All About Angels
Welcome to D’var Torah: Small Talk About Big Words. In this series we look at Torah, one word at a time. D’var Torah means “word of Torah” and is what we call teachings or interpretations of a text. Here, we will take this phrase literally. Each word has a story.
It was an angel who saved Isaac from his own father’s attempt to sacrifice him on Mt. Moriah. And before that, it was an angel who spoke to Hagar in the wilderness, reassured her, and brought her home. It was an angel who summoned Moses to the burning bush and it was an angel who led the Israelites through the desert. And every shabbat when we sing Shalom Aleichem, we welcome angels into our homes.
But what the heck is an angel?
The word for angel in Hebrew is malak מַלְאָך it occurs 213 times in the Hebrew Bible. Primarily, malak means messenger but can also mean, as we are discussing, angel or ambassador.
Here’s my question – if the G-d of the Torah is so all powerful, why does G-d need a messenger? At other times G-d just shows up to talk to Abraham or Moses. So why angels at all?
Allow me a metaphor. Image G-d as all of the intelligence of the universe, typed out on a typewriter. The typewriter is constantly clicking away, considering creation is happening all the time. Ok, and then imagine, every once in a while, a piece of that writing is ripped off, sealed in an envelope, and delivered to you.
An angel is like a letter carrier from the great beyond – bringing you a tiny piece of the infinite. An angel is an intermediary. I happen to consider my cats angels… but that’s for another post (and I’m half serious). Sometimes a poem feels like an angel.
Not all interactions with the divine can be like receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai, where G-d reveals G-dself completely. How could we live like that?
But what if we started looking for angels more liberally, like sacred sticky notes, throughout our lives? What if we considered angels to be like little hints on the most ancient treasure hunt? And the treasure is getting closer and closer to peace.
May you meet an angel today.
Thank you for reading!
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