Berakhot 091

In Berakhot 088 I quoted a statement of Rambam's: All forces are angels. How great is the blindness of ignorance and how harmful! If you told a person who is one of those who deem themselves one of Israel's sages that the Deity sends an angel, who enters the womb of a woman and forms the fetus there, he would be pleased with this assertion and would accept it and would regard it as a manifestation of greatness and power on the part of the Deity… But if you tell him that God has placed in the sperm a formative force shaping the limbs … and that this force is a "Mal'akh" … the man would shrink from this opinion… [Guide for the Perplexed 2:6]

Rick Dinitz sent me the following:

Rambam's distinction is too subtle for me. Please explain what difference it makes to Rambam's hypothetical sage whether God sends the angel directly into the womb, or God places the angel in the sperm and the angel arranges transportation to the womb where it does its work.

I responded to Rick privately as follows:

Moreh Nevukhim was originally written in Arabic with Hebrew quotations and phrases interspersed. When the phrase Ĥakhmei Yisra'el occurs in the middle of an Arabic sentence in the Guide, experience – gradually built up throughout the work – teaches us that the term here is being used in a derogatory fashion. What Rambam was saying was that most "religious" people are prepared to believe in angels but are not prepared to believe that the forces of nature are the angels – the messengers of God through which the purposes of the deity are effected. He explains that this is why the Bible, intended for a "mass readership", accords angels the humanoid physicality that it does. He thinks that the perceptive intellectual will perceive beyond that.

Rick Dinitz subsequently sent the following commentary, which is our shiur for today:-

Thanks for explaining the idiom. I mistakenly thought that by calling them "sages in Israel," Rambam was holding them up as paragons of intelligence. Now I understand that Rambam is actually using the phrase to deride those self-styled "sages" who can't recognize angels for what they are. (They wouldn't know an angel if it bit them on the nose, unless the angel were wearing fluffy white wings and a halo.)

If so, then I think Rambam would agree that the cellular machinery that unfolds DNA from a single cell into a full-blown human infant is indeed a mal'akh [angel] – faithfully (and mechanistically) executing God's will in the physical world. On the one hand, our language of science speaks of cells, molecules, amino acids, codons, genes and their expressions. On the other hand, our religious language speaks of angels forming the fetus in the womb. In Rambam's reality, both languages are correct – all the reproductive machinery of molecular biology is in fact one kind of Mal'akh, doing God's will. Yes? [Yes! – SR]

(Of course science in Rambam's time did not speak of DNA in the same way that we do, but his phrase "God has placed in the sperm a formative force shaping the limbs" reflects contemporary science as he understood it. He sees no contradiction between the languages of science and religion.)

We can also understand the Mal'akhei ha-Sharet [Ministering Angels] of [the liturgical poem] Shalom Aleikhem as mechanisms of God's will. As a midrash teaches us, two mal'akhim follow us home each Erev Shabbat [Sabbath Eve] – one that promotes good for us, and one promotes evil against us. If they find the home ready for Shabbat, the "good" mal'akh blesses us by saying "so may it be every Shabbat," and the "evil" one answers "Amen." If they find the home is not ready for Shabbat, or God forbid, that Shabbat is not even observed in this home, then their roles are reversed; the "evil" mal'akh "blesses" us by saying "so may it be every Shabbat," and the "good" mal'akh answers "Amen." (Could you please refer me to a source text for this midrash?) [Gemara, Shabbat 119b – SR]

I understand these mal'akhim as a religious expression of human momentum and inertia. We are creatures of habit, and these mal'akhim re-inforce our habits regarding Shabbat and our preparations for it. They do their jobs, and bless us in whichever way is appropriate based on the state of our home when Shabbat arrives.

So we can understand the song as a way to explicitly recognize our interaction with these angels, expressing our confidence and satisfaction in their work – which is, after all, both the result of our preparatory work, and also an expression of God's will. In verse one, we greet them; that is, we recognize them for what they are, we remember that the outcome of their work is in our hands, but that our ability to influence them (for this week) is finished (though we can still influence the result in subsequent weeks). In verse two, we invite them in; that is, we declare that we are ready for Shabbat, our preparations complete; we acknowledge that they will come and do their job whether or not we welcome them; nonetheless, we do welcome them, following the example of Avraham Avinu, who welcomed angels (and human visitors) into his home. In verse three, we invite them to complete their appointed tasks, so that they can return to their Creator in peace (as we counsel them in the following verse); we do not ask them to bless us (which you consider problematic) – for bless us they will, in one way or the other, even if we are impolite, and do not invite them. Finally, in verse four, we escort them home to the Ruler who sent them, confident that they (and we) have done God's will.

The song helps us visualize the process through which God renews the blessing of Shabbat in our lives, and the way our human efforts interact with God's intent – the two combining to make it so. It's also an exercise in accepting (or better, welcoming) the inevitable. Shabbat comes inexorably – and with her arrival, our preparations must cease; we do all we can, then we must let go. So too, the Mal'akhei ha-Shalom [Angels of Peace] come inexorably; we've done all we can, and now it's up to them to seal it – to deliver God's blessing, as determined by our preparations.

The song and its midrash portray an intricate dance in which God's will and our human free will spin in and out of one another – each one both leading and following the other. God reconfirms our free will by affirming the consequences we have earned – "This is how you want Shabbat to be, then so be it." We have free will, but each choice restricts our future options – breaking free of a deeply entrenched mode of behavior requires great determination. How much simpler life would be, if only we could be like angels, with no choice other than to do God's will. But that is not God's will for us; rather, we must make our own choices, and welcome the angels that cheer us on when we make God's will our will.

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