The Circle

Recently my wife and I were at a beach in Kiryat Chaim (click on the location link below this article) after Shabbat, where we stood and watched a crowd of people, mostly adults, dance in a large circle (see photo). It reminded me of dances like The Freeze and Line Dancing. As if on cue, everybody knew the dance routine to each song, and it appeared as if no two dances were identical. I was told that they learn these dances from kindergarten age.

About that same time I read an article in a Jewish newspaper, as part of my reading for my Hebrew studies, titled: Choni HaMagel and until cake cake cake. As an outsider having not been raised here in Israel this baffled me as to what it meant. So of course I ran it by my Hebrew instructor, and he explained to me that first of all HaMagel means the circle maker, and is not Choni's last name as I initially presumed. He then explained to me that the three references about the cake refers to a circle dance that little children in kindergarten learn.

So what is the deal with the circle?

There are many references to circles all around us, both obvious and not obvious. We see from photos of the earth that it is round, some of the creatures of heaven are round like a wheel (Ezekiel 1:15-21), and around the throne in heaven are the 24 elders (Revelation 4:4).  In the less obvious, cells in our bodies are round, and atoms are rounds.

The Hebrew word for feast or festival is chag, which is usually in the form of a circle for dancing and feasting. It can also mean that the feast is to be celebrated in a circular or yearly fashion. Another Hebrew word dor translates to generation, and can also be the word for circle, in the sense of generations which are a circular or cyclic in nature.

In our Greco-Roman mind we see the creation as the beginning of a time line and its destruction as the end of that timeline, but the ancient Hebrews see time as a circle. As believers we should know that life will continue on whether here on earth, or in heaven or hell.

God obviously had something behind the purpose for the circle more than we can even imagine.

Oh... so what about Choni? Well the story goes something like this. He was living in a village where it had not rained for a very long time, and the people inquired of him to pray for rain. So he had decided to go out into the field and draw a circle in the ground. He placed himself inside the circle and told God that he refused to come out of that circle until it rained. Unfortunately, it did but not enough to do anything. He petitioned God again that it was not enough and that he was not coming out until they got a sufficient amount rain to fill the cisterns and the underground storage tanks. It did just that.

To finish the story, there was such an abundance of rain that the people approached the man asking him to pray and ask God to stop the rains. God honored his prayers and the rains ceased. 

Until next time... Shalom!