One day a man named Yoav called me up and told me: “We are a secular family living in Kibbutz Regavim, and we provide our children with a liberal-secular education, nothing to do with Judaism. I don’t know why, but our son, 16 years old, has been saying for a while that he wants to start putting on tefillin – and he would like us to help him find a pair.” Yoav wished to make it quite clear: “This did not come from us, it’s not our style at all.”

I asked him: “So what happened to cause him to want to wear tefillin?” Yoav answered, “I don’t really know, and even my son doesn’t know exactly; he just says that he has an inner voice calling him to wear tefillin…”

When I asked him how I could help, Yoav said, “Though we’re not at all religious, it’s important to me to respect my son’s wishes. The truth is that we’re not poor, but I also don’t want to spend thousands of shekels on tefillin. So I’m trying to find tefillin in other ways.”

I told him that I would certainly be very happy to help – and within a few days, Yoav’s son received a special pair of tefillin. He was thrilled, and with thanks to G-d, he immediately began wearing them daily.