Angels on the Ladder - Brief Article

Judaism, Fall, 2000 by Cecil G. Helman

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (Genesis 28:12)

Lying alone in an open field, a stone under his head, Jacob dreams his famous dream. All about that ladder that connects heaven and earth. A ladder longer than Time. About angels climbing up it, and angels climbing down.

To many of us, there is something familiar about that dream of angels and ladders, heaven and earth.

For to some extent, Jacob's dream is everyone's dream.

And everyone's life is a version of it.

If you look closely at that dream, you can see that each of the angels is carrying something in its tiny, delicate, transparent hands. Each is carrying something, for the dreamer who dreams them.

But the two groups of angels are quite different from each other.

For all those climbing up the ladder are carrying bundles of Questions: What am I? Why am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What does it all mean?

While all those coming down are carrying Answers. Many bundles of them, of every sort. Some that can help, and heal. Others that can weaken, or even kill.

So every night, the world lies dreaming at the foot of that great ladder. Trying to find the balance between those two groups of angels, as their ethereal feet tread the rungs in both directions. But some dreamers will never achieve this balance. Instead, they are fated to live with far too many questions going upwards to heaven. Or too many answers coming down.

Most of us, though, will spend our lives within a different moment. In that sudden spark when one angel passes another on the ladder. And when the wing feathers of the one brush briefly, for an eternal second, against the luminescent wings of the other....

CECIL G. HELMAN was born in Cape Town, South Africa and now resides in England, where he practices medicine. His published books include: The Body of Frankenstein's Monster: Essays in Myth and Medicine and The Exploding Newspaper and Other Fables.