Menachot — the Talmud on the boxes

A tractate of the Talmud principally about meal-offerings — flour, oil and frankincense in the Temple — which contains, in its third and fourth chapters, very nearly everything the tradition knows about tefillin. 34a–37b is the passage: what a box is, how many compartments, which arm and why, how high on the head, the knot, what happens if one is lost, what order they go on and come off in.

It is the second Talmud node in this part of the house, and it is here for the reason the first one was. This is a law-court transcript, not a mystical text. The arguments are about the spelling of yadcha and the meaning of totafot and what may be inferred from a comparison with another commandment — the same register in which the tractate discusses how finely to sift flour. Everything sefirotic said about tefillin anywhere is a reading laid over this, several centuries later, and this app keeps them apart on the page.

Why tefillin ended up in a tractate about meal-offerings is itself characteristic: the Talmud organises by association and digression, and the material sits where the discussion arrived at it.