phylacteries

Distinctions

totafos (טוטפות)

Three times in Chumash (Shemos 13:16, Devarim 6:8, 11:18), each time of the head alone. Targum Onkelos and Targum pseudo-Yonasan render it tefillin. A second early tradition among the ancient translations, that of Targum Neofiti and the Peshitta, renders it instead by the Aramaic or Syriac equivalent of zikaron, "remembrance," which implies they took the core meaning to be remembering; Ibn Ezra (to Shemos 13:16) echoes that approach. On that reading, the column notes, it is unclear what the etymological root of totafos might be, or even what language it comes from. Beyond that, four lines of explanation:

An ornament worn on the forehead. Tosafos (Menachos 34b) look for the word's cognates in Mishnaic Hebrew and find totefes, an article of women's jewelry (Shabbos 6:1, see Shabbos 57b), and the Aramaicized totafta, a bracelet (Targum to Shmuel II 1:10, and see Yechezkel 24:17). Ibn Janach and Radak (each in Sefer HaShorashim) take the same line and assign the word a root of its own, ט-ט-פ, which occurs nowhere in Tanach but here; so too Rashbam (to Shemos 13:9) and possibly the Zohar (Bo 43a). Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (1785-1865) develops it: the tefillin are an ornament, a Jew's way of announcing to the world that he is proud to stand in Hashem's service. This also explains why the Gemara (Megillah 16b) sees yakar (Esther 8:16), "precious, honorable," as a reference to tefillin.

Something that has to do with seeing. Tosafos' second suggestion, adopted by Chizkuni and Rabbi Yosef Bechor Shor (the column cites them to Shemos 3:16), ties totafos to gazing, the head tefillin sitting by the eyes and looking outward. The Gemara (Berachos 6a) reads "the nations of the world will see that the name of Hashem is called upon you" (Devarim 28:10) as the gentiles seeing a Jew in his tefillin, so the biblical word for them plausibly touches on being seen.

Dripping. Menachem Ibn Saruk (920-970; Machberes Menachem, cited by Rashi, the column says, to Shemos 3:16) takes the word from the biliteral ט-פ, which yields four categories: taf (children), notef/tipah (dripping), netifos (adornments and niceties), and matif (speech, preaching). He explicitly classes totafos with the last of these, but offers no further justification for the assertion. A separate approach connects totafos to the "dripping" sense of (נ)ט-פ: Rabbi Yissocher Ber Eilenberg (1550-1623; Tzeidah LaDerech to Shemos 13:16) quotes in the name of his teacher Rabbi Mordechai Yaffe (1530-1612) that tefillin picture the trickle-down of how Hashem sustains the world: the black leather box above stands for His dominion rising over all of existence, the straps descending from it for the influence that reaches down into the world's inner core, represented by the wearer's torso. Daas Mikra (to Shemos 13:16) more simply reads totafos as head jewelry that would typically hang down, as though dripping, connecting it to netifos (Yeshayahu 3:19).

Secondary or subordinate. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740-1814; Chesheik Shlomo) champions Ibn Saruk's biliteralism and gives ט-פ the core sense of what is secondary or subordinate to a main element: taf, the children secondary to the household's master and mistress; a tipah, the small insignificant droplet that falls from a larger body of liquid; matif, prophetic or hortatory speech delivered in a controlled, slow way that resembles slowly falling drops; and (in Yerios Shlomo) tinuf (dirtiness), with a middle nun added, since what soils an object is secondary to the object. A totefes on this reading is a sort of hat fastened on the head with straps, the hat being the main frontispiece and the straps merely secondary. He then concludes: the Torah is saying the head tefillin should be worn where people would normally wear their totafos, not that totafos is the name of the tefillin.

