Angels, it seems, are everywhere. From contemporary popular culture (TV's Saving Grace with its beer chugging angel Earl) to the classic Christmas movie Its a Wonderful Life with its slightly shlemiel-like angel Clarence. In the literary world Anne Rice's new series of books is called Songs of the Seraphim and Tony Kushner's Angels in America was played out on both stage and screen. My own personal research angel, Google, tells me that there is a 2008 Baylor University study that found that half of all Americans believe that they are protected by a guardian angel. This brings us to the specific angels who appear in this week's Torah portion (Va'Yetzei, Genesis 28:10-32:2) who have been the subjects of paintings by artists from Rafael in the sixteenth century to Marc Chagall in the twentieth.
The story, in short, is that Jacob, running from his twin brother Esau after a nasty little "mix-up" (abetted by Rebecca) concerning the thorny matter of who should actually have gotten the blessing of the first-born from Isaac, comes upon a place (as yet unnamed) towards dusk and decides to camp there for the night. As Jacob sleeps, he dreams, and in his dream he sees a ladder standing twixt heaven and earth, and angels ascending and descending upon that ladder. Finally, God appears and blesses Jacob and promises him protection in his sojourn to Haran. Jacob wakes up in the morning and says: "Surely the LORD is present in this place, and I did not know it!This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven." He then builds an altar and calls the site Beth El (abode of God).
This is not the first time that angels have appeared in Genesis. Angels ("cherubim") guard the entrance to the Garden of Eden so that Adam and Eve cannot return. Angels announce to Abraham the coming birth of Isaac; angels save Lot from Sodom and earlier from the Sodomites; angels save Isaac from the knife of Abraham. This is definitely not the first time that God has appeared in Genesis. And yet, Jacob expresses surprise ("and I did not know it!") and is either "shaken" (in the new Jewish Publication Society translation) or "afraid" (in the old Jewish Publication Society translation). (The former translation follows the context while the latter translation conforms to the ancient Greek, Syriac and Aramaic translations.) It seems to me that this "I don't know" (ve-anochi lo yadati) is significant.
Let us look at another story, a much later story, a story found in the Babylonian Talmud (edited in the seventh century CE) which might lend a helpful frame to Jacob's shock in this tale. The story in the Talmud tells of an incident that occurred in Jerusalem after the destruction of the Second Temple. Here is the story as related by R. Yosi, a second century CE Palestinian Sage (Tractate Berachot 3a):
One time I was travelling on the road and I entered into one of the ruins of Jerusalem in order to pray. Elijah, of blessed memory, came, and guarded the door for me, and waited for me, until I finished my prayer. After I finished my prayer, he said to me:
- Peace be with you my master!
And I said to him: "Peace be with you my master and teacher!"
And he said to me: "My son, why did you go into this ruin?"
I said to him: "To pray."
And he said to me: "You ought to have prayed on the road."
And I said to him: "I feared lest passer-by might interrupt me."
And he said to me: "You ought to have said an abbreviated prayer."
At that moment I learned from him three things: 1. One must not go into a ruin; 2. One must say the prayer on the road, 3. And if one does say his prayer on the road, he says an abbreviated prayer.
And he said to me: "My son, what sound did you hear in this ruin?"
I said to him: "I heard a divine voice, cooing like a dove, and saying: Woe to the children! For on account of their sins I destroyed my house and burnt my Temple, and exiled them among the nations!'"
And he said to me: "By your life and by your head! Not in this moment alone does it exclaim thus. But three times every day does it exclaim thus. And not only this, but whenever Israel go into the synagogues and study houses and responds: May His great name be blessed!' the Holy One of Blessing, shakes his head, and says: Happy is the king who is thus praised in his house! What is there for the father who had to banish his children?! And woe to the children who were banished from the table of their father.'"
There is much that one can say about this wonderful story. The moment that I wish to focus on comes halfway through the tale. Rabbi Yosi entered a ruin in Jerusalem - and all ruins in Jerusalem point towards or stand in for the one ruin, the Temple. Rabbi Yosi went into the ruin to pray. He was not worried that he would be attacked by highwaymen if he prayed on the road (a danger discussed further on in this same chapter of Talmud), he was worried lest his prayer be interrupted. Elijah appears to him and teaches him three things about prayer. First, one must not go into a ruin. Second, one must pray on the road. Finally, if one prays on the road, one says an abbreviated prayer. I suggest that it is not too much of a stretch to see this conversation in a larger frame. Elijah is teaching Rabbi Yosi (a student of Rabbi Akiva, who was a follower of Bar Kochba and anticipated the imminent rebuilding of the Temple) that one cannot return to pray in The Ruin, that is the Temple. Further, one is allowed to pray on the road, that is, there is still prayer in Exile. Finally, even though the prayer in Exile is not the same fulsome prayer as was once said in the Temple, when one prays "on the road" one must say "an abbreviated prayer" - and that prayer counts as the former prayer used to.
Here, then, is the moment. Elijah asks Rabbi Yosi: "My son, what sound did you hear in this ruin?" From this we understand that to this moment Rabbi Yosi had no idea that the cooing of a dove that he heard was relevant to the ongoing narrative. (If I were telling a tale which included my hearing the voice of God, I am pretty sure that that bit of information would come pretty much at the beginning of the tale.) Even when Rabbi Yosi answers Elijah it is clear that Rabbi Yosi does not understand what he heard. God's statement, or more accurately, God's wail (Woe to the children! For on account of their sins I destroyed my house and burnt my Temple, and exiled them among the nations!') is the response to R. Yosi's prayer. This is exactly what Elijah has to teach Rabbi Yosi. In Exile there is prayer, but it is not the prayer of yore. It is not the prayer wherein a supplication is made and then the omnipotent God of Jerusalem who resides between the cherubs in the Holy of Holies in the Temple - but who rules all of creation - answers the prayer - smiting enemies, bequeathing blessings. Diasporic prayer means partaking of God's mourning. Prayer is for God as much as to God.
Jacob, encamped on the boundary between Israel and Exile (the Exile which, as Andre Neher has taught us, is the place where we most often find our matriarchs and patriarchs), has a surprising, shocking encounter with God. Apparently this is not the same type of encounter in which God's word was crystal clear and cut like a knife or burnt like a pillar of fire. This was a God standing at the top of a parade of angels who, as the midrash tells us, were changing shifts - the angels of Canaan were going off duty and the angels of the Exile were coming on.
It is this moment of surprise, of shock, of fear combined with the relation with God at a distance that was to frame Jacob's sojourn in Haran and his return. Before he is able to traverse the river to return to Canaan, he must once again pass the angel, the angel who bestows upon him his new name - Israel.
Jacob's diasporic sojourn was, as such sojourns always are, a mixed bag. He marries and raises a family. He establishes himself as the father of a large clan who will one day be a nation, but at the same time he skirts and flirts with danger. He gathers the knowledge and the life that he will plant in the Land of Israel, just before he leaves for Egypt. Jacob was perhaps the first fully fleshed out Diasporic Jew. He was, as we all know, not the last.
Shabbat Shalom.