RITUAL DEFIANCE:

The Practice of Laying Tephillin and its Effect on the Lives of Orthodox Men During and

After The Holocaust

Collin Shore Davis

720410064

History 262: History of the Holocaust

Professor Christopher Browning

April 24, 2014

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During World War II, the Jews of Europe were systematically discriminated

against, deported, and finally, murdered by the thousands in Germany and German

occupied countries. Although the stories of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the other acts

of violent defiance against the Nazis have been more widely circulated and discussed, the

small, personal acts of defiance such as the continued performance of rituals (in this case

the laying of Tephillin) may have had a greater impact on the retention of religious

observance post-Holocaust.

Why Tephillin?

In the practice of Judaism, community is highly regarded and is necessary to

facilitate some of the religious obligations; for example, in order to recite the Amidah

(the cornerstone of Jewish prayers) and other prayers one must have a Minyan (a quorum

of ten Jewish men above the age of Bar Mitzvah). The prayers often include “us” and

“we” language instead of “I” or “me.” Tephillin, however, are worn during prayer as a

sign of individual devotion, whether in a group or not, and many men use the same pair

they receive at their Bar Mitzvah throughout their entire lives.

Tephillin, although are very expensive to purchase (even today a pair can cost

over $400), in the concentration and death camp economies they most likely would not

have been considered especially useful or valuable as the people who would be willing to

trade for them would probably have been few and far between.

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Fig. 1. Tefillin rescued from the Warsaw Ghetto by escapee Michael Garber

Everything had a purpose in a camp, but Tephillin, having only one purpose were

not very practical like the knife or fork or bowl that were necessary for life as described

by Primo Levi in his book, Survival In Auschwitz.1 Tephillin may not have been worth

more in the camp economy, but the punishments for religious observance were severe,

including torture, solitary confinement, and often death.2

Tephillin may not have been economically practical or useful, but in the lives of

those men to whom they mattered, Tephillin were spiritual anchors keeping them from

losing faith and hope. Eliyahu Herman, a Holocaust survivor interviewed by Debbie

Shapiro in 2012, talks about how he smuggled his Tephillin into Mauthausen and how

important they were to him, to the point where he bribed a guard to tell him when barrack

inspections were so that he could hide the Tephillin.

1 Primo Levi. Survival in Auschwitz: the Nazi assault on humanity. trans. S. J. Woolf. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.). 33.2 Sybil Milton. “Women’s Survival Skills.” In The Holocaust: problems and perspectives on interpretation. 3rd. ed. ed. by Donald L. Niewyk. (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1992.), 123.

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Fig. 2. Members of the Bnai Akiva religious Zionist youth movement, wearing tefillin, recite their morning prayers next to a haystack.

After the war ended, Herman still kept his Tephillin with him wherever he went,

and Shapiro comments at the end of her article that the small bag with the Tephillin

inside were on the table next to Herman throughout the interview. 3 The number of men

who were able to continue the practice of this ritual were few, but for those who were

able, Tephillin are ascribed a large amount of credit for their survival and many of them

made it a lifelong habit to never be separated from their Tephillin after their release.

Tephillin, Group Cohesion, and Survival

Sybil Milton states in her work, “Women’s Survival Skills,” that, “Women had

significantly different survival skills and techniques than did men,” While women may

seem out of place in a discussion of Tephillin (considered a male-specific mitzvah), the

idea that woman are somehow naturally better equipped to handle horrific situations

3 Debbie Shapiro. "Tefillin in Hell." aish.com. http://www.aish.com/ho/p/Tefillin_in_Hell.html (accessed April 18, 2014).

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seems a little outdated. If this is the case then there must have been a specific trait or

opportunity that was only available to women. Milton says that, “Women also shared and

pooled their limited resources better than did men.”4 Better sharing habits and

cooperation may have been more prevalent among women, but there is also an exception

of pooling resources among men, namely, among those who were more than willing to

engage in the sharing of Tephillin.

