Researchers deduce true color of ancient tefillin cases in Second Temple period (2024)

"Although according to the Halacha Lemoshe Misinai there is no requirement for the Batim to be black, nevertheless it is a Mitzvah" Shulchan Aruch Harav website

In Late Second Temple times about 2,000 years ago, the small leather cases housing tefillin were not dyed black as is customary today, according to an analysis published Thursday in PLOS ONE.

The ember hue of the shriveled ancient phylacteries discovered in a cave near Qumran in 1949 was due to natural processes, not dyeing, writes the team led by Prof. Yonatan Adler of Ariel University, with Ilit Cohen Ofri and Yonah Maor of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Theresa Emmerich Kamper of England's University of Exeter and Iddo Pinkas of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Tefillin contain tiny parchment scrolls inscribed with biblical verses and are worn – one on the head and one on the forearm – during morning prayers. Today, a quick internet search finds instructions for how to don them, specifying that the black face of the straps and cases should face outward.

But need they be black? Tests the team ran on the ancient cases, which weren't black or blackened per se, just a very dark color, showed they hadn't been dyed as assumed, Adler said in the IAA statement.

"Minor water leakage into the caves over the 2,000 years the artifacts have been there could have accelerated the leather aging process. In the past, we have found that some of the Dead Sea Scrolls have also undergone a similar process, which unfortunately has caused the parchment to darken," he added.

The tefillin cases had been discovered in a Judean Desert cave near Qumran, where the first Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Subsequently, more (and more scroll fragments) were found in other caves near Qumran, in the Wadi Murabba'at "Cave of Horrors" and in Nahal Tze'elim.

All were dated to the same period as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the late Second Temple period or Roman period some 2,000 years ago, the IAA said. Some look quite black.

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Their deduction that the leather darkened naturally after all was based on not finding any chemical traces of known dyes. "In ancient times, there were two main methods for dyeing leather black. The first method used carbon-based materials – soot or charcoal – to give the leather a black color," explains Cohen Ofri, head of the conservation laboratory at the IAA's Dead Sea Scrolls Unit.

"The second method was based on a chemical reaction between tannin – a complex organic compound found in many plants – and iron oxides. In our tests, we ruled out the possibility that the tefillin cases were dyed black using either of these methods."

Theirs is the first analysis of ancient tefillin color, Adler said. "In some of the ancient tefillin, the leather has a natural brown color. However, in others, the very dark color of the leather was previously thought to be the result of artificial dyeing, which was done to comply with the law that requires the leather of tefillin cases to be black."

Maor of the IAA's analytical laboratory said the color appeared to be the result of natural aging. "Minor water leakage into the caves over the 2,000 years the artifacts have been there could have accelerated the leather aging process. In the past, we have found that some of the Dead Sea Scrolls have also undergone a similar process, which unfortunately has caused the parchment to darken," he said.

One requisite deduction is that tefillin didn't have to be black in Second Temple times, and that the tradition emerged later and achieved the status of mitzvah.

"It is likely that in the beginning, there was no halakhic significance to the color of tefillin," Adler said. "Only at a later period did the rabbis rule that tefillin should be colored black. However, even after this, the halakhic authorities continued to debate whether the requirement to color tefillin cases black was an absolute obligation or merely preferable for aesthetic reasons. It is commonly thought that Jewish law is static and does not develop. Our ongoing research on ancient tefillin shows that the exact opposite is true: Jewish law has always been dynamic. In my view, it is this vibrancy that makes halakha so beautiful."

How many cases have been found from the Second Temple period? Twenty-five, of which the analysis relates to 20, Adler tells Haaretz by phone. "All are much the same size: 17 are black, three are brown."

Black, blackened or very dark? "They're not uniformly black," he clarifies

Quibbling rabbis

All the tefillin in the analysis are from the Roman period; two that might be Bar Kochba period but the rest are from Qumran, Adler says. All feature a very dark, nearly black appearance to the leather.

Whose leather? From goat and sheep chiefly, and possibly some cow. Asked if any of these sources might have had melanin in their skin under their fur, Adler says they do not.

"We analyzed all of them, in different ways. The invasive analyses were only done on one fragment from a case that had little pieces coming off – we were lucky to have them," he says, noting the serendipity. "We used them for the destructive analyses. For the remaining cases we were confined to noninvasive analyses, meaning macroscopic, microscopic and spectroscopic, which enabled us to test use of carbon ink or carbon dye."

None were dyed? "None," he confirms. None were artificially blackened.

When the tradition of the black tefillin case and straps arose is not clear. The Jerusalem Talmud says: "R. Yose b. Bibai taught: [The requirement that] tefillin should be square and black is a law given to Moses at Sinai," Adler explains. But the word "black" appears as a gloss added in the upper margin of the 13th-century manuscript, and so may not be original to the late antique text of the Talmud.

A gloss is an addition after the fact: like a caret in an essay today, where a word is added over the line. "The manuscript is 13th century and the gloss is a bit later," he adds.

So is the blackness of the tefillin case in the Jerusalem Talmud an afterthought?

"It could be that the addition is based on a different manuscript that has since been lost, and it could be an accurate correction based on a correct earlier version of the Jerusalem Talmud. We have very few manuscripts of the Yerushalmi – this is the only full one we have," Adler says. "So we take its glosses seriously. It's not necessarily a correction that is inauthentic."

Therefore, on the basis of the Jerusalem Talmud's correction, one would understand that the cases themselves have to be painted black and that's considered to be a law given to Moses at Sinai. "The Babylonian Talmud says: Rabbi Isaac confines the blackness to the straps, which was a law given to Moses at Sinai," Adler continues.

"The question is, do we say the Babylon Talmud says straps need to be black, which implies that maybe the cases don't really need to be black and that is how Maimonides understood it," he says with a flourish. "But [Maimonides] says: It is a mitzvah for it to be black, for aesthetic reasons."

So, black case closed? Not quite. "Other rabbis say no; the Jerusalem Talmud says the cases themselves must be black as well. There are rabbinic debates."

While the debates continue, the tradition has coalesced around black cases and, very strictly, black straps.

"There is no such thing as a tefillin case that is not black – whether because of the law or for aesthetic purposes, the mitzvah, it's best that way. But they're very careful about the straps being black. Even the smallest chip off – they paint it. Men's tefillin bags today may have a small bottle of black-out tefillin paint. If a little black is chipped out, it doesn't work. The tefillin don't work. This is how rituals work: they have to be just so."

Why black? No explanation is given – just that it was commanded to Moses at Sinai.