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| Mel Alexenberg, Miami Beach Angel, Acrylic painting on canvas with digitized Rembrandt angel. Exhibited in "The Poetics of the Eruv" show at Yale University, 2011. |
In his highly original book The Thirteen Petalled Rose,
Rabbi Adin Steinsalz describes angels as messengers bringing Divine plenty down
from the worlds of Mind and Emotion into the World of Action. The role of angels is implicit in their
Hebrew name malakh, which means “messenger.” It is said that an angel can carry out only
one mission. Every angel is
one-dimensional, lacking the many-sidedness of human beings. No two angels are alike.
In the biblical book Ezekiel,
we learn about three classes of angels: Sepharim
inhabiting the World of Mind, Hayot in the World of Emotions, and Ofanim
in the World of Action. Each one of the
Sepharim is a distinct unit of mind, each of the Hayot is a distinct
unit of an emotion, and each of the Ofanim is a distinct action. Sepharim and Hayot are like
invisible bits and bytes in the cybersphere Cloud that transmit their messages
to Ofanim that render them visible on your smartphone screen or computer
monitor. Like data packets transporting
information through cyberspace, the task of angels is to maintain
communications between worlds of Mind, Emotions, and Action.
Angels can be considered discrete data packets in the
immaterial Worlds of Mind and Emotions realized in the material World of
Action. An angel in the World of Mind is
a one-of-a-kind cognitive data packet of a specific thought, word, idea, or
concept. An angel in the World of Emotions is an affective data packet of a
particular feeling or emotion, a specific inclination or impulse toward love,
fear, pity, and so on. Ofanim are
wheel angels moving through the World of Action, animating the realm of space
and time, coloring every single facet of your daily life. (In modern Hebrew, ofnayim
is a bicycle and ofnoah is a motorcycle.)
In celebration of Miami’s centennial, I digitized an angel
drawn by Rembrandt and sent it flying between the four corners of USA. The single angel image was deconstructed and
routed through cyberspace between Miami and San Diego along multiple pathways.
When the data packets reach San Diego, they are reassembled in the correct
sequence based on the ID numbers that were assigned in Miami.
The transmission control protocol (TCP) ensures that all the
packets get to the requesting computer with no pieces missing as the whole
Rembrandt cyberangel is rematerialized.
One angel packet can fly from Miami to New Orleans to Houston to
Albuquerque to Phoenix to San Diego, while another angel packet flies from
Miami to Atlanta to Nashville to St. Louis to Tulsa to Denver to Las Vegas to
San Diego. Visualize the documentation of hundreds of routing paths plotted
between the four corners on a map of the USA.
The erratic pathways drawn from Miami to San Diego, from San
Diego to Seattle, from Seattle to Portland, and from Portland back to Miami
look like streaks of electric energy. The visual record of the cyberangel
flight around the American perimeter appear like flashes of lightning
illuminating the multiple pathways between the four corners of USA. It is
appropriate that the contemporary Hebrew word for electricity heshmal is
taken from Ezekiel’s image of an angel.
The great Jewish leader of the 20th century, The
Lubavicher Rebbe, teaches that the sweeping technological changes we are
experiencing today were predicted some two thousand years ago in the Zohar,
the classic text of Jewish spirituality. The Zohar describes how the
outburst in scientific knowledge and technological advancement would be
paralleled by an increase in sublime wisdom and spirituality. Integrating the
wisdom of the mind and the wisdom of the soul can begin to usher true unity
into the world.
From “Internet Angels” section in Mel Alexenberg’s latest book
Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media.See praise for the book at Israel365.
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