אמר רבי סימון: אין לך כל עשב ועשב, שאין לו מזל ברקיע, שמכה אותו ואומר לו גדל
Rabbi Simon said: Is it not so that there is not a single blade of grass that does not have its Fortune in heaven striking it and telling it to grow.
I have long struggled with word changes and misquotes of traditional texts, not to mention incorrect citations.
The above translation is what it really says in the original. And yet, I much prefer the more common translation: Behind every blade of grass there is an angel telling it, "Grow! Grow!" You can find that quote all over the internet - incorrectly attributed to Talmud. It's really in Mishnah Rabba Bereishit (ancient rabbinic commentary on Genesis), 11:6.
Recently, I have seen מכה translasted as "tap" - as though the angels are tapping the blades of grass on the shoulder to get their attention. But מכה is the word for striking, for hitting, for giving punishing lashes to someone (as in the tractate of Talmud, מכות makot, in which we learn that one should never merit 50, so the worst punishment is 49 מכות, lashes.
And then there is a traditional interpretation of the original in which the hitting of the grass is meant to teach us that some things need to be hit in order to grow. Tell me how many heder (school) teachers or parents have used that one through the generations to justify striking a child.
And perhaps "change" is less true than borrowing a bunch of sources and putting them together: while the Midrash is based on a statement in Job, there is no mention of an angel. Where does the angel come from? In Sefer Hasidim (12th c.) it says, כי אין דבר שיהיה מלאך ממונה עליו, ואפילו כל עשב ועשב, "there is nothing that doesn't have a guiding angel over it - even grass." I like this version, though it doesn't indicate that the grass is being told to grow.
This also brings up the angel bit. In the Midrash, there is no angel - there is מזל mazal, fortune, or perhaps star or constellation. Yes, this is whence we get mazal (mazel) tov - not "may you have good luck," but "what you have (achieved) is a sign of good fortune," a sign from the stars.
Somehow, we get from Fortune to Angel, as well as from hitting and telling to telling (possibly with a gentle tap to get attention).
Perhaps it is a bit like the game of telephone, whereby a teaching is passed from one generation to the next, and on the way transitions in order to remain relevant, to speak to each successive generation.
Indeed, if we didn't need that, we could all simply sit down and read the Torah and never need the Mishnah, or the Gemarrah, or the Midrash, or the commentaries of Rashi, Maimonides, Nachmanides, Gersonides, Hirsh, Hertz, Eitz Hayim, or all of the rabbis and teachers offering Divrei Torah, interpretive words of Torah, in Jewish communities throughout the world.
There are good reasons to consider all words we wish to pass on, and how we choose to interpret them says something about our values. Some people don't want to talk about angels - ancient rabbis as well as contemporary Jews both. I like to talk about them - I like to think about the role of angels in the world, the angels who sit behind a blade of grass and what they do. Maybe, back in the day, they did hit the grass - and maybe, like we now don't believe in striking our children to get them to learn, just maybe those angels have also changed and don't any longer strike the grass to urge it to grow. Maybe they tap it gently, נגע to touch, just to get its attention. Or maybe they just whisper a little louder, or change their words, or step out in front instead of staying behind - just to get the attention of the grass.
With that in mind, I will stick with:
Behind every blade of grass there is a guiding angel whispering to it, Grow! Grow!
And I will cite its origin as "Midrash, common interpretation."
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