Smartertimes observed the other day, in writing about the Times coverage of the Boy Scouts, that "there are some topics that are so culturally foreign to the Times newsroom that the paper is almost bound to err in covering them."
Orthodox Judaism is right up there with the Boy Scouts on that list of topics. The latest example comes in an article about an eruv in Westhampton Beach. An eruv is a ritual boundary that permits carrying on the sabbath within its limits. The Times article, early on, describes 68-year-old Eugene Milanaik as "stashing a backpack filled with his Sabbath essentials — two prayer books, a prayer shawl, and phylacteries — in a plastic bin at the Hampton Synagogue, so he would not need to carry them on the Sabbath."
Any Orthodox or even reasonably observant Conservative Jew reading this article stops right there and throws down the paper in a combination of disgust and exasperation. Phylacteries — a fancy word for what most Jews who wear them call tefillin — are black leather boxes attached to black leather straps, with little biblical texts inside the boxes that are strapped to the arm and head of a Jew during morning prayer. But they aren't used on the Sabbath, just on the weekdays. Phylacteries aren't "Sabbath essentials" for Jews any more than pork chops are. Maybe Mr. Milanaik was planning to use the phylacteries on Sunday morning. Or maybe he had something else in his backpack that the Times reporter mistakenly identified as phylacteries. But, again, as in the case of whether Boy Scouts have "chapters," this is the sort of reference that an editor or reporter unfamiliar with the topic, whether it is tefillin or Boy Scouts, could easily screw up, but that one familiar with them would be unlikely to screw up.