[Avodah] "The Angel Which Redeemed Me From All Evil." Bereshis (48:16)

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 08:45:01AM -0500, Cantor Wolberg wrote:
: The Cherubim shall be with wings spread upward, sheltering the Cover  
: with their wings with their faces toward one another; toward the the  
: Cover shall be the faces of the Cherubim (Shmos 25:20).

Do keruvim shelter? Or do they hold a lahat cherev hamis-hapekhes to
GUARD the road to the eitz hada'as?

    The topic of Torah to the Nefesh: A comparison to rain for the
    ground; it causes what was planted there to grow, a cure or a
    poison. Similarly Torah, causes what is in his heart to grow. If
    what is in his heart is good, his yir'ah will grow; if what's in
    his heart is a "root sprouting poison weed and wormwood" then the
    bitterness that's in his head will grow.

    As they wrote "the righteous will walk in it, and sinners will
    stumble in it" [Hoshea 14:10, as explained by Chazal], and as they
    wrote "To those on the right the medicine of life is in it, and to
    those on the left, the poison of death." [Shabbos 88b]

    Therefore one must cleanse one's heart every day before study and
    after it of impure attitudes and middos with a fear of sin and
    good deads.

    This [process] is euphamistically called "going to the bathroom". They
    were was about this they hinted when they said "Going to the
    bathroom is greater tha all of it." (Berakhos 8a) And when they said
    "Whomever spends a long time in the bathroom, it is lofty." (Ibid
    55a) Also when they said, "Get up early and go, in the evening go"
    (Ibid 62a) they intend to say that in his youth and in his old age
    he shouldn't distance himself a great distance from his Creator so
    that he couldn't be helped.

    One must inspect which evil middah is strong within him, and after
    that clean it out. Not like those men of desire who wallow in what
    they want, and the desire grows greater. It requires a lot of slyness,
    to be "sly in yir'ah" (Abayei, Ibid 17a) in opposition to the "snake
    was sly".

    One who is lazy in weeding out an evil middah, isn't helped by all
    the legal fences and protations that he does. For any disease which
    isn't cured from within...Even the fence of the Torah which protects
    and saves will be useless because of his laziness. (c.f. Rava,
    Sotah 21a; Bei'ur haGra Mishlei 24:31, 25:5)

		    - Vilna Gaon as quoted in Even Sheleimai 1:11

As I see it, a role of the keruvim on the aron is to protect those who
lack the middos from using the Torah to water their weeds.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha