We have already learned that tefillin must be affixed in the morning in time for the first recitation of the Shema. And indeed, today, you are most likely to see someone wearing tefillin if you attend a weekday morning minyan. But when should one take them off? The Talmud cites a beraita which offers three different answers to this question:
And until when does one wear them? Until the sun sets. Rabbi Ya’akov says: Until traffic in the marketplace ceases. And the rabbis say: Until the time of sleep. And the rabbis concede to Rabbi Ya’akov that if one removed them to go to the bathroom or to enter the bathhouse and the sun set, one does not don them again.
These offer progressively longer timespans: until sunset, until no one is left in the market and until bedtime. The rabbis’ concession to Rabbi Yaakov suggests that they assume that before sunset, if one has to go to the bathroom, one takes the tefillin off to do what they need to do, and once they are done and have appropriately washed their hands, they don the tefillin again. According to all three opinions, tefillin is actually an all-day mitzvah. While the precise stopping point is debated, all sources insist that it is appropriate, if not required, to wear tefillin into the late afternoon and evening.Though it is not the majority opinion in the text, the Talmud even creates space for possibly putting tefillin on at night:
And Rabbi Elazar says: And although it is prohibited to don tefillin at night, if one does so to safeguard them, it is permitted. And Ravina said: I was sitting before Rav Ashi and it grew dark, and he donned tefillin. And I said to him: Does the Master need to safeguard them? And he said to me: Yes. But I saw that his intention was not that he needed to safeguard them; he holds: This is the halakhah but a public ruling is not issued to that effect.
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Rav Ashi seems to believe that one actually should put tefillin on a second time at night but has chosen not to state that publicly. (Rashi suggests that Rav Ashi worried that men who were tired after a long day of work might accidentally fall asleep with them on, which would be inappropriate.) So he used a polite fiction of being scared someone might steal his tefillin to justify keeping them on his head at night. Ultimately, Jewish tradition has largely moved away from wearing tefillin all day. Most people who wear tefillin put them on in the morning and remove them when they finish their morning prayers. But why? We’ve actually already learned one answer to this question, back on Shabbat 49a:
Rabbi Yannai said: Donning tefillin requires a clean body, like Elisha, Man of Wings. What does that mean? Abaye said: One may not break wind while wearing them. Rava said: One may not sleep in them.
Tefillin are meant to be worn only when one has full bodily control. For this reason, perhaps, the custom evolved that tefillin are removed after morning prayers — right around when one might wake the digestive system with breakfast. But the number of rabbis on today’s daf who strongly believe that tefillin should be worn all day is illustrative. For some, perhaps this practice led to the kind of bodily awareness and control that most of us can only dream of. For the rabbis, this direct reminder of God’s love for the Jewish people, and God’s covenant with Israel, was worth that kind of physical regulation. And that love of mitzvot is itself inspiring.
Read all of Menachot 36 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on February 16, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
