03 Dec ARE YOU AN EARTH ANGEL?

Prior to 1974,
the standard practice
for dealing with
someone who was
choking was to
whack the afflicted
person on the back.
Dr. Henry Heimlich argued hitting them
that way can force the obstruction further
into the gullet, rather than dislodge it. He
worked on various theories attempting a
better way before ultimately coming up
with the technique of putting one’s arms
around the person choking and exerting
upward abdominal thrusts, just above the
navel and below the ribs, with the linked
hands in a fist, until the obstruction is
dislodged.
Heimlich published preliminary

findings from his experiments with anti-
choking techniques in a US medical

journal. Newspapers around the US
quickly began picking up on examples
where readers, including restaurant
owners, had caught word of Heimlich’s
article and had tried the maneuver on
choking casualties, with successful
results.
Word spread, and that summer
the Journal of the American Medical
Association published an editorial in
which, with the surgeon’s permission, the
technique was officially referred to for the
first time as the “Heimlich Maneuver.”
The technique became widely adopted
nationally and internationally and today
it appears on posters in most restaurants
and is taught in many schools.
Despite introducing the technique,
Heimlich had never actually used it
the 42 years of its existence. In 2016,
Dr. Heimlich was in the dining room
of his retirement home in Cincinnati. A
fellow resident at the next table began
to choke. Without hesitation, Heimlich
spun her around in her chair so he could
get behind her and administered several
upward thrusts with a fist below the chest
until the piece of meat she was choking
on popped out of her throat and she could
breathe again.
At 96 years old, Dr. Henry Heimlich
had finally executed the Heimlich
maneuver to save a life. A short time
later, the 87-year-old woman for whom

Dr. Heimlich was an angel here on
earth, wrote him a note saying she was
so thankful that “G-d put me in this seat
next to you.”
Our Parsha begins with the description
of Yaakov’s dream that included angels
ascending and descending a ladder to
heaven. Many commentaries wonder
why the passuk describes them as
“going up and coming down”; shouldn’t
angels descend from heaven and then
ascend back up to it? I would ask a more
fundamental question: why do angels
need a ladder at all, can’t they float or
be beamed down to earth and back up to
heaven?
The answer can be found by looking
at other appearances of angels in Sefer
Bereishis. When Yaakov is poised to
reunite with his brother Esav, he first
sends “malachim” to Esav. Rashi there
interprets “malachim” as “ממש מלאכים, “
real heavenly angels. The Ibn Ezra
disagrees. He says Yaakov sent human
messengers who came through for
Yaakov and did just what he needed at
that moment.
Later still, when Yaakov sends Yosef
out to look for his brothers, the Torah
cryptically tells us someone appeared to
Yosef and asked, “who are you looking
for, maybe I can help direct you.” Rashi
says that person was none other than the
heavenly angel Gavriel. Again the Ibn
Ezra disagrees and says, no, it was a
human being who at that moment stepped
up for Yosef and asked how he could help.
Based on the Ibn Ezra’s consistent
explanation, perhaps we can suggest
that the angels in Yaakov’s dream were
not in fact heavenly angels but men.
Until that dream, Yaakov was an תם איש
אוהלים יושב, a pure person who sat in
the tent and studied Torah. Now, he was
bringing all of that learning, knowledge,
wisdom, and insight into the world.
Perhaps through this dream and vision,
Hashem was communicating that
spirituality and angels are not made in
heaven, but rather angels are made here
on earth. Maybe that is why they are
described as going up and coming down.
Yaakov’s mission—and ours—is to
be the angel for others. When we come
through for others, when we ask how

we can help, when we
make the difference for
them, we bring a piece
of heaven down here
to earth. Through our
actions we build an actual
stairway to heaven..
Yaakov awakens
from his dream and
becomes dedicated to
being an angel. When
he goes to the well, he
sees lazy employees and
he immediately says,
אחי , my brothers who I
care about, the day isn’t
over, we have to keep working. He sees
a young lady who can’t access the well
because of a huge boulder covering it and
he spreads his angelic wings and lifts it
for her. He is Rachel’s angel. He ascends
to heaven.
When Lavan replaces Rachel with
Leah on Yaakov’s wedding night, Leah
must have panicked. It will be humiliating
when Yaakov is expecting his beloved
and finds Leah instead. What did Rachel
do? She had every right to expose the
situation. Instead, to save her sister the
embarrassment, she became her angel
and gave her the simanim, the secret code
that she and Yaakov had formulated.
We must not passively wait for angels
to descend from heaven, to relieve pain,
offer support, provide help, and bring
salvation. We must be those angels,
proactively stepping up and stepping in
to make a difference in the lives of others.
For nearly years, $100 bills with an
identifying mark were randomly found
all over Salem, Oregon, in markets, at
stores, fairs and even on the street. They
helped people pay their electric bill,
make their rent, buy their prescription
medication, and even provide them
shelter for a couple of nights. At last
count, the mystery philanthropist has
anonymously given out of over $50,000
worth of $100 bills and has become the
angel for so many.
In July of 2017, Rosie Gagnon laced
up her sneakers for her daily run around
the hills of Virginia’s Shenandoah
County. When Rosie hit mile six of eight,
the water she’d packed along was gone

and her face was bright red. As she passed
by one particular home, a man pulling
down the driveway stopped and poked
his head out the window. He offered her
a bottle of water and it was exactly what
she needed. He then asked her if she was
the one he sees running past his house
every day. She answered yes. The next
day on her run at mile six out of eight
again, there was a cold bottle waiting for
her on a green telephone box at the edge
of the road. And then again the next day,
and the day after that. Six months after
leaving water each day she runs, Rosie
was interviewed. She explained that she
packs along her own water, of course, but
it never lasts as long as she needs. But
there, with a huge hill looming in her
final stretch, she always knows there’s
help ahead.
There are countless stories of humans
ascending and descending the stairway
to heaven to be someone else’s angel.
Twenty-two years after inventing his
technique, at 96 years old, Dr. Henry
Heimlich became that choking woman’s
angel. When Rosie Gagnon had to face
the daily run up a steep hill, Bruce Riffey
was her angel who put out water that
gave her the encouragement to make the
climb.
There are people all around us who
are choking on life, facing steep uphill
climbs, or stuck on the proverbial side of
the road. They are struggling emotionally,
financially, with loneliness or in despair.
Say hello, give the benefit of the doubt,
offer a kind word or a kind gesture. You
might be somebody’s only angel of the
day, their gift straight from heaven.