As protective and attached as these men were to their Tephillin, Eliyahu Herman

talks about the way he shared his Tephillin with other men in the camp as though it were

a normal occurrence.5 Of course, in any economy there were those who tried to extort the

desire of religious men to continue their devotional practices for their own gain—Simon

Wiesenthal tells a story of a man in Mauthausen who “rented out” a Siddur (prayer book),

that he had smuggled into the camp, for food—a decision that ultimately led to the man’s

death according to Wiesenthal.6

These anecdotes would suggest that there was a certain amount of bonding that

occurred between religious men while sharing Tephillin and this bonding was central to

their survival. For women, bonding and support, according to Milton, came from each

other—although Lawrence Langer disagrees and says that there is no evidence to suggest

that women were better able to survive.7 However, the bond between religious men was

strong, originating from a common ideology, reinforced by the sharing of Tephillin. The

4 Milton. “Women’s Survival Skills.” 120.5Debbie Shapiro. "Tefillin in Hell."6 Yerachmiel Tilles. "The Other Side of the Prayerbook." The Other Side of the Prayerbook - Contemporary Voices. Chabad.org. 7Lawrence Langer. "Gendered Suffering?." In Women in the Holocaust. ed. Dalia Ofer. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.). 136.

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bond between these men and God lasted well past the time of imprisonment and had an

affect on their religious behavior for the rest of their lives.

Religious Change Among Survivors

In 1997, Reeve Robert Brenner conducted a survey of Holocaust survivors in

conjunction with the Yad Vashem Center for Holocaust Research in Jerusalem, in an

attempt to find relationships between religious observance and 5 conditions (Number of

years in camps, types of camps endures, experiences of one camp verses another, loss of

martial partner and/or children, age and sex of survivors) among Holocaust survivors.8

Initially the survey was sent to 1,000 survivors but of them only 708 agreed to

anonymously be part of the survey.9 The survey asked survivors how many of a set of

“standard” commandments they kept before and after the Holocaust, and how many they

were doing at the time of the survey almost 50 years later. One of the questions asked

was if the person (if male) wore Tephillin every day.10

Unfortunately, Brenner’s study does not include percentages of responses to

individual questions, and it was limited to twenty questions, which creates a nice

overview, but might also skew the survey. Important to this discussion, Brenner notes

that:

…one might expect that the more commandments there are to keep, the fewer would do so. But the reverse is closer to the facts: 45 percent of the Jewish population that was observant prior to the Holocaust claimed to have kept all, or nearly all, of the practices [and was] classified as ultra observant; 30 percent was …highly observant, and 25 percent…moderately observant.11 (emphasis/alterations own).

8 Reeve Robert Brenner. The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors. (Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1997). 22.9 Brenner. Faith and Doubt. 17.10 Brenner. Faith and Doubt. 29. 11 Brenner. Faith and Doubt. 37.

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While this looks promising, Brenner goes on to say that a larger conclusion from the data

collected was that, “Fewer Holocaust survivors after the war remained observant. And

for those who remained observant there was a marked diminution in the intensity of their

practice.” (emphasis original).12 Perhaps an exception to this is the ritual of Tephillin,

which was one mitzvah that surviving men would perform even if they neglected others.

The number of Jews who were observant before and those who became non-observant

after the Holocaust is 38 percent according to Brenner, but only 19 percent of non-

observant Jews became observant after.13 On top of this, Brenner found that only 44

percent of the survivor population claimed that the Holocaust had changed or affected

their religious behavior (made them more observant or less observant).14 Of the total

percentage of survivors, the percentage that had access to and was able to wear Tephillin

is surely only a fraction of the 44 percent of observant Jews who survived, and only “8

percent reported that the Holocaust had reinforced their religious behavior.”15 It is easily

imagined that part of the reason many men tried to bring their Tephillin with them, or

shared smuggled ones is because is was a way of going against the Nazi rule, a small,

simple act of devotion that was also an act of defiance towards Germany.

The Holocaust’s Effect on Tephillin

12 Brenner. Faith and Doubt. 38.13 Brenner. Faith and Doubt. 43. 14 Brenner. Faith and Doubt. 63.15 Brenner. Faith and Doubt. 78.

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Until now, this discussion has been largely centered on the effect of Tephillin in

the Holocaust, but it is important to also understand the effect of the Holocaust on

Tephillin. While the men who used Tephillin during the Holocaust were changed, either

having their doubts reinforced or having their beliefs confirmed, Tephillin would not

come out exactly the same either. Tephillin today look the same as they did the in 1940’s,

they are still put on the same way, and the blessing for wearing them is the same. What

then has changed? The attitude towards Tephillin changed rather drastically because of

the fact that men were willing to risk their safety and even their lives for the chance to

wear Tephillin. At the Western Wall in Jerusalem, there are groups that spend the day

lending Tephillin and instructing how to wear them and bless them for prayer, etc.

