[Avodah] Praying to angels

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 12:19pm GMT, R Dov Kay wrote:
: As we get stuck into our Selichos, I was wondering what listmembers
: do about the selichos which involve petitioning things/entities other
: than G-d, eg machnisei rachamim...

Personally, I do not say it. Not much of a big deal, since I'm usually
12 pages behind at this point and need to choose /something/ to skip
before I fall asleep anyway.

However, in general, I skip things I can not understand in clearly
permissable ways. Not as a matter of halakhah, but simply because there
is little motivation to say a piyut if I can't get behind its meaning.

Similarly, my 4 verses of Shalom Aleikhem are "Shalom Aleikhem", "Boachem
leShalom", "Beshivtikhem leShalom" and "Tzeisekhem leShalom". A different
subset of the 5 verses said by many Sepharadim (and some Chassidim)
than usual for Ashkenazim, but avoids my mind being distracted by the
question of whether I should ask an angel for a berakhah.

And, as I mentioned in previous iterations, when guests are over (except
this week, as I believe our guest will have read this post) I mutter the
first word so as not to make a public point of diverging.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to
micha at aishdas.org        suffering, but only to one's own suffering.
http://www.aishdas.org                 -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)
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