An angel get's it's wings (Avodah Zarah 4b)

Yesterday, a colleague of mine joked that the Talmud tells us that each time we do a good deed an angel get’s its wings. Another colleague looked at him astonished, “Really! It says that in the Talmud?”

“No” laughed my first colleague, “I was actually just quoting Peter Pan.”

What was funny about his comment was that in a way he was actually right about the Talmud. Leaving Peter Pan (or any other source for a similar quote) we learn from today’s Talmud page that each time that someone does a mitzvah (lighting candles, feeding the poor, etc.) that mitzvah becomes manifest as a spirit of sorts. The Talmud goes on to explain that when one is judged in future ages, these living mitzvoth come to court and testify on his behalf to help get him into the world to come.

I tell this story not for the content but because it illustrates a point. Rabbi Ben Bag Bag famously stated that we should turn the Torah again and again because all is in it. I believe strongly in the truth of the statement. We can learn law, ethics, standards, love and a host of other important things, if we have an eye to read the text in the right light at the right moment. The texts can offer us what we need if we approach them with openness.

And now we add one more to the list of things in our Torah: a humorous way to root pop culture (an idiom that often speaks very strongly to Jews in America) in our tradition.