A Taste of Shabbos – Parashat Vayishlach

Genesis seems full of angels, so it’s no surprise that we find our Shabbos bride being escorted in with angels. The Talmud relates that when someone comes home Friday night, they are escorted by two angels, one good and the other not so good. If the house is not a ready vessel, then the bad angel says, ‘May it be like this next week,’ and the good angel is forced to say Amen. But if the candles are lit, the beds are made, and the table is set, then the bad angel must say Amen.

This story has so many Jewish concepts in it; let’s focus on a few. Last week’s parsha ends with Yacov returning home. The Torah tells us that when he encountered a group of angels, he called the encampment ‘Machanayim,’ meaning a double camp. The commentaries explicate that he had been accompanied by the angels of exile and now he was also meeting the angels of the holy land who were coming to escort him back to the land – hence the double expression. It makes sense psychologically; often when you are on the last lap of a long journey, your passion seems to fade. So it is very helpful if you have companions from the past, as well as guides from the future to run with you.

Many sages give this Midrash a contemporary slant: We are now in the Friday afternoon of history, with all its hustle and bustle, and yes, the aches and anticipation of the Messianic birth pains. The six thousand years of exile angels are still with us but the redemption angels are coming from the future to take us home. It is not hard to extrapolate to our personal lives: there are weekday angels and Shabbat angels and as we tire toward the end of a long six weekday marathon, we are delighted to feel the presence of the Shabbos angels giving us a hand to enter a Shabbos world. I have been waxing rather poetic here, but the image itself pushes us in that direction. So, no wonder the Shabbos song preceding Kiddush on Friday night is so popular- and somewhat controversial.

Of course I am referring to ‘Shalom Aleichem,’ ‘Peace unto you,’ a phrase which Jews actually say when meeting each other at special times. But on each Friday night, we greet the angels with these words! Some sages balk at part of this four verse prayer. The first two are fine: 1-hello, 2-come in, 3-bless me, 4-goodbye. 1 and 2, are ok but 3 and 4 can be problematic. 3: How do we pray to angels when, with our insistence on monotheism we are supposed to pray only to G-d? 4: Why do we say ‘goodbye’ when they just arrived? Seems not very polite to ‘kick them out.’

Let’s shed some light on these questions by referring to the opening of this week’s parasha- Vayishlach- he sent, i.e. ‘and Yaacov sent angels’ (to his brother, Esav). The sages debate the nature of these angels. One sensible explanation is that, since we are taught that each mitzvah creates an angel, Yacov is sending a reminder to his brother that even though Yacov may have lacked the mitzvot of honoring his parents and living in Israel for the twenty years he was away, he performed many more than Esav, and under much more difficult circumstances.

Another rather post-modern answer is given by the Rebbe of Lubavitch. He says the angels are actually our mental capacity, our personality and character traits that we have cultivated during the week. We reflect on them and prepare to send them back to the more Esav-like, man of the field, weekday environment. We take time to assess which parts of our world we have successfully encountered, and raised holy sparks, and which parts may not be suitable for our abilities and our assignments for this time of our life. It may seem like a daunting task, but with the help of, as Lincoln would say, our ‘better angels,’ we can, G-d willing, succeed in our shlichut, our mission, our Vayishlach, as this parsha so clearly names our assignment.