“... But the tallit was not God’s only ritual accessory. Some rabbis also claimed God wore tefillin—small pouches or boxes containing tiny scrolls bearing holy words found in portions of Exodus and Deuteronomy. Fixed to the head and the left arm (or the right for left-handed people), they appear to have been in use among Jewish groups from as early as the second century BCE, and are still worn in prayer by Jewish men (and, increasingly, some women) today. These sacred objects manifest obedience to one of the most authoritative of divine instructions in the book of Deuteronomy—an instruction which itself appears in one of the tiny scrolls contained in the tefillin boxes... According to teaching passed on by the fourth-century CE Rabbi Avin, evidence indicating that God wore tefillin was to be found in selected verses in Deuteronomy, Isaiah and the Psalms... To a reader unfamiliar with the interpretative gymnastics of rabbinic scriptural exposition, Rabbi Avin’s argument looks impenetrably esoteric. But it is the dynamic corporeal image of God’s body, conjured by the rabbi’s comfortable insistence that God wears tefillin, that is more striking. It is highly unlikely the rabbis of antiquity would have imagined these sacred objects magically appearing on God’s body in a sudden blinding flash or a mysterious puff of smoke. Instead, they naturally assumed that God did what they did: he bound a pouch containing a portion of the Torah onto his upper arm with a long strip of leather, winding the strap down his arm and around his hand. ...”