ANGELIC AMBASSADORS: PARSHAT VAYISHLACH
Shira Smiles Shiur 2015/5776
Summary by Channie Koplowitz Stein
When Yaakov returns home to Canaan
after having spent twenty years with Laban, he understands that Esau is
probably still angry with him for his receiving the firstborn blessing. Yaakov
tries to appease his brother by sending him malachim
bearing gifts. Who these malachim are will form the basis of our discussion
today.
While malachim are often translated as human messengers sent on a
specific mission, they are at least as often translated as heavenly angels who
are also sent by God on a specific mission. Rashi chooses to interpret these malachim as malachim mamash, actual (heavenly) angels. What prompted Rashi
toward this understanding?
Rabbi Bick in Chayei Moshe raises further questions. Why did Yaakov choose to
send real angels? If he was sending real angels, why was Yaakov still afraid?
Wouldn’t the angels protect him? If these were in fact angels, why did Esau
continue approaching with 400 men?
Rabbi Scheinerman and Rabbi Feinstein
share related ideas. Rabbi Scheinerman says that since Hashem created
everything to serve mankind, the angels were also to serve that purpose, and
Yaakov could readily use them. Rabbi Feinstein takes this idea one step further
and writes that for someone on Yaakov’s exalted level, there was no difference
between using man or angel. Along these lines, the Kli Yakar notes that these angels were sent milfonov, from before him, meaning that these angels were before
Yaakov and constantly accompanied him.
Nevertheless, why did Yaakov choose
to send angels instead of men as his emissaries? In Shiurey Chumash, Rabbi Wolbe explains that while Yaakov was afraid
of physical harm, he understood that his battle with Esau was more a spiritual
battle than a physical one, a battle of good versus evil, a battle against the
guardian angel of Esau (Esau’s essence). This battle would continue as Yaakov
battled the angel when he was alone at the Yabok River where Esau’s angel
injured his sciatic nerve, a battle that continues to this day with the
marriage of Yishmael and Esau. This battle must be fought on a spiritual plane
with our name Yisroel rather than Yaakov.
In concert with the spiritual center
of the conflict between Yaakov and Esau, Yaakov is sending his “messengers” to
Seir, the guardian angel of Esau, writes Rabbi Bick. His message says, “Im Laban garty – I have lived with Laban.” Encoded in the message as an
anagram is, “I kept the taryag (613) mitzvoth.” The “angels that Yaakov sent to Laban,
writes the Vayovenu Bamikra, were the angels created through Yaakov’s mitzvah
performance. But his “angels” returned to Yaakov with the message that Esau
himself had 400 accusatory forces.
The Mishnat Yosef sees a duality in
Yaakov’s words. Yaakov is addressing both his Master, Hashem, and Esau. If
Yaakov indeed had angels at his disposal, what was he afraid of? Yaakov had
gone to Laban’s house on the command of his mother. He married and created a
family there. But Yaakov stayed with Laban six years longer than he felt were
necessary, based on his mother’s command. He had worked fourteen years for
Rachel and Leah, and an additional six years for “wages”. While he had observed
many mitzvoth in the home of Laban, he could not fulfill the mitzvah of
honoring his parents, and living in Israel, especially during those additional
years. It was this lack of personal angels on his part and an abundance of such
angels on Esau’s part that Yaakov feared.
But the angels that Yaakov is
sending are “from before him.” He notes that we are rewarded not only for the
mitzvah itself, but also for the steps we take to enable us to perform the
mitzvah. Here Yaakov was sending the angels that he was creating with each step
he took toward his parents’ home so that he could fulfill the mitzvah of
honoring one’s parents. So Yaakov prayed to Adoni,
to my Master, to allow these angels to be his advocates against Esau. Further,
these angels protect us not only physically, but also spiritually, for they
create an aura and energy around us that forms our character and predisposes us
to doing further good deeds or, God forbid, to further sin and evil. Additional
angels and energies are created when we are tempted to sin and resist. It was
these angels that Yaakov sent to Esau, writes the Ohel Moshe. Sometimes this energy is even palpable when we enter a
place and we feel the sanctity or the joy that has remained there from previous
encounters, writes Rabbi Wolbe. (Perhaps that is what is meant by the sanctity
of Eretz Yisroel and especially of Har
Habayit remains even now.)
