To the Editor:
I suppose I am too young—I am ten years old—to be interested in the articles in your magazine, but I do like to read your poems.
In your March issue, I read “Tailor Boys” and I noticed something wrong. I know that Jews never put on phylacteries on Sabbath morning, so they wouldn’t be carrying them to the synagogue. The sort of pious Jews that the poet talks about would not carry anything on the Sabbath anyway.
Freyda Kraus
Chicago, Illinois
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Mr. Jacob Sloan, who translated the poem, states: the word in the original poem is tfilin zek, and refers to the bags in which both phylacteries and prayer-shawls were either left in the synagogue on the preceding evening or, in the smaller town where this was not feasible, were carried to prayer.
Mr. Kalman Heisler, the author, states: “In my town, the bags were always referred to as ‘phylactery bags’ even when used solely for the carrying of the prayer-shawl on the Sabbath. There are many possible explanations for this local peculiarity, but I can vouch for its authenticity as a fact.”
Rabbi Louis Finkelstein of the Jewish Theological Seminary, when called upon to moderate, said: “The phylactery bag was a separate and smaller bag contained within the larger bag for the prayer-shawl. While the bag containing the prayer-shawl may have been carried, in certain places, on the Sabbath, the phylactery bag would certainly have been left at home. However, local and regional peculiarities of nomenclature always exist and, as in this case, give rise to confusion. It is forbidden, generally speaking, to carry anything out of the house or in the streets on the Sabbath day. However, in various European cities, the Jewish community sets up an erub, which, from the point of view of Jewish ritual, turns the whole city into a single household, and under those circumstances, it is, of course, permitted to carry things on the Sabbath. An erub is a wall or fence, or even a wire or rope, which serves as an enclosure for a locality marking it off from the world at large.”—Ed.
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