The Left-Handed Kesher
Question: The kesher of tefillin shel yad needs to be arranged as a yud facing the heart (illustration 17).119 However, when arranging the kesher for a left-handed person who lays tefillin on his right arm, I have been told that this becomes a challenge and that there are varying opinions how it should be done. My son is left-handed and his bar mitzvah is coming soon, please explain the issues involved and what should be done about it.
Discussion: You are correct that arranging the kesher for a left-handed person presents a unique challenge. Indeed, the kesher is meant to be shaped as a yud and placed on the inside of the bayis adjacent to the body. For left-handed tefillin this is impossible to achieve in the traditional manner since the kesher will either show up as inside-out or upside-down.
This leaves two possibilities.
1. A regular yud can indeed be created and affixed either horizontally with the leg of the yud facing the bayis (illustration 18), or upside-down with the leg of the yud facing upward and the head at the bottom (illustration 19).
2. A yud can be created with the leg on the left side rather than the right (illustration 20).
Question: Which way is the more accepted tradition?
Discussion: It is remarkable to note that until recently, there has been no discussion found in the Poskim instructing us how to best create a kesher for lefties. Some seforim120 even report that when they investigated how sofrim made the kesher in Yerushalayim in the times of HaRav Yehoshua Leib Diskin and HaRav Shmuel Salant,121 they were told that “There was no minhag – because it was not so common to have lefties!” Apparently in those days all left-handed children were trained to use their right hand instead…
Although some have the custom to make the kesher in accordance with the second option listed above, it seems clear that for one who has no particular reason to do so, the first option is preferable.122
The reason for this is simply because a yud with the leg on the left is not a yud, while a yud which is affixed (even) with the leg facing up rather than down is no less a yud than a regular yud. Only the placement is unusual, which does not present any particular cause for concern.
There are those123 who insist that in this situation, the kesher must be affixed in the horizontal manner rather than upside-down. However, since we find no mention of such a stringency in earlier Poskim, it seems that one need not be careful about this and may even make the kesher upside-down.124
119 27:2.
120 HaRav Yaakov Adess in his kuntreis on this topic, printed in Divrei Ya’akov, Be’inyanei Halachah 1, pg. 635.
121 When one refers to “minhag Yerushalayim,” one is usually referring to a custom practiced by one of these two great gedolim – and to the “Perushim” community in Yerushalayim founded by the talmidim of the Vilna Gaon.
122 Tefillah LeMoshe 17:33; Devar Halachah, Vol. II, pg. 122.
123 Tefillah LeMoshe mentions this three times in Volume 2. On pg. 368, illustration 195; pg. 381, illustration 280; and on pg. 401, footnote 64, where he goes so far as to say that one who affixes the kesher in this manner is not yotzei the mitzvah.
124 Additionally, there is insufficient support to the claim that an upside-down kesher would be problematic in the source he cites.
Furthermore, when making the kesher horizontally, as per the Tefillah LeMoshe, only the leg of the yud touches the ketzitzah, while when making the yud upside-down, the entire body and leg of the yud is snug against the ketzitzah.
See also Minchas Yitzchak IX:3, who discusses how to make the kesher for left-handed people and mentions at the very end that the Steipler Gaon made a kesher like the second option we presented – but cut a yud into the leather as well.
See Rav Adess’s kuntreis on the kesher for lefties where he discusses the entire subject at great length.