Tuesday, September 08, 2026

Chazon Ish on Machnisei Rachamim vs Malachei Rachamim mi'sharsei Elyon

My wife was more awake when she was saying slichos than I was, which is why she noticed the piyut that we said yesterday / today (depending on your nusach) in which we address ourselves to מלאכי רחמים משׁרתי עליון.  She asked, "Are we praying to angels?!"  My answer was that this is no different than the prayer of מכניסי רחמים at the end of slichos, which some people skip out of concern for that very issue of avoiding the appearance of praying to angels, and others justify it in various ways, e.g. we are praying to G-d and simply asking the angels not to get in the way.  

Lo and behold, I found in the Divrei Siach sheet from 5782 (#488), R' Chaim Kanievski quoted the Chazon Ish as omitting מכניסי רחמים but having no problem with מלאכי רחמים משׁרתי עליון.  He drew a subtle distinction:


Had my wife not been bothered by the question, I would have never have given it a second thought.

  

1 comment:

  1. From what we know of malachim from midrashim, they do not seem favorably inclined toward humans. they were against the creation of humans and giving us the Torah. They also didn't want Hashem to accept the teshuva of Menashe. Our general practics is to bypass the gates they'd put up against our tefillos by saying Kaddish in Aramaic.

    ReplyDelete