by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

I have heard that some people who are looking for more spirituality in their lives reject Judaism because they think it’s just a lot of dry legalisms and annoying restrictions. The rise of interest in Kabballah (never know how to spell it, so I just throw in all the b’s and a’s I can) has at least partially responded to the market demand. But since, like all fads, the Kabballah bubble will eventually burst, the true seekers will need something else to fill the putative void. I would like to point out that for those in need of otherworldly razzamatazz, bad publicity to the contrary notwithstanding, Judaism has plenty of other spiritual properties to recommend it.

Take, for example, angels. Who doesn’t like angels? Well, Jewish tradition is replete with them. The Torah tells of the interactions of a number of figures with these not-of-this-world creatures. Abraham hosted three angels on the third day after his brit milah; Jacob wrestled with an angel; Hagar was saved by one; Bilaam was harassed by one; Joshua was rebuked by one. In fact, the very notion of a celestial being with wings comes right out of a verse in Isaiah.*

Nor did their existence cease with the prophets. The most famous visitation of modern times involved Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of that dry compendium of Jewish law known as the Shulchan Aruch. He wrote a book-length account of his experience called Maggid Meisharim. And then there was the case of the Vilna Gaon. Or would have been, had the Gaon not declined the angelic tutorials.

When asked by his chief disciple, Rav Chaim of Volozhen, why he passed up this extraordinary opportunity (when was the last time an angel appeared to you?), he said that the angels cannot be trusted, they tell lies. Rav Chaim then asked why this did not deter Rabbi Karo? The Gaon gave two reasons why what was good for Rabbi Karo was not good for him: For one thing, he lived in the city of Safed (center of Kabballah then and now) in the Holy Land of Israel, whereas he was in Lithuania. And Rabbi Karo lived in the sixteenth century, whereas the Gaon was in the eighteenth. In former times they had greater spiritual capacities.

That’s the story, as far as it goes. There are, no doubt, many questions one might ask about this, but the one my wife asked was: Why would God dispatch an angel to tell anybody lies, especially such a faithful servant of God as the Vilna Gaon?

I premise my answer to her question on the Vilna Gaon’s own understanding of where angels come from. Some of them, at least, come from us. That is, they are generated by our actions down here on the planet. Good deeds make good angels; bad deeds make bad angels. These are the same angels—the accuser and the advocate—who appear in the heavenly court on Rosh Hashana. By their very presence they accuse us of sin, and, hopefully, vindicate us on our good points.

At the Akedia, the Binding of Isaac, an angel was sent to stop Abraham from carrying out God’s command to sacrifice his son. The angel said to him: “Now I know that you are God-fearing, you did not spare your son from me.” The Vilna Gaon notes the grammatic anomaly: it should say, “from Him,” since it was from God that he did not spare his son. Why did the angel speak in the first person? The answer is that not all angels are created equal. Some are great, vigorous beings; others are anemic wimps. The difference depends on the quality of a person’s actions. A good deed performed with total concentration and unrestrained energy yields a mighty angel; the same deed carried out half-heartedly, out of habit, will produce a spiritual weakling. Despite the huge difficulty of his trial, Abraham went about it with his usual unbounded enthusiasm in the service of his Creator. He held back nothing. The angel who came to him was the angel who had been created by Abraham’s own deed. He was telling him, “you did not spare your son from me,” because he had spared nothing in the deed, and so the angel thus created was a great one.

This can explain why the Vilna Gaon did not trust an angel to speak the truth. For due to the limitations of his time and place, he believed himself incapable of producing an angel of the caliber of former times, one who could be depended on to speak only truth.

It is interesting to note, as well, that the Gaon was both a kabballist and halachist. He had hoped that, in addition to his many commentaries on Talmud, Tanach and Kabballah, that he would author a new code of Jewish law. Though his glosses on Rabbi Karo’s Shulchan Aruch appear in the standard edition, he did not merit a wholly new compilation of his own.

Well cannot know why, for sure. Perhaps the time and place were not right for it.

* See Chapter 6 with the commentaries. The reason for the wings is beyond the scope of this essay. But for the record, there is nothing there about strumming a harp.

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