This is a re-presentation of פרשת עקב תשע״ט.
In this week’s parasha, we have the mitzva of tefillin twice:
והיה לך לאות על ידך וּלְזִכָּרוֹן בין עיניך למען תהיה תורת ה׳ בפיך; כי ביד חזקה הוצאך ה׳ ממצרים׃
והיה לאות על ידכה וּלְטוֹטָפֹת בין עיניך; כי בחזק יד הוציאנו ה׳ ממצרים׃
I want to look at that word, טוֹטָפֹת. What is (or are) a טוֹטָפֹת? The targum is not helpful; it just translates it as תפלין. We know what it is, but what does the word mean?
ותשוון ית פתגמי אלין על לבכון ועל נפשכון ותקטרון יתהון לאת על ידכון ויהון לתפלין בין עיניכון.
The King James English translation describes what it is, but it is still unclear what the word comes from:
Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.
The word appears 2 other times, but only in the same context:
וקשרתם לאות על ידך; והיו לְטֹטָפֹת בין עיניך׃
ושמתם את דברי אלה על לבבכם ועל נפשכם; וקשרתם אתם לאות על ידכם והיו לְטוֹטָפֹת בין עיניכם׃
The hint at its meaning is from the first source of tefillin, where the word is זִכָּרוֹן, and that is one translation cited by Rashi (it’s his second. We will bring the first one later):
ולטוטפת: תפילין…ומנחם חברו עם (יחזקאל כא:ב) והטף אל דרום, (מיכה ב:ו) אל תטיפו, לשון דבור, כמו (לעיל פסוק ט) ולזכרון, שהרואה אותם קשורים בין העינים יזכור הנס וידבר בו.
בֶּן אָדָם שִׂים פָּנֶיךָ דֶּרֶךְ תֵּימָנָה וְהַטֵּף אֶל דָּרוֹם; וְהִנָּבֵא אֶל יַעַר הַשָּׂדֶה נֶגֶב׃
הטף means “direct your words or thoughts”; in this case the frontlet is not decorative but is meant to be a זִכָּרוֹן, something to keep דברי אלה in your mind.
However, Ibn Ezra really doesn’t like that interpretation:
לטוטפות: אין למלה הזאת ריע במקרא. והמכחישים אמרו, שהוא מגזרת (יחזקאל כא:ב) וְהַטֵּף אֶל דָּרוֹם. וזה לא יתכן, כי שרש הטף, ”נטף“, וזה חסר נו״ן וכפול הטי״ת.
He attributes it to המכחישים, ”the deniers“. He is not claiming Rashi is denying anything; he is talking about the Karaites, who denied the nature of תורה שבעל פה:
Karaite Jews do not wear tefillin in any form. According to Karaites, the Biblical passages cited for this practice are metaphorical, and mean to “remember the Torah always and treasure it”. This is because the commandment in scripture is “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart”… “And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for forehead ornaments between thine eyes” (Deuteronomy 6:5,9). Since words cannot be on one’s heart, or bound on one’s hand, the entire passage is understood metaphorically.
So Rashi, who has no issues with Karaites in his community, has no problem with saying that the פשט of טוטפת is “memorial” even though you might argue that it is metaphoric and means “keep these words in mind”, while the דרש expresses the law by which we make that memorial concrete. Rashbam, in his commentary on the לאות על ידך, makes this explicit:
לאות על ידך [ולזכרון בין עיניך]: לפי עומק פשוטו: יהיה לך לזכרון תמיד, כאלו כתוב על ידך. כעין (שיר השירים ח:ו) שִׂימֵנִי כַחוֹתָם עַל לִבֶּךָ כַּחוֹתָם עַל זְרוֹעֶךָ.
Ibn Ezra, on the other hand, had a major problem with the Karaites and does not want even a hint of their heresy in his commentary:
In his Torah commentary, Ibn Ezra quotes Karaite commentators extensively, occasionally even detailing his debates with them…Apparently he was contesting not merely ancient Karaite views that had gained a foothold in various Middle Eastern Jewish communities over several centuries, but active Karaite contemporaries in his native Spain.
That’s all fine, but Rashi actually brings another interpretation first:
ולטוטפת: תפילין, ועל שם שהם ארבעה בתים קרויין טטפת, טט בכתפי שתים, פת באפריקי שתים…
Rashi cites Sanhedrin 4b [the opinion of Rabbi Akiva] that the name totafos was chosen because it alludes to four, the number of the head-tefillin's compartments, since the word טט…means two in Katpi and פת…means two in Afriki, two ancient languages.
