Introduction

ONE OF THE PROMINENT CHARACTERISTICS of the world that I claim Maimonides consciously rejected is its angelology. There are a number of aspects of traditional beliefs about angels that Maimonides must have found hard to accept: their independence, corporeality, vice-regency, etc. However, while he could not have been happy with rabbinic personification of angels, with rabbinic doctrines of fallen angels,1 and with some talmudic texts which present the angel Metatron as a kind of vice-regent to God, none of these presents more difficulties than biblical anthropomorphism. Why is he so troubled by the existence of intermediaries between God and humans? It is the prominent place of angels in extrarabbinic literature that was probably the focal point of Maimonides’ concern, but it is also likely that the ease with which talmudic rabbis saw angels as intermediaries between humans and God also troubled him. Examining a custom widespread throughout the Jewish world today will illustrate the point.

Angels in Rabbinic Thought

Ashkenazi Jews the world over usher in the sabbath eve at home by singing the hymn Shalom aleikhem before reciting kiddush. The third of the hymn's four stanzas reads as follows: ‘Bless me with peace, O angels of peace, angels of the most high, from the King of kings, the holy One, blessed be He.’ The entire hymn appears to be based upon the following passage in the Talmud:

Rabbi Hisda said in Mar Ukba's name: He who prays on the eve of the sabbath and recites ‘and [the heaven and the earth] were finished’ (Gen. 2: 1), the two ministering angels who accompany man place their hands on his head and say to him, ‘and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged’ (Isa. 6: 7). It was taught, Rabbi Jose son of Rabbi Judah said: Two ministering angels accompany man on the eve of the sabbath from the synagogue to his home, one a good [angel] and one an evil [one]. And when he arrives home and finds the lamp burning, the table laid, and the couch [bed] covered with a spread, the good angel exclaims, ‘May it be even thus on another Sabbath [too],’ and the evil angel unwillingly responds ‘Amen.’ But if not, the evil angel exclaims, ‘May it be even thus on another Sabbath [too],’ and the good angel unwillingly responds, ‘Amen.’