If I say the word Angel to anyone brought up in the west, we tend to thing of a winged being. With a halo. And a harp. On a cloud. Or a plump Cherub on the Trivial Pursuit board. How wrong can one be? To put it simply...very.

A Keruv (one of the ten levels of angels) is described as a Maloch of destruction - yet, it is also described as having a childlike face. But it wields a sword of flame, preventing the return of Adam to Gan Eden. Not to be messed with. 

Oh, and it appears, not just on the Aron Hakodesh, but also on the Throne of Hashem...

Like Yaakov. And by extension, as we shall see, Yosef. These two have lives which mirror each other. Including encounters of a strange kind with Malochim/angels.

So I would like to look at the angel from a different angle. It will henceforth be called a Maloch, so as to remove it from the facile pictures of our mind. But that will be replaced by the difficult task of identifying and then understanding another layer of meaning behind the Malochim on the ladder of Yaakov's dream.

Or rather, the ladder that was Yaakov, in his dream. Intrigued? I hope so...