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The Jewish Press web article “New Study Suggests Some Tefillin Boxes Were Not Colored Black 2,000 Years Ago” (June 14) is quite provocative from the standpoint of Jewish law. Based on an analysis of tefillin boxes dating to the end of the Second Temple era (approximately 2,000 years ago), researchers at Ariel University have concluded that “the law requiring tefillin to be made black may not have been in place in the Second Temple period.” Rather, says Professor Yonatan Adler, the study leader, “Only at a later period did the rabbis rule that tefillin should be colored black.” He adds:...

Research shows that people who wear tefillin, leather bands used in a Jewish religious practice which involves the tight wrapping of an arm with the bands, may receive cardiovascular health benefits. The study suggests those benefits are the result of ischemic or reduced blood flow preconditioning which produces protection from the damage caused by heart attacks. The use of tefillin dates back to scriptural commandments urging the faithful followers to comply with religious law and to "bind them as a sign upon your arm." Rubinstein says the binding of the arm and the discomfort users often report may serve as...

They were hidden inside some phylacteries discovered during some excavations sixty years ago but never opened. The news was announced at a conference at the Faculty of Theology in Lugano. . . So there are now nine Qumran scrolls to keep experts busy. The discovery was made very recently and was announced a few days ago at the international research seminar. . . “The new discovery shows that the research being carried out on the Qumran is not complete yet. There are a thousand reasons, especially political ones, why the material unearthed is still being studied and why the the...

An archaeologist says he discovered nine tiny scrolls with biblical text from the Qumran caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed, according to news reports. The newfound scrolls, which date back to about 2,000 years ago, were hidden inside three leather tefillin cases, also known as phylacteries, traditionally carried by observant Jewish men, Italian news agency Ansa Mediterranean reported. These cases were first pulled out of the caves in the 1950s, but their contents apparently were not examined until now....

(IsraelNN.com) A plane headed from LaGuardia Airport to Louisville made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport Thursday morning because a 17 year old man on a plane was praying with tefillin, or phylacteries. According to Fox News, the man was questioned by airline personnel, who “didn't get answers to satisfy them” and diverted the plane to Philadelphia.

A late night Kassam rocket attack by Palestinian militants in Gaza – described as the one of the worst in years – hit outside a tent where soldiers were sleeping inside an Israeli Defense Force basic training camp in Zikim, located between Gaza and Ashkelon to the north. According to reports by the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Achronot, the Sept. 10 rocket strike injured 67 soldiers, both men and women, four seriously and seven moderately. One of the soldiers, a Chabad-Lubavitch Chassid who is also a paramedic for the Magen David Adom rescue service, ran quickly to the scene where...

TEL AVIV – A Florida teenager lying in a coma here after being critically injured last week in a suicide bombing opened his eyes for the first time since the attack yesterday just as his rabbi donned him with teffillin, or Jewish prayer phylacteries. Daniel Wultz, 16, was one of over 60 people injured in last Monday's attack in which a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded section of Tel Aviv as Israelis celebrated the fifth day of the Passover holiday. The blast ripped through a falafel restaurant just outside the city's old central bus station, killing...