It only took until Tuesday.

It wasn’t the Mint Oreos that Naomi brought home from Target, though they didn’t help of course. Or the invitation to join the girls for ice cream in Maplewood. I mean, “choose life,” right? (Deuteronomy 30:19). After all, the vow was not even about sugar.

I made this vow last Shabbat morning, at services. There we were reading about the nazir, and we decided that the real power of the vow made by the nazir is that it was temporary. That he would refrain from something for just a while, and then be done. What, we wondered, might we take on that would serve us well emotionally and spiritually, as a temporary vow? What might we refrain from for one week that would serve us well in some way?

My vow was not about Oreos or ice cream, though given my sweet tooth it could have been. My vow—since you’re wondering—was about refraining from feeling angry at myself for one week. When I run late, when I don’t get to call people back or return their emails, when I give in with a little too much abandon to that sweet tooth. What might it be like to refrain for one week—not from those habits, but from self-recrimination?

That’s what only took until Tuesday. I suppose my public confession is pretty ironic. I’m publicly self-recriminating myself for not privately refraining from self-recriminating myself. Please laugh with me.

Which brings me to the headline of the week: did you see that archeologists found 2,000 year old tefillin in Israel?! You know, those little black boxes that get strapped to the forehead and arm with black leather straps, with the shema and some other lines of Torah inside. You know, that the Chabad guys will sometimes try and get (Jewish-seeming men) to try on. The ones that I and a number of Oheb congregants do lay, solo or when attending weekday morning minyan.

The headline was not actualy about their discovery. The headlines were about the 2,000 year old tefillin not being dyed black which is the only way they are made today, per Jewish law.

What does this have to do with refraining from negative self-talk and temporary vows, though? Well here’s a cool factoid: there are four Torah passages written inside those tefillin boxes. Inside the arm-box, they are all written on one piece of parchment. But on the head-box (get this): each one is written on a teeny tiny piece of parchment, and inside the box are four compartments, and each parchment gets its own little chamber. One compartment in the arm box, four in the head.

We either do something or we don’t. Eat the Oreos, put on the tefillin, say the kind thing or the nasty thing. One compartment on the arm tefillin. But what goes on in our minds is much more complicated. We struggle with the different ideas in our minds, the different voices in our heads. We want to do something but shouldn’t. We did something and regret it. We vow to refrain but the habit is too strong. We are always in a conversation with ourselves.

There is something inspiring about those 2,000 year old tefillin in this context. That they were likely not dyed black is cool evidence that Jewish law morphs over time (I’ve always thought a feminine or queer version would be patent leather, at least, or some bling). That our ancestors wore tefillin, made tefillin, hid them away with their precious texts and objects, is mind-blowing. We are the inheritors of a people who have played with how to be human, how to live a good life, how to struggle with the different voices in our heads and make the best decisions for ourselves. (That they were living in the Land of Israel, at this moment when so many people like to call Jews “colonizers,” also feels important.)

Somehow tefillin became out of vogue with progressive Jews. So yes, as your rabbi I am putting tefillin back into the conversation for us as a community. But more than that: I’m wondering, how does Jewish wisdom help us struggle with our own selves? What are the ways our inner conversations maps onto Jewish practice and ritual?

How might our most ancient Jewish practices—tefillin, prayer, coming together at minyan during the week and/or on shabbat, showing up for one another in caring community and friendship—help us live up to that sense of being b’tzelem elohim, worthy and beautiful and wonderful creatures made in the image of God?

I have no plans to stop the Mint Oreos or ice cream. I also will keep playing with refraining and indulging, laying tefillin and praying, and most of all being with you all in this work of being human, being Jewish, and using all of that toward a life of wisdom.