Tikkun Leil

Shavuot 5784

Torah shield with dedicatory inscription, decorated with angels (Vienna, 1826)

Israel Museum, Jerusalem

A man should never cast his reason behind him, for the eyes are set in front not in the back.

The fundamental principle of belief in prophecy precedes the belief in the Law. For if there is no prophet, there can be no Law. The prophet receives prophetic revelation only through the intermediary of the angel […] Even in the case of Moses our Master, his prophetic mission is inaugurated through an angel: And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord in the heart of fire [Exod 3:2].Consequently it has been made clear that belief in the existence of angels precedes the belief in prophecy, and the belief in prophecy precedes the belief in the Law.

[T]he sages did not speak nonsense, and […]the words of the sages contain both an obvious and a hidden meaning. Thus, whenever the sages spoke of things that seem impossible, they were employing the style of riddle and parable which is the method of truly great thinkers. For example, the greatest of our wise men (Solomon) began his book by saying: ‘To understand an analogy and a metaphor, the words of the wise and their riddles’ (Prov 1:6).

[W]e live in a material world and are, therefore, able to achieve only inferior and discontinuous delights. Spiritual delights are eternal. They last forever; they never break off. Between these two kinds of delight there is no similarity of any sort. It is, therefore, inappropriate for us who are masters of Torah or theologians to say that angels, stars, and spheres experience no delight. On the contrary, they really experience great delight in that they know by experience the true being of God the Creator. With this knowledge they enjoy delight which is both perpetual and uninterrupted. They have no bodily delight, nor could they, since they have no physical senses, as we do, through which they could get our kind of gratification.

We will be like them after death. Those men who choose to purify themselves will reach this spiritual height. They will neither experience bodily pleasures, nor will they want them.

The angels too are not endowed with bodies, but are intellects separate from matter. However they are the objects of an act and God has created them as will be explained. The Sages say in Bereshith Rabbah: The flaming sword which turns every way, is called thus with reference to the verse: His ministers a flaming fire. [The expression], which turns every way, alludes to the fact that sometimes they turn into men, sometimes into women, sometimes into spirits, and sometimes into angels. Through this dictum they have made it clear that the angels are not endowed with matter and outside the mind they have no fixed corporeal shape, but that all such shapes are only to be perceived in the vision of prophecy in consequence of the action of the imaginative capacity […]

[I]t is very difficult for man to apprehend, except after strenuous training, that which is pure of matter and absolutely devoid of corporeality. It is particularly difficult for one who does not differentiate between that which is cognized by the intellect and that which is imagined and who tends mostly toward imaginative apprehension alone. For such a one everything that is imagined exists or can exist, whereas that which does not enter within the net of imagination is in his opinion non-existent, and incapable of existing. Accordingly, to individuals of this kind…the true reality of a notion never becomes known, nor does a difficulty ever become clear to them. Because of the difficulty of this matter, the books of the prophets likewise contain dicta whose external sense can be understood as signifying that angels are corporeal, that they move, that they are in the form of men, that they are given orders by God, and that they carry out His orders and do what He wishes in virtue of His orders[…]All this is said so as to guide the mind to a knowledge of their existence and of their being alive and perfect, as we have explained with regard to God […]

[T]he mind is guided toward a knowledge of the fact that the rank of the existence of the angels is below the rank of the deity through the admixture with their shape of something belonging to the shape of irrational animals. However, an animal shape is attributed to them by attribution of wings only and in no other way. For flying cannot be represented to oneself without wings, just as walking cannot be represented to oneself without legs. For existence of these faculties cannot possibly be represented to oneself except in so far as they subsist in these substrata. The motion of flying has been chosen in order to point to the angels being living beings. For it is the most perfect and the noblest of the motions of the irrational animals.

[T]hose who write the names of angels, holy names, verses, or special shapes on the mezuzah are included in the category of those who have no share in the world to come, since these fools not only cancel the commandment but make of a great command, the unification of the Holy One, blessed be he, His love, and His worship, a charm for their own benefit since they, in their stupidity, think that this is a matter which benefits them concerning worldly vanities.

The Sages said: one who has teffilin on his head and his arm, and fringes on his clothing, and a mezuzah on his doorway is assured of not sinning, since he has many reminders; these are the angels which save him from sinning, as it says, The angel of the Lord camps around those who fear Him and rescue them (Ps. 34:8)

Commentary on the Mishnah, Introduction to Helek

Our sages also wrote, ‘In the world to come there is no eating, drinking, washing, no anointing, or sexual intercourse, but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads, enjoying the radiance of the Divine Presence.’ In this passage the expression ‘with their crowns on their heads,’ signifies the immortality of the soul being in firm possession of the Idea which is God the Creator. The ‘crown’ is precisely the Idea which great philosophers have explicated at length. The expression, ‘they delight in the radiance of the Divine Presence,’ means that the souls enjoy blissful delight in their attainment of knowledge of the truly essential nature of God the Creator, a delight which is like that experienced by the holy angels who know his existence first hand.

[C]ertain sects of the Sabians worshipped the jinn [demons] and believed that they assumed the outward forms of goats and therefore called the jinn goats. This teaching was very widespread in the days of Moses our Master: And they shall no more offer their sacr~fices unto the goats [se’irim], and so on. Hence these sects also used to prohibit the eating of goats.

[…]

[I]t seems to me that the reason for the fact that all the sin-offerings, both of private individuals and of the congregation, are he-goats [se’irim] - I refer to the he-goats [offered on the occasion o f the festivals] of pilgrimage, on the New-Moons, on the Day of Atonement, and [for the sin] of idolatry-is that the reason, in my opinion, was that their greatest act of disobedience consisted at that time in sacrificing to the secirim; as the text states: And they shall no more offer their sacrifices to the se’irim after whom they have gone a whoring.[Lev 17:7]. However the Sages, may their memory be blessed, consider that the reason for which the congregation is constantly atoned for by means of se’irim is that the whole congregation of Israel committed their first act of dis- obedience with the help of a kid [se’ir] of goats. They refer it to the sale of Joseph the righteous, in whose story it is said: And they killed a kid of goats, and so on.[Gen. 37:31] Do not regard this reason as feeble. For the end of all these actions is to establish firmly in the soul of every disobedient individual the constant need for remembering and making mention of his sin – as it is said: And my sin is ever before me [Ps. 51:5] and that he, his descendants, and the descendants of his descendants, must seek forgiveness for the sin by an act of obedience belonging to the same species as the act of disobedience.

Thus the aim was achieved and the purpose realized: namely, to break the brotherhood between those truly possessed and their jinn. Know that the epoch of this belief was close to the time of Moses our Master, that it had a great following, and that people were led astray by it. You will find that this is literally stated in the song Ha'azinu: They sacrificed unto devils, which are not God, to gods which they have not known, and so on. [Deut 32:17] The Sages have explained the meaning of its dictum, which are not God, in that they said that they not only persisted in worshipping existent things but even imaginary ones. This is the text of Siphre: It is not enough that they worship the sun, the moon, and the constellations, they even worship their babu'a. The word babu'a means shadow.