Why did the Rabbi choose specifically to adopt the Sephardic custom of refraining from putting on tefillin on Hol HaMoed? What’s wrong with the Ashkenazic custom?

That was the custom in our place and in the other places I lived. That is how the overwhelming majority of the public conducts itself, Ashkenazim too.

Benjamin,
From my father I learned that in order to free up space in one’s mind for the important things, it is worthwhile to acquire habits in the unimportant things. A custom is just another habit in unimportant matters that frees up room for important matters. And from Leo Strauss I learned that it is better for the philosopher to observe social conventions in order to gain freedom from society in essential matters. And if the Rabbi puts on tefillin on Hol HaMoed, he will socially mark himself out at the expense of the essential things.

By the way, the ones who established Ashkenazic customs in the Land of Israel were the disciples of the Vilna Gaon, and since they were the first to leave the old city walls and establish settlements, they were also the ones who determined what would or would not be accepted, with their main tool for imposing their view being Rabbi Tukachinsky’s calendar. Every additional Ashkenazic community established in the Land of Israel tried to find out what the local custom was and asked for his calendar, and that is how the views of the Vilna Gaon’s disciples were imposed on the Ashkenazim of the Land of Israel (priestly blessing every day, putting on tefillin on Hol HaMoed, not reciting kiddush in the synagogue, Hallel in the synagogue on the night of Passover, and so on). The Rabbi has no real significance in this matter.

Dear Y.D., your father is a very wise man, but putting on tefillin on Hol HaMoed is important and one should make room in one’s mind for it. Your comments about the disciples of the Vilna Gaon and the custom trailing after them are plainly inaccurate; no community tried to determine the custom in the Land of Israel (except perhaps with regard to the Sabbatical year), the accepted Jewish law was known to everyone. Since we are dealing with a Torah-level commandment, it is astonishing how a newly introduced kabbalistic custom could override it; even more astonishing in the case of Rabbi Michi, who is careful not to stumble over customs that have no source, that he did not pay attention to such simple points as these.
Also, I would direct my learned friends to the fact that entire communities that relocate do not change their customs; see, for example, the Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities of Hamburg, and similarly the communities of Amsterdam.

There is not the slightest problem with a custom that has no source. Every custom has no source, since it starts somehow. If every custom had a source, then all customs would be a tradition from Sinai. The problem is a foolish custom, not a custom with no source.
And another thing: you are mixing up custom with a custom of halakhic ruling. These are two utterly different things.
As for communities that relocate not changing their custom, I don’t see how that is relevant here. That is a result of the transition from the custom of the place (in Talmudic times) to an ethnic custom (in our times, because people’s mobility drains the geographic place of its significance).

Therefore, all literature devoted to investigating customs is, in my view, worthless. Historical amusements with no significance whatsoever.

With God’s help, 26 Elul 5780

To B.G. – Greetings,

The reasoning for not putting on tefillin on Hol HaMoed is discussed in Tosafot (Eruvin 96), and the Rashba also ruled (in his responsa, part 1, no. 690) that one should not put on tefillin on Hol HaMoed, since Hol HaMoed too, on which there is a partial Torah prohibition of labor, is called a sign.

It seems that בעקבות the Rashba’s ruling, the custom spread throughout all of Spain (overriding the Rosh’s ruling that one should put them on), and the words of the Zohar merely helped the Rashba’s ruling gain acceptance and spread from Catalonia to all of Spain. The Rashba was a kabbalist and may perhaps have known the Book of the Zohar, but nowhere do we find that Kabbalah and the Zohar served as a consideration in his halakhic ruling.

See the WikiSugya entry on “Tefillin on Hol HaMoed,” and the article by Rabbi Prof. Neriah Guttel, “Tefillin on Hol HaMoed – From Jewish law to Kabbalah and Back to Jewish law,” on the Orot Israel College website.

Best regards, S.Tz.

Rabbi Michi, the custom in Hungary was to put on tefillin on Hol HaMoed, so what did the Rabbi mean by “that was the custom in our place”?
Dear S.Tz., greetings and blessings. The sources are simple and well known, but you are mistaken. The custom spread because of the Zohar, not because of the Rashba. Note well: the simple and widespread custom in Spain, until the expulsion, was to put on tefillin on Hol HaMoed!

To B.G. – Greetings,

When it is mentioned in the literature that until the expulsion “Spain” did such-and-such, the meaning is Castile, not Catalonia and Aragon, which were entirely separate kingdoms until the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. Thus Nachmanides of Girona calls Maimonides “Rabbi Moshe the Spaniard.”

It is explained in the Beit Yosef that in Spain [= in Castile] the custom was to put on tefillin following the ruling of the Rosh, who came from Ashkenaz and was the rabbi of Toledo, the capital of Castile.

It stands to reason that Catalonia and Aragon did not put on tefillin on Hol HaMoed, in accordance with the ruling of the great halakhic decisor of Catalonian Jewry, the Rashba, and the words of the Zohar led to the broader acceptance of the Rashba’s ruling in Castile as well, pushing aside the Rosh’s ruling.
,
Best regards, S.Tz.

I wonder whether in the village of “Gorlín” on the French-German border they followed, in the Middle Ages, the view of our French masters, the Tosafists, and did not put on tefillin on Hol HaMoed, or whether they followed the Ashkenazic halakhic authorities and did put them on 🙂

S.Tz., you repeated what I already said above, so more power to you. I explicitly wrote “Spain”… This harmful phenomenon spread among the Sephardim (and the Ashkenazim) with the spread of the Zohar, as appears in the holy books. There is no dispute about this, nor even the slightest doubt of doubts…

Benjamin, I don’t understand your insistence. I don’t recall ever having been in Hungary, and that is not my place. I’m not particularly interested in what they did in Hungary.

So what did the Rabbi mean by “that was the custom in our place”? Where is this “our place,” and why should the Rabbi care what they did there?
What difference does that argument make to the issue of putting on tefillin on Hol HaMoed?

I see that you understood that my place is Hungary? If so, you should update my Wikipedia entry.
I suggest you think it through yourself. I have no doubt you’ll be able to answer yourself (including the earlier questions here).

With God’s help, 27 Elul 5780

This time Benjamin is right, because the time has come for the prophet’s vision to be fulfilled: in those days there will be neither hunger for bread nor thirst for water, but only to hear the word of God. And in Yiddish, “hunger for God” 🙂

And when the messianic days arrive, when there will be no need for labor, but rather “the righteous will sit with their crowns on their heads and delight in wisdom and knowledge of God,” and the intermediate days of the festival will no longer differ from the rest of the year — then certainly one will need to be adorned with tefillin on them for honor and glory.

With the blessing, “May it be a year of all-Hungarianness,” Lauinger from Samson

Happy holiday, Rabbi. Would it not have been appropriate to rule that there is reason to be stringent and put on tefillin on Hol HaMoed? Why does the fact that there is a custom to follow the Zohar on this matter make it binding?

I don’t think so. There is a custom not to do it. This is not a matter of being stringent; either there is an obligation, in which case one should instruct people to put them on and not merely be stringent, or one should follow the custom. Sometimes custom tracks Jewish law, especially since regarding putting on tefillin every day there is no clear independent source for it.