The Shvilei Pinchas, Rabbi Pinchas Friedman, offers an additional
perspective on this idea based on the
Zohar. These angels, writes Rabbi Friedman, were the yetzer hatov and the yetzer horo. The yetzer horo enters a person at birth, while the yetzer hatov is added at the time of
bar/bat mitzvah. The mission of the yetzer
hatov is to transform the yetzer horo
into good. Who are these angels? These are the same two angels that, according
to the Medrash, accompany a person home from shul on Friday night. According to
tradition, if the home maintains a Shabbos air, if the candles are lit, the
table is set, and the bed is made, the good angel declares, “May it be this way
next week as well,” and the “bad” angel must answer Amen. Thus he is transformed
from a negative force to a positive force.
How does this relate to Yaakov
Avinu? Yaakov claimed he performed the 613 mitzvoth while in the home of Laban.
Obviously no one can perform all the mitzvoth because some pertain only to men,
some only to women, some only to priests, and so on. So how could Yaakov have
kept all 613 mitzvoth? Because keeping Shabbos is equivalent to keeping the
entire Torah. This is the idea alluded to from Rashi’s from his curt phrase
that Yaakov sent malachim mamash, actual angels, an abbreviation
for min mitzvath
Shabbos, from the mitzvah of
Shabbos. The three symbolic items the angels see on Friday night were those
found in the tent of Sara Imenu and later in the Beit Hamikdosh. These are the ner tamid, the perpetual light that
never went out from one Friday night to the next, the table set with the bread
that in the Beit Hamikdosh never went stale from one week to the next, and the shechinah, God’s presence, which resides
is a proper Jewish home on Shabbos, reminiscent of the shechinah that resided in the Beit Hamikdosh. By keeping Shabbos,
Yaakov was symbolically keeping the entire Torah.
If the negative angel can be
transformed into positive energy, we can gain a beautiful insight into Yaakov’s
motivation in sending these real angels to Esau. The Tosher Rebbe explains in Avodath Avodah. Yaakov saw the innate
greatness in Esau, now buried under the equal evil in Esau, for Hakodosh Boruch
Hu creates us all in balance. Yaakov was attempting to arouse the innate goodness,
getting Esau to accept that goodness with a symbolic Amen as the “evil angel”
would do on Friday night. If Yaakov could influence Esau to do teshuvah and
reveal that innate goodness, he could bring the final salvation to the world.
Therefore Yaakov addressed him as my master, hinting at the Master Whom we must
all serve, and therefore he sent them to the land of Seir, of Esau’s guardian
angel. But the plan failed, for Esau refused to even meet with the emissaries.
Esau is not even impressed by the real angels, for his desire for physical
pleasure is so powerful that he will not subjugate it, writes Rabbi Sternbach
in Taam Vodaath. If you cannot
control your yetzer horo, writes
Rabbi Gamliel Rabinowitz in Tiv Hatorah,
you lose all connection to sanctity, even when visited by real angels.
The yetzer horo can tempt one in such a way that he can transform even
a mitzvah into a sin, writes Rabbi Schwadron, the Maggid of Yerushalayim. By
grabbing a mitzvah at someone else’s expense, either by embarrassing them or by
usurping another’s opportunity for example, that very mitzvah is tainted and
transforms into negative energy.
Rabbi Eisenberger in Mesilot Bilvavam clarifies a point for
us: With regard to Medrashim and Aggadot, one need not take them literally, but
one must take the lesson from each perspective. Were the emissaries angels or
human? What Yaakov sent were angels, but what Esau perceived was human beings.
They represented the mindset of each. By focusing on our mission, we each
become emissaries of Hakodosh Boruch Hu, just as angels are His emissaries. One
way of becoming God’s angels, writes Rabbi Bunim, is by claiming one mitzvah as
our own special mitzvah that we will become passionate about, constantly strive
to perfect and to find more opportunities to perform, whether it’s the
recitation of a particular brachah,
visiting the sick, or providing encouragement to others, for example. Thus he
will have created an advocate for himself, an angel to testify and justify his
existence.
By examining what is most
challenging for us, we can generally find the area of our character that
requires our deepest attention and focus on its repair, writes Rabbi Frand in It’s Never Too Little, It’s Never Too Late,
It’s Never Enough. We each have the ability to create our own masterpiece
of our lives by focusing on our “calling”. Naturally, there will be challenges,
but our devotion to this mitzvah will create our malachim, whether they are our children or a stress free erev Shabbos. What it takes is our commitment
to do Hashem’s will.
We are not on the level of Yaakov
Avinu, but we all have the opportunity to become angels ourselves or to create
angels through our commitment to following a path that Hashem set before us to
perfect ourselves and do His will.