A foreign word. All the readings above presume totafos is a native Hebrew word; the Gemara supplies one that seemingly treats it as a loanword. Rabbi Akiva (Menachos 34b, cited by Rashi to Devarim 6:8) parses totafos as tot, two in Coptic, and fot, two in Afriki (which the column glosses as Phrygian), alluding to the four parshiyos written on the parchments inside (or, per Rashi to Shemos 13:16, the four chambers of the head tefillin). Others place the word in Aramaic: Rabbeinu Chaim Paltiel (to Shemos 13:16) relates it to t'fei ("more," "addition"), since tefillin make a person more likely to remember the exodus, and Rabbi Mecklenburg to the Aramaic for appeasement (Targum to Bereishis 34:22, Mishlei 1:10). Others again read it as Egyptian: Rabbi Avraham Saba (1440-1508; Tzror HaMor to Shemos 13:16) connects it to Egyptian headdresses, and Abarbanel (there) holds it is the Egyptian word for "brain." The column adds a recent proposal in the same direction, that of Professor Hubert Grimme (1864-1942), cited by Professor Jeffrey H. Tigay, who derives totafos from the Egyptian ddft, "snake," a reference to the Uraeus snake often worn on the headdress in ancient Egypt. A further suggestion, tying totafos somehow to the names of the Egyptian deities Thoth and Ptah, the column reports but discounts, saying it has not seen it cited in any serious scholarship on the topic.

tefillin (תפילין)

Common in the Mishnah (Berachos 3:1, Shabbos 6:2, 16:1, Eruvin 10:1, Shekalim 3:2, Megillah 1:8, Moed Katan 3:4, Nedarim 2:2, Sanhedrin 11:3, Shevuos 3:8, Yadayim 3:3). The plural is not incidental: technically it names the pair, head and arm, and the Mishnah's word for a single box is tefillah (Menachos 4:1, Keilim 16:7, 18:8, Mikvaos 10:2, 10:3-4); the possessive tefillav, "his tefillin," appears at Erchin 6:4.

Tosafos (Menachos 34b), in the same passage that treats totafos, derive the word from פ-ל-ל, argument or proof: the tefillin are a tangible testament to the association of Klal Yisrael with Hashem. Similarly the Rosh (Hilchos Tefillin §2) and his son the Tur (Orach Chaim §25) take it from plilah, argument, since tefillin quell any argument about the specialness of Klal Yisrael, serving as a physical sign that Hashem rests His presence upon them. The Maharal (Be'er HaGolah §4:2) proposes that the root's core sense is intellectuality or thoughtfulness: tefillah is a thoughtful plea, judges are pelilim (Shemos 21:22) because they use their minds to decide the law, and tefillin sit at the head and beside the heart to fix mind and heart on remembering Hashem; Rabbi Yaakov Emden (Mor U'Ketziah, Orach Chaim §25, and Siddur Yaavetz on the berachos before laying tefillin) and Rabbi Yisroel Lipshitz (Tiferes Yisrael to Menachos 4:1, Yachin §2) offer comparable explanations.

Rabbi Nosson of Rome (1035-1106) in Sefer HeAruch, his lexicon of Rabbinic Hebrew, instead files tefillin under ת-פ-ל, and Rabbi Eliyahu Bachur (1469-1549) in Sefer Tishbi questions why he did not give the root as פ-ל-ל like Tosafos. Explaining the Aruch's position, Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842-1894) in HeAruch HaShaleim argues that ת-פ-ל is a permutation of ט-פ-ל (tafel, a secondary element attached to a primary one), and refers to the way tefillin are attached or tied to a person's body. Rabbi Yosef Teomim-Frankel (1727-1792), author of the Pri Megadim, suggests in one of his epistles that tefillin likewise derives from ת-פ-ל in its sense of "unsalted": because one dons tefillin every single weekday the mitzvah becomes routine and bland, with no special taste to it, and one must perform it anyway simply because Hashem decreed so. He further suggests connecting tefillin to pele/hafla'ah, wonderment, exaggeration and separation, from the root פ-ל-(א); Rabbi Mecklenburg applies that to the way Klal Yisrael consciously separate themselves from the ways of evil and from impure thoughts by binding tefillin on, and Rabbi Mordechai Abadi (1826-1884) to the way only Klal Yisrael separate Hashem from everything else and single Him out by declaring His uniqueness. Rashi (to Bereishis 30:8) in fact connects tefillah with pesil and the root פ-ת-ל, thread or cord, twisted, wrestling; some read Yehudah's ptil (Bereishis 38:18, usually rendered "wick" but here generally understood as "belt") as his tefillin, ptil being readable as an anagram of tefillin (Paneach Raza, Baal HaTurim there), and Noam Elimelech (to Bamidbar 18:8), echoing Tosafos, reads tefillin as what ties Klal Yisrael to Hashem and Hashem to them, since the Gemara says that He too wears tefillin, whose contents declare the uniqueness of Klal Yisrael as ours declare His oneness (Berachos 6a).

