There are many laws and requirements regarding the making of tefillin, and it takes many years of training to qualify the scribes and craftsmen who make them. This is a basic description of how Tefillin are made.

There is a difference of opinion regarding the order in which the passages are inserted into the Tefillin boxes. According to Rashi, the passage of Shema ("Here O Israel") precedes that of "And it shall come to pass, if you hearken", in both the Tefillin worn on the head and on the arm. According to Rabbeinu Tam, the order is reversed. Rabbeinu Tam's Tefillin expand the intelligence, enabling us to break evil at its source and stand up against the forces of evil.

The late Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, in his classic pamphlet "Tefillin" explains that we bind ourselves to God through emulating Him. Women resemble God in a way that no man could ever hope to… a woman partakes of God's attributes more intimately than any man.