Part 2
There may be nothing more enchanting, mystical, and mysterious than the wonder of music. In our previous article, we began to develop a deeper understanding of the concept of music, its cyclical nature, and the Torah ideas related to circles. To review, a circle represents spiritual death. It is a geometric anomaly; it is the only shape with no newness: no turns, no corners, and no changes. It has no beginning and no end. A circle is a cycle that goes nowhere; it lacks evolution and generates no growth. No point on the circle is unique, with each point equidistant to the center. A circle simply cycles back on itself without making any progress.
On a psychological level, the circle in human life is the mindless cycle of habitual living, without any newness, growth, or evolution. So many struggle to create genuine change, going through the motions instead of growing through the motions. This is why the Hebrew word for habit is “hergeil,” which also spells ha’regel, “the foot.” The foot is the part of the body farthest away from one’s head, which is the locus of thought, willpower, and decision-making. The feet walk automatically with no need for thought or contemplation. Hergeil represents a lifestyle devoid of thought and newness. Fascinatingly, the root of “hergeil” is “gal,” and “l’galgeil” means to roll, another circular motion.
Mindless habit creates a lifestyle that leaves one shackled in a mental and spiritual cage. Every week is just about surviving from Shabbos to Shabbos. Every year, it’s the same holidays, the same experiences, the same birthdays, and the same ups and downs. Life becomes a giant circle, a cycle of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Spirituality becomes ritual; religion becomes habit. Davening, saying brachos, and learning Torah become items on a checklist instead of an opportunity to connect to Hashem. Relationships become tiresome, food becomes boring, and life loses its flavor. This is the spiritual danger of circles, of cycles, of habit. This is a life without purpose, without passion, without an empowering why to all aspects of one’s life. When one lives a Jewish life without questioning, without taking ownership, and without seeking deeper meaning and purpose to all aspects of his or her lifestyle, they are doomed to live within the cage of circularity, where mindless habit replaces mindful transcendence.
Judaism: A Religion of Newness
Judaism is strongly connected to the concept of newness. Upon leaving Egypt as a newly formed nation, the first mitzvah the Jewish People received was the commandment to declare the new month: “Ha’chodesh ha’zeh lachem rosh chodashim – This month shall be for you as the head of months” (Sh’mos 12:2). Why is this the first mitzvah the Jewish People are given, right at the moment of their formation? This seems like a secondary concept, paling in comparison to mitzvos such as Shabbos, bris milah, and other such prominent mitzvos. What is unique about declaring the new month?
Upon leaving Egypt, the Jewish People experienced their birth, their inception as a nation. The Hebrew word for month, chodesh, also spells chadash, which means “new.” Just as the moon constantly changes as it waxes and wanes, we are a people of newness and constant growth, waxing and waning through our continuous evolution. This is why the Jewish People count by the lunar year, built from months. The Western world, in contrast, counts by the solar year, which is based on the earth’s yearly rotation around the sun. The Hebrew word for “year” is “shanah,” which shares the same root as yashan, which means “old,” and comes from the same root as the word yashein, which means “sleeping.” It reflects the concept of repetition and mindless cycles, as the word sheini means to repeat or do something twice. The sun does not appear to change; it remains static. A life of shanah represents a life spent spiritually sleeping, lacking any growth or newness. In a solar year, the months are merely a practical way of breaking down the year. In the lunar year, however, the months are the creative building blocks that come together to form the year. In essence, the Jewish system is built from 12 months of growth and evolution, not a single repeating year. However, to understand the true ideals of Judaism and reframe how we are meant to relate to circles, we must briefly delve into the nature of time.
The Nature of Time
The widely accepted understanding of time is that it moves in a straight line. Hashem created our world of space and time, and since its inception, time has been moving inexorably forward. Along this line of time is the past, present, and the future. If we were to move backward along this line, we could peer through history and find Avraham Avinu at the Akeidah, Moshe Rabbeinu receiving the Torah, and the Rambam writing the Mishneh Torah. Our current experience is taking place in the middle of the line, and if we could move forward along the line, we would see events that have not yet occurred. However, there is a major contradiction to this theory.
