Hanochas Tefilin

We don't have pictures yet.

Meishe said the Ma'amar like a pro. Fast and without any mistakes. And then like a pro he took everyone's congratulations as if the whole thing was no big deal.
Then Mendy (Tatty to you!) said a Dvar Torah: (These are freely quoted and may not be exact.)

"In the good ol' days the Bar Mitzva was the time when kids out of town would get their first connection with the Rebbe because that would be the first letter the Rebbe would send to them. Some people got letters before and the kids in town "would taste from the Eitz Hachayim every day" but for us in golus in Eretz Yisroel that was for every kid the first kesher with the Rebbe."

Uncle Chaim Dovid responded to this dvar Torah with a story about Yossi Rosenblum:
"When Yossi my eidim got his letter from the Rebbe for his bar mitzva he was unsatisfied because he felt the letter wasn't personal, the secretary had a bunch of papers with the nusach of the letter on them and the Rebbe would just sign the letter and they would send it. There was no personal attention given.
"Then Yossi went into the Rebbe for the Yechidus Klali of course together with all the other Bar Mitzvah Bochurim. And Yossi had a place very near to where the Rebbe was sitting. Suddenly the Rebbe turned to him and asked, "Hostu Bakumen mine briv?" (Did you receive my letter?)
Of course that was answer enough.

Then a guest from South Africa, Kopple Bocher said another story:
There was a big Rov in SA who received a letter from the Rebbe, a michtav klali prati. And this Rov was a little belittled because he felt about his letter as Yossi had felt about his.
So he wrote a letter to the Rebbe's office, a complaint - sort of.
The Rebbe's answer was twofold: Not everyone gets a michtav klali prati, and you are the only one who got it in your area. Also when I write a michtav klali prati that "where I'm kuching and I'm surprised that you can't kuch in what I'm Kuching in."

Then Rabbi Yitzchok Meir Gurarie of Montreal Canada said a dvar Torah, the same Dvar Torah he tells to every Bar Mitzva Bochur: (In short)
There are only three mitzvos that the Alter Rebbe writes in the siddur that we must have kavana when we do them- Tzitzis, Sukkah and Teffilin. The Rebbe points out that the Kavana for those mitzvos are not just a nice kavana to have while you do the mitzva, its actually an necessary part of the mitzva itself and if you do the mitzvah without the kavana you might not have fulfilled the mitzvah at all.

"And this is the simple meaning of the kavana as it is written in the siddur: (The italics are a direct quote and the regular letters are the pirush)
We must bare in mind when we put on Tefillin that Hashem commanded us to write these four parshios don't look only at the boxes of the Tefillin pay attention to the parshios that are inside them in which are described Hashem's oneness that would be the first two parshios shma and vehaya which describe how there is no god or governing power other than Hashem and that He has the power to do both above and below in case you were thinking that only in heaven Hashem's got the power but down here on earth we can pretty much do as we please, here's a reality check- both above and below Hashem can do as he pleases and that would be the other two parshios, the ones about yetzias mitzrayim. Now that we have and understand the parshios we've got to knock them into our heads and hearts and symbolic of that He commanded us to place them on our arms next to our hearts and on our heads next to our minds to not only know all this in our minds but to actually knock it into our psyches forever! So we wear these boxes in order to give over remember give over - key word here our soul which is in the head and our thoughts which are in the heart to Him.

"Now why is the main focus of a Bar mitzvah on the Teffilin? The boy has just become responsible for the whole Torah 'vos epess Teffilin'?
It is for the same reason that the last two parshios mention teffilin (when Teffilin would seem to have no connection to them). Teffilin is like the whole Torah in a nutshell. Everything in Torah is in the Teffilin and every thing in the Torah ahs the inyan of Teffilin -giving ourselves over to Hashem- in them."

And then we left.