Today’s class is dedicated Le’ilui Nishmat Yitzhak ben Chana, Mr. Irving Missry a’h, by his family, on his 22nd yarzheit.
At the end of last week’s Parasha, Yaakov Avinu met up with angels of God.
This week, the Parasha starts with the words,
וישלך יעקוב מלאכים לפנו
Yaakov sent angels from in front of him.
The Sefer Binah LYitim says that there are two types of angels: God’s constant angels, like Rephael, Micha’el, and Gabriel, and the angels that we create from our deeds. These angels protect us, and give us success. God gives us angels as messengers in this world. The Rambam writes in Moreh Nevuchim that the reason there are angels atop the holy ark
(the Keruvim) is to show that we believe that God uses angels as his messengers. That is how God set up the world.
Yaakov Avinu is the forefather with the most angel activity. He dreamt of angels in last week’s Parasha, he meets up with the angels, he sends angels against Esav, angels protected his sheep…etc.
Angels are there to help and protect us, and this is something that we have to believe, in our own lives. As it says, “God commands angels to guard over you.“
There are two Angel- related points I want to discuss today:
Firstly, the Ben Ish Chai says that when a person says goodbye to someone who is going on a trip, he is supposed to say a halacha. Kabbalistically, it is suggested to say, “In the case of an individual and the many, the halacha is like the many.”
While saying this, the person should have in mind that the initial letters of each of these words (in Hebrew) are the same as the last letters of the Hebrew words, “God’s angels will be commanded to watch over you.”
What does this halacha have to do with the concept of God’s angels?
The Ramban says that Hashem let Yaakov Avinu see the angels when he was going to meet up with Esav, in order to let Yaakov Avinu know that he had more than Esav did. Esav had 400 people, but Yaakov had 4,000! How? He had angels of God; the angels of his Mitzvot, which would protect him.
A person has to know that his Torah and Mitzvot create angels that protect him. Many pesukim say so.
Another point is related to our finances. The Sefer Hasidim, in chapter 309, says that when a businessman is successful, it’s because God sends the angels that are in charge, to go into the heart of the customer and tell him to buy from that businessman. And the angel tells the fabric man to sell to him… etc.
This is just one example of what we don’t see this with our eyes, but we believe- that God brings us our success.
A man once told me that he had to get to a certain show, and he was in the airport. The bags he needed for the show were on a certain conveyor belt, but they fell off. One of his friends happen to be standing there and saw what happened, so he put the bags back on the conveyor belt. God has messengers. He put into the friend’s head to take a look and notice that his friends bags had fallen off the conveyor belt.
Rav Laizer Ginsberg once gave a beautiful mashal:
Imagine a man in a taxi who loses his phone. Two hours later, he gets a call from a religious man, to say that his phone was found in the taxi. It was two hours later, and 10 people could have been in that taxi in between. So what happened? When the man dropped his phone, an angel came and tucked the phone between the seats, so that the next ten people who got in the cab, who might have kept the phone, didn’t see it. Finally, when a Jewish man got into the taxi, the angel put his hand in to pull the phone out, and the finder was able to spot the phone and return it.
Hashem has messengers all over the place. These are the angels that are created by our Torah and our Mitzvot.
B’ezrat Hashem, we will continue doing Mitzvot and have God’s angels there to protect us.