholesalers. The wholesalers are not by and large certifying that the mezuzos that they sell are kosher, so if the gift shop doesn’t ask, this is how the wholesaler clears out his inventory of cheap mezuzos. Is the wholesaler a dishonest crook? Probably not. He probably bought a  batch of mezuzos from someone, and after showing them to qualified soferim he realized that they are ‘not so good’ so he sold on the assumption that they are probably kosher on some level, and that it is the job of  the person who sells to the consumer to insure that it is kosher.

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