[Avodah] Sholom Aleichem [was: Tinok Shenishba]

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, April 14, 2008 12:15 pm, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: My understanding is that a malach is an  intelligent being -- in fact,
: a HIGHLY intelligent being -- and not a machine or  a robot.  A malach
: lacks bechira only because it (he?) knows Hashem so  intimately that
: having any will or desire other than what Hashem wants is simply
: logically and intellectually impossible for such an intellectually
: and  spiritually superior being.

That's the opinion of the Or Samei'ach. The Rambam on which he is
commenting says otherwise, that there have no power to make decisions,
not even in the potential. And in fact, it looks like he defines a
mal'akh to be the spark of Divine Intellect necessary to cause on
event. IOW, the mal'akh /is/ the decision (Moreh 2:6). See our
discussion in v2n24 or so onward.

RYGB once asserted that perhaps leshitas haOS, mal'akhim when sent
down to olam hazeh can make wrong choices, which would explain Yuma
67b, where the gemara describes them as the sinful Benei Elohim.

I also wonder if the OS's sevara rules out mal'akhim making the same
kind of emes-vs-sheqer mistake as Adam qodem hacheit. Always knowing
which side is tov is different than always knowing the amito shel
davar about what the sides are.

: You can ask
: a malach for something that is in  the malach's power to do -- for
: example, it is in the malach's power to bentsh  you, if and when
: Hashem wants you to be bentshed. This is no more davening to the
: malach than asking your mother for a glass of water is  davening to
: your mother.

And then there is asking a gadol beTorah for his berakhah. One step
further: requests of meisim to stand forth as meilitzei yosher. (As
opposed to wishes to Hashem that he listen to them as such.) At this
point, the Gra prohibits, others permit.

There is a spectrum here, and it's hard to define exactly where one
has broached the 5th ikkar. In
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2007/06/angels-and-idols.shtml>, I suggest
that many of the classical forms of AZ were actually the worship of
real mal'akhim. That elilim aren't fake powers, they are secondary
powers being placed in the wrong position. Using the Rambam's
statement about the origins of AZ in Hil' AZ 1:1 and some statements
about history (one made by RSRH, the rest pulled off encyclopedias), I
try to show that the religion of the Eigel worshippers and of Malkhus
Yisra'el was keruvim worship. Kerub was a bull-headed god in the
Chaldean pantheon, similar in role to the Egyptian Apis, whose worship
involved many of the trappings Yerav'am imitated. The chayos have one
face that is described as that of a keruv in one place, and that of a
bull in another. And if the eigel was to replace (lehavdil) MRAH as a
conduit to G-d, then it was very much in the role of a keruv, and an
alleged agalah of tefillos.

Which makes requests of angels very close to the end of the slippery
slope. And perhaps one might argue the reverse of RRW: Praying to
entities that have no free will is silly, but praying to entities that
can be thought of as autonomous is placing a real layer between man
and Creator.

On Sun, April 13, 2008 3:12 am, R Arie Folger (der Baseler) wrote:
: So you say. There are halakhic authorities that disagree. AFAIR, in
: Chaim Berlin, yevorkhuni leshalom was substituted for the usual text,
: because apparently Maharal had a problem with it. Now I never saw that
: Maharal and don't even know whether the song is old enough for this
: account to be true, but the minhag of saying yevorkhuni does exist.
:
: BTW, others, such as some Sefardim and Bobover 'Hassiedim, skip the
: last stanza or change tzeitkhem to betzeitkhem, so as not to chase the
: angels out.

Some Chassidim (eg Boston; I don't know where it originates, but the
benchers given out at my bar mitzvah were Bostoner, and therefore I
still own one) have 5 verses. After Borkhuni and before Tzeisekhem
they have "Shivtikhem Leshalom".

After learning about the Gaon and thinking about the Rambam on AZ and
worshiping Hashem's entourage, I have problems saying the verse as
"borkhuni". Not halachic problems, kavanah ones -- I can no longer say
the words with any kavanah without thoughts of kefirah running through
my head. However, my understanding for the minhag of saying 4 verses
has to do with there being 4 rungs in Yaaqov's sulam, so that the
spaces above, between them, and below the first rung to the ground
make 5 olamos. I am therefore unhappy with the solution of just
skipping the verse, as that messes up the author's numeric symbolism.
I therefore now use "Shivtikhem" instead. When company is over, I try
to mumble the word, so that they don't hear me being poreish min
hatzibur.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org     - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
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