Similar to the men in the concentration camps, these groups share their Tephillin—but

instead of an act of defiance it is to promote the mitzvah and an attempt to bring

“secular” Jews into the orthodox livestyle. Many of these groups use stories from the

Holocaust as a way to “gilt-trip” men into taking the time for the ritual, as described by

Gutman Locks,

The day after [a Holocaust survivor] told me his story [about wearing Tephillin during the Holocaust], there was a soldier at the Western Wall who wouldn’t put on tefillin. No matter what I said, he simply refused. Then I told him [the survivors]’s story, and he quickly said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’16

Using the Holocaust as a means of relating to the elderly is also prevalent and this does

not escape the practice of wearing Tephillin. On April 7, 2012 a group Bar Mitzvah was

16 Lock, Gutman . "Tefillin After 72 Years - Contemporary Voices." Tefillin After 72 Years - Contemporary Voices. http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1255791/jewish/Tefillin-After-72-Years.htm (accessed April 17, 2014).

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held for Holocaust survivors who had not been able to perform the ritual of becoming an

adult when they should have at age 13.17

While the use of Tephillin in Concentration and Death camps was a rare

occurrence, the strong desire of men to continue if at all possible and afterwards the

strong connection these men had with their Tephillin goes to show that it was the little

things, the small acts of defiance, that made the biggest difference in the lives of

detainees. None of the survivors credit the Warsaw uprising with their continued practice

of Judaism, but of the 42 percent of survivors who remained observant the much smaller

percentage who were able to maintain the practice of wearing Tephillin impacted the

lives of those around them, and their stories are impacting people today and compelling

them to fulfill the mitzvah.

Bibliography

Brenner, Reeve Robert. The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors. Northvale, New

17 Gavriel Fiske. “Mass Bar Mitzvahs held at Western Hall. (Accessed April 20, 2024.)

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Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1997.

Fiske, Gavriel . "Mass bar mitzvahs held at Western Wall." The Times of Israel.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/mass-bar-mitzvahs-held-at-western-wall/ (accessed April

20, 2012).

Langer, Lawrence. "Gendered Suffering?." In Women in the Holocaust. ed. Dalia Ofer.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. .

Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: the Nazi assault on humanity. trans. S. J.

Woolf. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Lock, Gutman . "Tefillin After 72 Years - Contemporary Voices." Tefillin After 72 Years

- Contemporary Voices.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1255791/jewish/Tefillin-After-72-

Years.htm (accessed April 17, 2014).

Milton, Sybil. "Women's Survival Skills." In The Holocaust: problems and

perspectives of interpretation. 3rd ed. ed. by Donald L. Niewyk. Lexington, Mass.:

D.C. Heath, 1992. 119-125.

Mindel, Nissan. "For the Sake of Tefillin." Chabad.org. Kehot Publication Society

Brooklyn, NY. Web.

<http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/514105/jewish/For-the-Sake-of-

Tefillin.htm>. (accessed April 2, 2014)

Shapiro, Debbie . "Tefillin in Hell." aish.com.

http://www.aish.com/ho/p/Tefillin_in_Hell.html (accessed April 18, 2014).

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Tilles, Yerachmiel. "The Other Side of the Prayerbook." The Other Side of the

Prayerbook - Contemporary Voices. Chabad.org.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/245721/jewish/The-Other-Side-of-

the-Prayerbook.htm (accessed April 19, 2014).

Figures

Fig. 1. Tefillin Saved by an Escapee From the Warsaw Ghetto. United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum Photo Achieves #2003.418.2 a-b. United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Michael Garber.

Fig. 2. Members of the Bnai Akiva religious Zionist youth movement, wearing tefillin,

recite their morning prayers next to a haystack. United States Holocaust Memorial

Museum Photo Archives #34958. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

Courtesy of Toni Susskind Weber.

Notes on Sources from the Internet

I have used both Chabad.org and Aish.com for this paper. I view these as reliable

sources, because they are Jewish livestyle sites, dedicated to promoting Jewish

live and their particular group’s philosophy. If anything, I think these site are

biased towards the Jews, which can be a shortcoming in and of itself.

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