This week’s parsha contains two of the four chapters that are contained within our Tephillin. [Shemos 13:1-16] The last pasuk [verse] of the second of those two chapters concludes Parshas Bo: “And it shall be a sign upon your arm, and for ‘totofos’ between your eyes, for with a strong hand Hashem removed us from Egypt.”
Rashi explains that the word ‘totofos’ means Tephillin. The head Tephillin are so called because they consist of four chambers (one for each of the four chapters contained therein). Rashi references the Gemara [Sanhedrin 4b] that analyzes the etymology of the word ‘totofos’: “Tat” in the Kaspi language means two and ‘Pas’ in the Afriki language means two. This is how we know that ‘totofos’ (two plus two) equals the four-chambered head Tephillin.
This is a difficult Gemara. Why does the Torah use such an oblique fashion to tell us the number of chambers in the Head Tephillin? The Torah should have at least chosen a word that means four (albeit in another language). Why “two plus two”?
Rav Dovid Cohen suggests a very novel approach to this problem: What are the four sections that we insert into the Tephillin? The first two are “Kadesh” [Sanctify] and “v’haya ki yevi’acha” [and it will be when He will bring you] that are located in Parshas Bo. The second two are “Shma” [Hear] and “v’haya im shamoa” [and it will be if you will hearken] which are located in the Parshiyos of V’Eschanan and Ekev, respectively.
The problem is that the Parshiyos of V’Eschanan and Ekev, like the rest of the Book of Devorim, were spoken during the fortieth year of the Jews’ sojourn in the desert. So what did the Jews put in their Tephillin during the forty years in the desert?
There are two possible answers to this question. Either they did not wear Tephillin for the first forty years in the wilderness (which Rav Dovid Cohen does not want to accept) or they in fact wore Tephillin in the desert that only had the two sections mentioned in the book of Shemos (Kadesh and v’haya ki yevi’acha). Therefore, it makes sense why the pasuk uses the word totofos, which, as explained, alludes to a two plus two equations. The explanation for the two plus two equation is that at one time Tephillin had two chapters and then two more were added later (in the fortieth year of their traveling), so that it ultimately contained four chapters.