The column closes the etymology with a convergence: Professor Moshe Weinfeld (1925-2009) notes that in the Aramaic writings found at Elephantine the term tefillah describes a silver amulet, and that in Ugaritic tefili refers to a sort of ornament worn on the head or forehead, which would mean that the etymology of tefillin may line up with that of totafos, which may also mean an ornament.

Why the berachah says tefillin

The berachos before laying tefillin say al mitzvas tefillin and l'haniach tefillin, using the Rabbinic word rather than the biblical totafos, which is noteworthy because berachos usually prefer biblical terminology to Rabbinic. Two contemporary rabbanim, Rabbi Pinchas Avraham Meyers (Chief Rabbi of the Hague) and Rabbi Moshe Rachamim Shayo, independently give the same two answers: first, that totafos refers only to the head tefillin and never to the arm tefillin, so the Rabbis preferred the more inclusive tefillin; second, that totafos is more likely of foreign origin, per Rabbi Akiva, while tefillin seems more closely related to Hebrew.

Rendering guidance

• In Chumash: totafos as frontlets, or transliterated, with a note that it denotes the head tefillin. Onkelos' tefillin is a translation of the mitzvah, not of the word.
• In Mishnah, Gemara, and halachah: tefillin, left as is. The English "phylacteries" is a foreign borrowing that reads oddly in a sefer; use it only where a title or a quoted translation demands it.
• Trap: "tefillin" in English will absorb totafos wherever it appears, and the distinction between them is exactly what a passage on the berachah, or on Rabbi Pappenheim's reading, is about. Where a source quotes the pasuk and then the Mishnaic word in one breath, render the pasuk's word "frontlets" and the Mishnaic word "tefillin" and hold the pair.
• Singular: one box is tefillah, not "a tefillin." In English, "the head tefillin" and "the arm tefillin" read better than a forced singular.
• On why the berachah says tefillin and not totafos, see above: Rabbi Pinchas Avraham Meyers and Rabbi Moshe Rachamim Shayo give two answers, that totafos covers only the head, and that totafos is more likely of foreign origin (per Rabbi Akiva) while tefillin is closer to Hebrew.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Bo: Filling your Phylacteries," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2024-01-20): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11218-bo-filling-your-phylacteries.md. Primary loci: Shemos 13:16, Devarim 6:8, 11:18, 28:10; Menachos 34b with Tosafos and Rabbi Akiva; Mishnah Shabbos 6:1 with Shabbos 57b; Megillah 16b; Berachos 6a; Shemos 21:22; Yeshayahu 3:19; Bereishis 30:8, 38:18; Rashi to Shemos 3:16, 13:16 and Devarim 6:8; Ibn Janach and Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Rabbi Pappenheim, Chesheik Shlomo and Yerios Shlomo; Maharal, Be'er HaGolah §4:2; the Rosh, Hilchos Tefillin §2; Tur, Orach Chaim §25; Mishnah Shekalim 3:2; Bereishis 34:22; Mishlei 1:10; Esther 8:16. The column's Egyptian and Ugaritic derivations (Grimme via Tigay, Weinfeld on Elephantine and Ugaritic) and its academic lexicography on Sefer HeAruch's root (Kohut) are reported here as the column reports them. Two loci where the column may have slipped are kept as it gives them and flagged here: it cites Rashi to Shemos 3:16 for Menachem Ibn Saruk, and Chizkuni and Rabbi Yosef Bechor Shor to Shemos 3:16, where the discussion of totafos is at Shemos 13:16.