The Blogs: Do you Believe in Angels?

Small Miracles All Around Us

Though we tend to think of angels as winged, white beings soaring in the sky, Judaism promotes the conviction that angels are all around us!

The word angel in Hebrew is “malach,” (which also means “messenger”) because the role of angels is to carry out missions from on high. The names of the various angels are associated with their mission. “Rafael” is the name of an angel, meaning “healer of G-d.” This angel is dispatched for healing and it’s for his services that we pray when we are in medical crisis. “Gabriel” is the angel sent for disciplinary purposes and “Michael” is the angel dispatched on humanitarian missions.

The angels carry our prayers to Heaven, lovingly laying them at the foot of the Heavenly throne. This is why it’s preferable to pray in Hebrew, as it’s the “first language” of the angels, thus ensuring that the prayer is properly delivered. Not all angels have pleasant jobs. You may have heard of the “Malach HaMoves,” the angel of death, whose mission is to bring humans back home when their time is up.

Much of our culture pays tribute to their presence in our lives. On Friday nights as we begin the Shabbos dinner, we sing “Shalom Aleichem,” asking the angels who accompany us to bless us with peace and serenity. You might have heard of the timeless greeting with which Jews greet each other—Sholom Aleichem (“peace to you”). Interestingly, this greeting is in the plural form, even when addressed to an individual. The Code of Jewish Law explains that this is because our greeting is not only to the individual we are addressing but to his guardian angel as well! Similarly, we pray that G-d “make peace upon us and all of Israel,” in the plural form even when we are praying alone, referring to ourselves and our guardian angels.

These angels are sometimes invisible and sometimes appear in human form. Being aware of their presence is comforting, but in a talk delivered on July 15, 1961, the Rebbe explained that they only appear when we are engaged in a Mitzvah such as prayer, Shabbos, or lovingly greeting another. When we aren’t doing a mitzvah, we don’t necessarily have the angels protecting us.

In April 1944, the Nazis entered the charming Chassidic town of Munkach in Hungary, which is today part of the Ukraine. Just one month later, they gave all the Jews an hour to evacuate their homes and prepare for deportation. They forced them into boxcars and sent them to Auschwitz.

When the trains arrived in the middle of the night, they were herded off like cattle and made to stand in line before the notorious and sadistic Dr. Josef Mengele. Standing in line disoriented from the harrowing experiences, was a seventeen-year-old teenager called Shlomo Zalman. As he waited listlessly for his turn, he had no idea what sinister role was being played by the evil man at the front of the line.

Suddenly, a man in a striped prison uniform emerged from the shadows and grabbed Shlomo Zalman’s arm. “What year were you born?” he asked gruffly, in a whisper. “1927,” replied the boy truthfully. “No! You were not,” insisted the stranger. “You were born in 1925!!” “Now tell me which you were born?” asked the mysterious stranger. “1925,” he dutifully answered. “Very good,” said the stranger, as he slipped away into the shadows, never to be seen again.

When Shlomo Zalman reached the front of the line moments later, he saw Dr. Mengele pointing his finger in different directions to sort the prisoners. “In which you were you born?” Asked Dr. Mengele. “1925,” answered Shlomo Zalman. As he did so, Mengele pointed to the right, sending him to the labor camps.

Only later did Shlomo Zalman learn that anyone sent to the left was sent to die in the gas chambers. The difference between right and left—life and death— that night was the cut-off age of eighteen. Had Shlomo Zalman said his true age, he would have been gassed to death soon after.

Shlomo Zalman survived the war in two more concentration camps, ultimately moving to the San Fernando Valley in California where he went by the name of Sol Teichman. There he became an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur and global philanthropist, donating countless millions of dollars to Yeshivas, schools, mikvahs, humanitarian, and other Jewish institutions that bear his family’s name. Hardly a day went by in his life when Sol Teichman didn’t remember the mysterious stranger who was his guardian angel!

But there is another reference to angels so important that it defines our very nation. In an enigmatic encounter in the Torah, when our patriarch Jacob is left alone one night, he is attacked by an angel with whom he wrestles all night long. At dawn, as the angel is preparing to leave, he blesses Jacob and changes his name to Israel, which is an abbreviation of “for you have struggled with angels and with men and you have prevailed.”

It turns out that we are named Israel because of an angel that we need to overcome. In a sensational sermon on Shabbos, January 21, 1984, the Rebbe explained that this angel over whom we must prevail is the attitude of complacency and satisfaction with our status quo. This angel is a mindset that tries to convince us that we must surrender ourselves to our current reality.

To be an Israelite is to have the courage to believe that we can reinvent ourselves. You can be a good spouse or parent even if you grew up in a dysfunctional home. You can be fabulously wealthy, even if you were not born into money. You can be religious, scholarly, kind, or likable—if you only set your mind to it!

If you find it hard to believe that change is possible, consider the dramatic transformation in the Middle East over the past year. The year began with the tragic October 7th massacre, during which Israel faced an unprecedented assault from numerous adversaries. Remarkably, Hamas and Hezbollah have been largely eliminated, and in an extraordinary and unforeseen development, Syria’s entire military capabilities have been thrown in disarray this week.

As we’ve seen guardian angels intervening to protect us through this past year, may we succeed in mustering the strength to overcome the angels that insist that we stay ordinary. Wrestling is not just about physical strength but also the ability to overcome your limitations. Because gold medals aren’t made of gold—they’re made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.

Rabbi Dovid Vigler
Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens
6100 PGA Blvd, Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418
JewishGardens.com | 561.624.2223

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