Coleman turns to tefillin

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Norm Coleman tells the New York Times he’s been praying and performing a traditional Jewish ritual every morning as he waits for a resolution of his Senate race:

He said that every morning, he puts tefillin — black leather boxes containing scrolls — on his arm as part of a morning Jewish prayer ritual. “I bind myself every morning,” he said. “I bind myself to God every morning because it’s in his hands.”

He paused. "David Letterman will make fun of me for this,” he said.

Franken, meanwhile, says he finds the reactions he gets from people sort of odd:

Still Mr. Franken said the whole experience had been disconcerting. “It’s a weird thing: people are always asking me and Franni, ‘Are you okay?’ ” he said, referring to his wife. “As sort of life crises go, this is low on the totem pole. But it is weird, it’s a strange thing.”

One amusing thing about the Times piece — it originally said Coleman was working as a consultant for the American Jewish Conference, which was an actual organization but hasn’t existed for 60 years. The article has since been corrected to list Coleman’s actual employer, the Republican Jewish Coalition.

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