Now that is just weird. Why would the Torah use foreign words for tefillin, and why is 2 and 2 so important (and if so, why not just a Katpi or Afriki word for four?). And is Afriki, “African”? It sounds like it, but there’s no single African language. Even more than that, the דרש of two plus two is superfluous. Once we accept that the plural טטפות and the singular זכרון represent the same thing, then we would say that the head-tefillin has multiple scrolls.
ואמר טוטפות ולא אמר ”טוטפת“ בעבור שהם בתים רבים כאשר קבלנו צורתם מן האבות הקדושים שראו הנביאים והקדמונים עושים כן עד משה רבינו.
And the number of scrolls has to be four:
הא דלא דרשינן בתים טובא משום דלא מצינו בתורה כתובים אלא בד׳ פרשיות.
So what’s with these languages? And what languages are they? The Soncino Talmud just transliterates Katpi and Afriki but the footnotes cite the possibility that they mean “Coptic” and “Phyrgian”. Now that means something!
- Coptic
- The latest stage of the Egyptian language…grammatically closely related to Late Egyptian, which was written with Egyptian hieroglyphs.
- Phrygian
- The Indo-European language of the Phrygians, spoken in Asia Minor during Classical Antiquity (c. 8th century BC to 5th century AD). Phrygian is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek and/or Armenian.
So these are actual languages from the descendents of יפת and חם; they are not Semitic languages at all. Why would the Torah use them? The footnotes in the תורת חיים chumash (published by Mossad haRav Kook; I’m not sure who actually wrote the notes) tries to justify this:
אין הפשט שהתורה תדבר בלשון כתפי ובלשון אפריקי, ח״ו לומר כן. אלא טט הוא לשון הקודש, אלא שאין אנו יודעים פרושו, ואמרינן כיון שמצינו בלשון כתפי ואפריקי ש”טט“ הוא שתים ו”פת“ הוא שתים, אמרינן דגם בלשון הקודש הוא כן…כשברא הקב״ה עולמו היה רק לשון הקודש, וכשבלל הקב״ה הלשונות בדור הפלגה בא לשון הקודש גם בשאר הלשונות, אם כן ממילא הוא לשון הקודש הבא בלשון אחר גם כן.
But that’s weak. חז״ל and the מפרשים will occasionally bring other languages to explain rare words, but here the gemara is claiming a mixture of two very different languages. So I’d like a different explanation. If you Google ancient Egyptian and Phrygian, you find a very interesting story:
Now before Psammetichus became king of Egypt [7th century BCE], the Egyptians believed that they were the oldest people on earth…Psammetichus, when he was in no way able to learn by inquiry which people had first come into being, devised a plan by which he took two newborn children of the common people and gave them to a shepherd to bring up among his flocks. He gave instructions that no one was to speak a word in their hearing; they were to stay by themselves in a lonely hut, and in due time the shepherd was to bring goats and give the children their milk and do everything else necessary…because he wanted to hear what speech would first come from the children, when they were past the age of indistinct babbling. And he had his wish; for one day, when the shepherd had done as he was told for two years, both children ran to him stretching out their hands and calling “Bekos!” as he opened the door and entered. When he first heard this, he kept quiet about it; but when, coming often and paying careful attention, he kept hearing this same word, he told his master at last and brought the children into the king’s presence as required. Psammetichus then heard them himself, and asked to what language the word “Bekos” belonged; he found it to be a Phrygian word, signifying bread. Reasoning from this, the Egyptians acknowledged that the Phrygians were older than they.
This is Herodotus, the “father of history”. Every educated person in Tannaic times had read Herodotus. I’m sure רבי עקיבא knew Herodotus, and Herodotus says that Coptic and Phrygian are the most ancient languages.
Saul Lieberman has shown that various aspects of Greco-Roman culture were pervasive not only among more Hellenized Jews of the first centuries CE, but that even “the Rabbis of Palestine were familiar with the fashionable style of the civilized world of that time. Many of them were highly educated in Greek literature…They spoke to the people in their language and in their style.”
So I have a hypothesis. רבי עקיבא faced his own version of Ibn Ezra’s Karaites; the Sadducees and those who denied the תורה שבעל פה lost their prominence after the destruction of the בית המקדש, but the intellectual attraction of Greco-Roman culture was only growing.
I would argue that טט בכתפי שתים, פת באפריקי שתים is not meant to be a halachic דרש (and notably Rashi does not call it that) but a form of apologetics, a way of arguing that the Torah is as ancient as any of the Herodotean histories. The הלכה ממשה מסיני doesn’t rely on etymology, but it’s a way of attracting attention from those who have abandoned it.