According to a rabbinic tradition recorded in the Talmud (Shabbat 12b), God’s angels do not understand the Aramaic language in which the Talmud itself is mainly composed. As many a modern reader can testify, they’re hardly alone.
But how can angels, who “know the thoughts in every man's heart,” be ignorant of Aramaic? The early commentators had a tough time explaining it. According to the medieval authority Asher ben Yehiel, the answer is that the angels are in fact perfectly familiar with Aramaic, but think that using it is beneath them. Closer to our own time, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) said something similar, with a twist: focused as they are on the big picture of humanity and the universe, angels can’t be bothered with the details, worked out again and again in the knotty particulars of Jewish thought and experience.
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