For the source text click/tap here: Menachot 36
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The general approach of the Gemara is that tefillin are a mitzvat aseh she-hazeman gerama – a positive time-bound commandment. When do we refrain from wearing tefillin?
Rabbi Yosei HaGelili points to the passage that commands that tefillin be worn mi-yamim yamimah – from day to day (see Ex 13:10).
He suggests that we can learn from here that it is only appropriate to wear tefillin during the day, and only on some of the days – excluding Shabbat and holidays.
Rabbi Akiva argues that the basic source to limit the commandment of tefillin to weekdays is the previous passage about tefillin “…and they shall be a sign (ot) on your hand and a remembrance between your eyes” (Shemot 13:9), which he understands to mean that tefillin are only necessary when there is a need for an ot – a sign. On days that are considered in and of themselves an ot, there is no need to don tefillin.
Our passage, ostensibly concerned with the practical halakhot of tefillin—donning order, timing of the blessing, endpoint of the mitzvah, and status during nighttime and Shabbat—discloses, upon closer analysis, a series of irreducible conceptual tensions regarding the nature of covenantal signification itself.