Angels

This chapter explains that one of the prominent characteristics of the world that 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, and vice-regency. However, while he could not have been happy with rabbinic personification of angels, with rabbinic doctrines of fallen angels, 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 extra-rabbinic 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 troubled him as well. Examining a custom widespread throughout the Jewish world today will illustrate the point.