By Rabbi David Burstein, Temple Beth Or

And you shall teach them diligently to your children,

and you shall speak of them

when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.

Rabbi David Burstein

The night is getting late and I am tucking my 7-year-old son Coby into bed. He looks up to me and says, “Dad, can we say the angel prayer?” And so I put my hands on his head and recite the traditional Jewish bedtime prayer including the following invocation:

“May Michael be at my right, Gabriel at my left, Uriel in front of me, Raphael behind me, and above my head, the Shechinah, the Divine Presence.”

Coby smiles and turns over to go to sleep, the presence of the angels and his dad keeping watch over him.

What do I want to teach diligently to my own children about the power of our traditions and my own personal beliefs? I am a rabbi. I am a reasonably rational adult. I am a role model to my own children and others in my religious school and…I believe in angels. And not just as a fantasy or bedtime story to help a child sleep. I believe in them with all my being.

We as Jews have talked about and believed in the existence of angels from the very beginning of our journey as a people. Our Torah and sacred texts contain numerous stories and accounts. And for as long as we have believed, we have also had our doubts. Were these angels real or imagined?

In a recent interview with Zeek magazine, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, author of The Angelic Way, responded to the following question about the validity of angels:

“Zeek: To many of us, angels are the apotheosis of modern culture, representing a displacement of human need onto an imaginary world. What is your response?

“Rami Shapiro: You could say the same thing about God, religion, and spirituality as a whole. Karen Armstrong’s new book, A Case for God, makes the point that pre-modern peoples looked at religion more allegorically than we moderns do. Certainly this is true of Judaism. Torah was meant to be interpreted; it was a living document with which we could dialogue. We were always finding something new in Torah and in this way the revelation was ongoing and contemporary. With the ascension of science in the 17th century, facts began to displace poetry, and we demanded something from our texts that they were never meant to provide: science. This reduced revelation to a one-dimensional literalism that continues to fuel fundamentalisms of all sorts (religious and atheist), and is anathema to classical Jewish thinking.

“So, to your question, there is no way I can look at angels as a scientist looks at facts. Angels are symbols of a spiritual capacity intrinsic to human beings.

“The whole point of The Angelic Way is to return angels to where they belong: the human psyche. Torah tells us as much in the story of Jacob dreaming of a ladder linking heaven and earth with angels ascending and descending upon it (Gen. 28:12). The 18th-century Jewish mystic Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye said the ladder was in fact Jacob’s head: his head reached from earth to heaven, and the angels were ascending and descending in his mind (Toledot Ya’akov Yosef, 50).

“Wherever angels appear in sacred literature I think they are metaphors for our capacity to ascend to heaven and then return to earth transformed and as agents for transformation.

“If we see angels as independent intermediaries between God and humanity, I think we do a terrible disservice to reality. Just as there is no gap between an ocean and its waves, so there is no gap between God and humanity, God and creation.

“We speak of them as other, but in time discover that they are part of ourselves. This is the promise of angels: When we mature spiritually and discover that all beings — human, animal, vegetable, and mineral — are the Face of God; then we have the capacity to actualize our angelic capacity to ascend to heaven, and then descend to transform and to make heaven here on earth.”

Angels represent our capacity for transformation and our belief in them allows us to access that skill when needed to help ourselves and others. To help them heal, to help them pray, to help them feel safe, and yes, even to help a 7-year-old drift off to sleep.

I have been using the archangel meditation I used with my son, to connect to Judaism and God since the mid 1990s. I say it when I am setting up sacred space. I say it before I perform a wedding, a funeral, and before any service I lead.

I say it when I teach a class on Jewish meditation and when I sit in my daily prayers.

Sometimes I say it out loud but mainly I do it silently. It helps me become centered and feel safe when I am scared. I don’t ask angels for magical powers or even ask to see proof of their existence. I just like acknowledging their presence in my life and by doing so feel closer to God.

Angels provide me with an opportunity to connect to my Judaism in a visceral manner. I can feel them with me at my sides, at my back, in front of me and also the overarching presence of God.

Judaism is full of opportunities to expand our minds and souls beyond the tangible and into the spiritual.

My relationship with the world of the angels deepens not only my work as a rabbi but makes me a better husband and father, son, brother and friend — a better human being.

And my belief allows me to be open to the myriad opportunities to connect to God that surround me every day.

Rabbi David Cooper writes in his book, Invoking Angels:

“When we engage in a daily relationship with angels, our lives become filled with a vast array of heavenly sparks that inform us of the divinity within even the most mundane activities…Living with angels on a daily basis cultivates an entirely new view. Everything takes on a special quality; everything feels connected in a fascinating way….Moreover, when angels are invoked, there is a fascinating experience of never feeling alone. There is a sense of being in the midst of a constantly unfolding creation that is rich, awesome, brilliant, and complete; each and every moment is stunning.”

I believe in angels and their capacity to help me be a better human being. To help my days be more stunning and my interactions with life more complete. This is my path.

But I guess the bigger question as a rabbi and more importantly as a dad is how much do I let my beliefs affect my relationships with those close to me?

I realize that Coby and my students and congregants for that matter need to come to their own spiritual path. They might find the same comfort in angels that I do or they might not. I need to let them do so with my full support.

Coby at some point will no longer want me to tuck him in and call the angels to be with him. That will be OK with me. That will be his path.

The beauty of the path we call Judaism is there is room for faith and for growth. There is room for the angel and for the scientist. And both can teach and learn diligently. There are numerous spiritual paths to God. There are numerous ways we can feel “not alone” within our tradition.

May God be with you on your own path, comfort you and may you know always you are not alone.