What is the difference between angels and human beings?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau explains it with the words of the Navi Zechariah, “I will give you places to walk among these who stand.” An angel is one who stands. “He stands. He doesn’t change.” A human is one who walks: “he walks, he moves, he falls, gets up and keeps going.”
That difference, he teaches, is not a weakness in people. “That’s your greatness. You were not created to repeat, you were created to discover.”
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that an angel’s level is fixed: “He never falls, and he never rises.” His completeness “is also his ceiling.” A human being is built completely differently, and that is why routine, which imitates standing still, is so dangerous for us.
Related concepts: Growth · Spirituality
In A Soul at Peace: Walking Among Those Who Stand
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Angels stand; humans walk.
Deepest human truth
A human being was created to move, fall, rise, and discover. Only the brave ones arrive.
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