This past week I took the boys to Bet El for a tour of the tefillin factory there and to get tefillin for their bar-mitzvahs (which will be בעזרת ה, in a little over a year.) A pair of tefillin takes a long time to make so we arranged it ahead of time that we could be there when they were inserting the parchments (the “parshiot”) into the actual tefillin. After that, it will take a few more weeks to finish them before they can be picked up.  As I told my boys, I have tefillin, my Dad has tefillin, his Dad had them as well, but they (my boys) are the first generation in a very long time in our family to have the merit to be able to see the parchments going into their own pair of tefillin, and to do this all in the Land of Israel.  

The tefillin
Akiva, who was putting the parchments inside
there are four different sections (parshiot). In the head one, each one is separate. This is the most famous (its the third of four parshiot), the Shema.
In the arm one, they are all written on a single parchment. Here it is all rolled up. He’s just finishing tying it
Then he wraps it in a blank piece of parchment so it will slide in easier and so you can pull it out if you ever needed to.
like so. this is the arm one, with all the sections on a single scroll.
this is the head one, with the four separate compartments for the four separate scrolls.
two of the four are in so far…
after rolling each scroll, you have to peel back the edge to look at the letters so make sure you put it in “right side up.”
This is a work station where they paint them
and this is where they spray paint them

Bet El is the place where Yaakov (Jacob) had his famous dream of the ladder with the angels going up and down.  This was the last place he stopped to camp for the night as he was running away from his brother Esav (Esau), leaving Israel (Canaan at the time) to go to his uncle’s home, where he would end up marrying both Leah and Rachel eventually.  When he awoke from that dream, he named the place Bet El, meaning “house of God.” The modern city of Bet El is right near the archeological site where they think this even occurred, so after the tefillin factory we spent some time at that site.  It is up on a hill overlooking the surrounding mountains, and they have signs along the path which have the verses from the Bible (in Hebrew and English) that recount the story as you walk toward the site.  

Other than the signs, its very natural.  Its a different kind of a thing to be at a place like this out in nature.  Most of the biblical tourist areas in Israel are ruins of buildings, old stones, etc.  And those are certainly cool and meaningful and interesting,  But there’s something very moving, very close, very natural, about being just out in nature where such a famous event occurred and to just see the landscape as it might have been then.  They have a symbolic ring of 12 stones, like the 12 stones that Yaakov put under him that night when he had the dream, and there’s the ruins of a very small old mosque and church, but other than that its just out in nature.  

In the Hebrew it says “site of the dream of Yaakov”
there are some flat ruins of an ancient Israelite fortress from first temple times. The views up there are amazing
the symbolic 12 stones with the ruins of the old church and mosque
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