There is a piyut in the Pesach Haggadah (U’v’chein Va’amartem) that describes how Avraham Avinu served matzah (unleavened bread) to the three mal’achim who visited him because it was Pesach at that time. Rashi (B’reishis 19:3) quotes this opinion and says that Lot served matzah to the mal’achim as well, when they came to Sodom. How can this be? The mitzvah of matzah originates from the events of Y’tzias Mitzrayim, which would not occur for another two hundred years!
In order to understand why Avraham and Lot served their guests matzah before the miracles of Pesach occurred, we must develop a deeper understanding of time. Time does not move along a continuous, straight line; it circles around in a repeating yearly cycle. As the Ramchal explains, Hashem created thematic cycles of time, and each point in the year contains unique spiritual energy.
This deep understanding transforms our perception of time. We don’t celebrate freedom each year on the 15th of Nisan because that’s when the Jews were freed from Egypt; rather, the Jews were redeemed from Egypt on the 15th of Nisan because that is z’man cheiruseinu, the time of freedom. This power of freedom allowed the Jews to escape the slavery of Mitzrayim, and this is why Avraham and Lot ate matzah long before Y’tzias Mitzrayim occurred. Matzah represents freedom, and Avraham and Lot tapped into the spiritual energy of freedom present at that point in time. Rather than commemorating a historical event, they were tapping into the deep energies of time already inherent at that point in the circle. So, too, when we celebrate each holiday, we do not simply commemorate a historical event; we tap into and experience the deep energies inherent at that point in time. Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkos, and all the chagim give us the opportunity to access unique spiritual energies in time.
Spirals in Time
However, even the circle analogy is limiting. If time were indeed a circle, each point of the year would simply be a repetition of that point from the previous year, from the previous lap around the circle. That would be pointless. We do not seek to re-experience the past each year. Our goal is to expand upon what we have created year after year, so that each time we return to that same point on the circle, we are on a fundamentally different level. Each Rosh HaShanah must be higher than the previous one: each Pesach, a new Pesach; each Shavuos, a new Shavuos, etc. Through our growth and ascension, we convert the two-dimensional circle into a three-dimensional spiral, traversing along the same circle to ever greater heights. We maintain circularity while achieving ascension.
The same is true for all spiritual circles. The ideal is not to transcend the circular system but to uplift it, to transform the circle into a spiral, and to find deeper ways of creating newness within the circular system. (This spiral concept also applies to the yearly Torah cycle.)
Bringing Chodesh into Shanah
This is the connection between chodesh, the lunar year, and shanah, the solar year. If time is meant to be a spiral, there is an apparent tension between these two themes: The Jewish system of time is rooted in chodesh (newness), and seemingly opposed to shanah, the circular system of solar years. However, we have already shown that Judaism does not oppose circles, but instead proposes to transform them into spirals. Therefore, we must further develop our understanding of shanah.
In truth, our goal is not to transcend the realm of shanah but to transform it into an experience of chodesh within the realm of shanah. As such, we build months within the year, infuse newness within the habitual, and form spirals within the circular frameworks. We do not separate the months from the year; we use the months to uplift the year. The physical template of shanah is infused with the innovation and creativity of chodesh.
The same is true of all experiences within time. Every day is a new day, every moment a new moment. The external templates and vessels – the surface layer of our lives – may seem repetitive, but we can create newness within each action and within each moment. We might daven the same t’filah every day, but as the Nefesh HaChayim explains, every t’filah should be a completely new experience. We may have the same spouse and family for our whole lives, but every day is a new opportunity to deepen our connection and to further build our relationships. We do not pass over time, reactively experiencing life; we actively ride the waves of time, creating spirals from the circles, infusing chadash within the shanah.
In our next article, we will delve more deeply into this fascinating topic and try to understand the nature of circles and spirals on an even deeper level, especially as it relates to music.
In the meantime, may we all be inspired to continue to embark on the journey of becoming our ultimate selves!
Rabbi Shmuel Reichman is the author of the bestselling book, The Journey to Your Ultimate Self, which serves as an inspiring gateway into deeper Jewish thought. He is an international speaker, educator, and the CEO of Self-Mastery Academy. After obtaining his BA from Yeshiva University, he received s’micha from RIETS, a master’s degree in education, a master’s degree in Jewish Thought, and then spent a year studying at Harvard. He is currently pursuing a PhD at UChicago. To invite Rabbi Reichman to speak in your community or to enjoy more of his deep and inspiring content, visit his website: ShmuelReichman.com.
