Bais HaVaad on the Parsha, Parshas Eikev

Not Right

July 30, 2026

Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Dayan Yosef Greenwald

And you shall place these words of Mine upon your heart and upon your soul, and you shall tie them as a sign on your arm (yedchem), and they shall be as ornaments between your eyes.

Dvarim 11:18

The Torah does not say explicitly on which arm tfillin are to be placed. There are two sources for the halacha that they go on the left. The first is that “yadcha” (in Parshas Va’es’chanan, referring to tfillin) alludes to yad keihah, the weak arm. The second is that the pasuk says tfillin go upon the heart, which is on the left side.

What about a left-handed person, whose right arm is the weak one? According to the Me’iri (Shabbos 103a), he puts tfillin on his left like everyone else. (He notes that this is different from other halachos that require the right hand, where a lefty uses his left.) A similar position is taken by the mekubalim (Sha’arei Teshuvah O.C. 27:11). This is very difficult to understand, as the Gemara (Menachos 37a) states explicitly that a left-handed man places tfillin on his right arm, his own yad keihah.

Perhaps one must explain the Me’iri and the mekubalim to be referring to an ambidextrous person, who does not have a yad keihah, and saying that he should follow the secondary source and place his tfillin opposite his heart, on his left.