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PHILLIP HOLLAND started putting on tefilin on a Wednesday and had his barmitzvah the next Shabbat.
So far, so normal — it’s the general custom to start putting on tefilin the week of your barmitzvah.
But Mr Holland, from North London, is 50 years old — and both his tefilinwearing and his barmitzvah came about as a result of a new app created by Chabad Lubavitch chassidim.
Wrapp, which is available for Apple and Android, allows people looking to put on tefilin to search for people nearby who are able to help them do so.
Launched last month by members of Chabad in New York, the app is hoping to get 10,000 people to sign up worldwide as tefilin providers. So far, more than 5,000 have signed up, including almost 100 in the UK.
Speaking to the JC, Mr Holland said he had been at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park earlier this month when he began chatting to some Jewish people.
“I said I was Jewish, and they said ‘have you ever wrapped tefilin?’.
“I said no. They said, ‘well you did at your barmitzvah’. I said I never had a barmitzvah and I am from an extremely secular family.
“They said why don’t I download the app? So I downloaded it. I was working from home a few days later and thought let’s try it and see what happens.
“An hour later I got a call from Rabbi Shmuel Lew and he said he was sending somebody over — they were at my house an hour later.”
In 1967, just prior to the Six Day War, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, launched a campaign to encourage secular Jews to put on tefilin.
More than 50 years later, the campaign is still going strong, including now in app form.
Rabbi Lew, who is registered as a provider on Wrapp, said he received the tefilin request on his phone. He explained: “You’re like an Uber driver, you can accept or not accept.”
He was unable to make it due to a prior arrangement, but he managed to find someone who could and sent Rabbi Mendel Raskin, head of a Lubavitch shul in Stamford Hill.
The Shabbat after his Hyde Park experience, Mr Phillips celebrated his belated barmitzvah at Leytonstone and Wanstead Synagogue in East London.
Rabbi Lew explained: “Mr Phillips was so inspired putting on the tefilin that he decided he wants to buy a pair and put them on regularly.”
Lubavitch will be loaning Mr Phillips a pair of tefilin in the meantime.
“He actually went on eBay to bid for a pair of tefilin, but we advised him that you don’t know what you’re going to get there. So we’re going to lend him a pair,” Rabbi Lew said.