I work as a scribe, a sofer stam, writing parshiyos of tefillin. I’ve been in the field for ten years, and this is the first time a story like this has happened to me.
To make sure that I complete my work on time, when someone orders parshiyos for a bar mitzvah bachur, I mark on my calendar that the boy’s father is to receive the tefillin a month before the bar mitzvah. Baruch Hashem, things generally work out and everyone is pleased.
A month ago, I started writing tefillin parshiyos for a bar mitzvah bachur whose bar mitzvah is to take place in another two months. Logic dictated that I would have them ready on time, but Hashem had other plans for me. I fell ill with a severe case of the flu and was glued to my bed, and I did not manage to write the parshiyos. A few days before they were to be ready, the father called and asked me, “How’s it going?”
I answered sheepishly that I hadn’t been able to write the parshiyos. I explained that I had been ill, that the circumstances were beyond my control, and I simply hadn’t gotten to it, for a justifiable reason.
For a young boy learning in cheder, a melamed could accept a late note for a “justifiable reason,” but in life, these notes are worthless. When someone orders tefillin, the klaf is the main point of interest, and if it is empty, no justifiable reason will help.
“Look,” the father said, “my son davens to Hashem every day to be able to lay his very own tefillin even before his bar mitzvah.”
I told him I would make the effort to get him tefillin, and I went to check if I had something in stock. I found parshiyos that were written in ksav Beis Yosef. I suggested that the bachur take these tefillin for now, and when I’d finish writing the parshiyos in ksav ha’Ari, I would exchange them for him.
The father wanted to agree to this, but literally a moment before I put the parshiyos into the batim, he called and told me the bachur was determined to have parshiyos that were ksav Arizal from the very first time he would wear them. He even started talking about looking for a different sofer, and this mattered to me, a lot.
I thought, From where will my help come? I asked Hashem to send me the solution, and suddenly I recalled that one of my colleagues had a set of my tefillin with ksav Arizal parshiyos. He was supposed to sell them and give me a portion of the proceeds, but in the meantime that hadn’t happened.
I called him and asked if he still had the tefillin.
“Yes,” he said dryly.
“Can you return them to me?”
My friend was not excited about returning the tefillin. He’d planned on selling them at a certain stage, but when I explained the urgency of the matter, he agreed. These were tefillin I had written long ago – four years ago. It was truly strange that the tefillin had not been sold in all that time.
I opened the battim to check the kesav and per-
