- Q. Dear Rov Shlit’a. As you know my father A.H. passed away last month. He left me a beautiful pair of Tefilin that he spend a lot on them, and they are very mehudar in many ways. There is only one problem, they are very big (He had greater head than me). How big can the Tefilin be?
A. There is no official Halachic maximum size for tefilin.
If too large , it is often problematic to keep the head tefilin in the right place, and not have them hanging of the head. We know that the Talmud in Eruvin 95b says that there is room for 2 pair of tefilin on one's head, inferring that their tefilin were relatively small.
Similarly the ancient tefilin from 2,000 years ago, found by archeologists in the Judean desert, were very small.
The Chasidim of Chabad have a custom to buy large tfilin, but as above, there are halachic advantages and disadvantages in doing so.
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as revised by Horav Yaakov Hirschman, Horav Dovid Pam, Horav Aharon Miller, Horav Chanoch Ehrentreu and Horav Kalman Ochs Shlit’a.
Important Numbers
