Parashat Vayetze: Angels Among Us
If we pause for a moment, and I ask each of you to picture an angel in your mind, you likely will think of a glowing being, cloaked in white, wings flapping, and a golden halo glistening overhead. Or, perhaps, you conjure up the darling image of Raphael’s cherubs or a little Precious Moments figurine. And if I were to ask you if Judaism believed in these beings, these angels, there probably would be a lot of “Nos” and “I don’t think so” and “Probably not.”
Though our tradition suggests that they don’t have such an endearing appearance as Raphael’s winged babies, Jews and Judaism do believe in angels. We do. And there is no refuting that. The problem is that when we throw around the word “angel,” all of us have different associations with the word. Maybe it’s a guardian angel—some creature looking out for you specifically. Maybe in your mind it’s the role we take in the hereafter. Or perhaps, it’s something much more elementary, the manifestation of your conscience, an angel sitting on your shoulder, trying to sway you to walk down a path of righteousness. Whatever the case may be, Judaism does believe in angels—we do believe in malakhim.
The word for angel in Jewish tradition is malakh. But the word malakh more accurately means messenger. If God sends an angel to deliver a message to Lot and his family per se, that’s a malakh. But, if a king sends a treaty to a neighboring kingdom, delivered by hand by a royal messenger, he, too, is a malakh. And that’s where things get tricky—our translations sometimes make the decision for us, are we talking about angels or are we talking about human beings?
This morning, we read the famous account of Jacob’s Ladder—Jacob put his head down and closed his eyes for the evening and in his dream he saw a ladder stretching to the heavens, its feet touching the earth. And on that ladder, Jacob saw angels: v’hinei malakhei elokim olim v’yordim bo – “And behold, the messengers of God are ascending and descending on it” (Genesis 28:12).
Messengers of God. Angels in Jacob’s dream. We might otherwise overlook this verse and ignore it as Jacob’s fanciful imagination, but the description of the vision is precisely what is compelling. Angels going up and down the ladder. Up and Down. Sure, we can say it’s just a figure of speech, as Rashbam suggests, but what if it’s very precise?
I can remember learning as a young boy with my father this very verse and catching the unexpected “up and down” as we studied the page together. The angels were going up then down. They were starting here on earth, taking a quick trip up to the heavens, and then coming back down. In Jacob’s vision, the angels were already on the ground.
I was in shock. I literally sat there in my childhood innocence speechless. My father looked at me and just smiled, allowing me to put the pieces together for myself.
I’m much more full of words today: the angels were there with Jacob from the start. And in the same vein, even right now, there are angels all around us, hurriedly tending to God’s Will.
Our tradition teaches us that angels have but one mission in their existence and then they return to God; hence, the crossroads at Jacob’s Ladder. One angel to deliver the message to Sarah that she was going to bear a child. One angel to wrestle with Jacob. One angel to wait with us in the dark and cold of the waiting room outside of our loved one’s OR. One angel to help us catch our breath after we have a fight with our parents or our children. Angels are everywhere.
What they may look like and seeing them is not what matters. Knowing that they are here and there, that’s what can help us get through the day—can help us get through the hour.
Our Torah portion ends in the same way it begins: vayelekh haranah, and Jacob went to Haran / v’ya’akov halakh l’darko, and Jacob went on his way. But here, as we concluded this morning, Jacob is a changed man. He knows about the angels now. He feels and understands and is grateful for their and God’s presence.
Instead of heading out to just “some place,” Haran, Jacob is heading in his own direction, on his own way, with confidence and trust. He has faith and he has support. We learn here, too, that Jacob is accompanied by angels yet again. “And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him.” (Genesis 32:2). The messengers of God met Jacob along the way, along his way. It is the angels’ responsibility to meet us where we are, not we them. But their meeting us only takes on greater meaning once we are ready to be met, once we are ready to see the ladder. Jacob didn’t say, “Ah, God was in this place, and I didn’t know it.” Jacob said, “God was in this place, and I didn’t know it?!” – akhen yesh Hashem bamakom hazeh v’anokhi lo yadati?! (Genesis 28:16). How could it be that all this time, I just didn’t get it?
I do believe that we can find added value in our lives and our acceptance of God’s will in our lives, if we are comforted by the notion that angels busy themselves around us. But remember, the word is malakh, a messenger of God—a creature that can be either human or Divine. See, the malakh distinction doesn’t matter; because even for the naysayers among us, we can all embrace our angelic nature and become messengers of God, doing God’s will and bringing peace on earth, especially sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, guideposts for Thanks and Miracles.
You can be the one to carry out God’s will, helping others, pursuing justice, lifting the downtrodden and clothing the naked. You can be the one to fill the belly of your brother in need. You can be someone’s angel. And though we can rest assured, that angels are often the ones that help lighten our load on even the heaviest of days, we all can be malakhei hashem and we don’t need ladders to do it.
