On Circles & Calves עגַל | עִגּוּל

There is a special kind of excitement that Pnimius Jewish kitchen on Friday… The counter slowly fills with colors and textures. The rhythm of preparation begins to take over the house. Knives moving across cutting boards, dough being kneaded, vegetables being chopped… anticipation of Shabbat approaching.

There is a special kind of excitement that Pnimius Jewish kitchen on Friday… The counter slowly fills with colors and textures. The rhythm of preparation begins to take over the house. Knives moving across cutting boards, dough being kneaded, vegetables being chopped… anticipation of Shabbat approaching.

This Friday was Day 7 of Roaring Lion, the war that began last Shabbat morning has highlighted every moment this week in ארץ ישראל - Eretz Yisrael, filling the air with running and returning to safe rooms, tefilla, achdut…and the kirvut / closeness that difficult times bring.

We have just come out of Purim like none other.. palpable new light emerging through hiddenness.

Yet as I stand in the kitchen preparing for Shabbat, I eventually notice something… The Ohr Chadash from Purim is still here… in my kitchen.

The עד דלא ידע  ad d’lo yada, that place of miracles beyond knowing, that opened on Purim is glimmering quietly beneath the surface of ordinary Shabbat preparations.

As my hands move through the cutting, peeling, kneading ... something new begins to appear… flickering not on my screen, but in the melachot happening in my kitchen…. inside the simplest things.
Inside fruit.
Inside vegetables.
Inside light refracting through the prism in my window.

Almost as if the world itself is whispering:
Pay attention.
The miracles are still here!

It actually began with something surprising.
as I was cutting an apple.
When I cut it open I stopped.
The inside was red!

Not pink like a normal apple. Deep red.
For a moment I wondered if the fruit was spoiled. Maybe it had gone bad.
So I cut another.
Red again.
Then I looked at the sticker on the apple.
“Kissabel. I’m red inside.”
I laughed.

The fruit itself was the same hidden teaching of Purim…
On the outside, the story looks ordinary (like a red apple)… Politics. Power struggles, A king, a queen, a decree.

But hidden within the ordinary is the אור חדש / new light planted in the middle of the apple. The seed of ad d’lo yada, the place beyond knowing.

As I stood there holding the apple, the geometry of the fruit caught my eye.
A circle.
geometric patterns… a mandala
And then the seed in the center.

As I continued slicing, I found myself thinking about something I had read earlier that Friday by Shlomo Katz.
Here are his words:

“A message from Rav Shlomo Katz on Parshat Ki Tisa 👇
There’s something deep hidden in this week’s parsha.

In the ancient world, circles often represented idolatry. The circle meant that history has no direction, that we are doomed to repeat the same cycles over and over again. What was will always be. Nothing truly changes.

And it’s fascinating that the archetypal moment of idolatry — the Golden Calf — is called an עגל. The word עגל shares the same root as עיגול, a circle.

Idolatry isn’t just about worshipping the wrong thing. It’s about surrendering to the belief that we’re stuck going around the same circle forever.

This moment is demanding from us to break that circle.”

And then something interesting happened.
I began noticing circles everywhere!!!
The onion.
The lemon.
The apple.
The simple geometry of the vegetables on my cutting board.

And then something even more surprising happened.
I up, out my window.
What?
Spirals in the sky above מירון Meron!!!
Huge white circles turning slowly in the blue sky, as if Shamayim was drawing the igulim.

The spirals reminded me of something in the teachings of the Arizal in Etz Chaim,
... creation begins with עיגולים / circles, the surrounding fields of ohr ein sof / divine light.

Perhaps sometimes the heavens themselves quietly echo that geometry.

And suddenly another memory surfaced.

From many years ago, when I was first becoming a baalat teshuva.
A family member said to me:
*“Let me know when you get to the center of the circle.”*

The implication was clear.
Judaism is just another circle.
Eventually you will reach the center and realize it is not real…

But something very different happened.
The more I lived with Torah.
The more I learned.
The more I experienced Shabbat, mitzvot, and the quiet depth of Jewish life.
The closer and closer I felt to the center of the circle.
And the center did not disappear.
It became more expansive!

Meanwhile the circles kept appearing around me in the kitchen.
The onion revealing layers upon layers of rings.
The apple revealing a heart shape at its center.
The lemon showing seeds pointing inward toward a hidden beginning.
And the prism in the window catching the infinite light and quietly splitting it into color in all off the corners of my kitchen.

Rav Shlomo Katz continued:
“On a military level, the circle has been the cycle we all know too well. Every few years, there’s another round. We hit the enemy hard, we “mow the lawn,” but we stop before pulling out the roots. Then we wait for the next round. Another circle.
The Torah is warning us: don’t fall back into the עיגול.
But it’s not only on the battlefield.
Look at what happens to us as a people. After October 7th, and again over Purim this week, we tasted something so holy, a level of unity that felt almost miraculous. For a moment, the divisions disappeared. We were one heart.
And then slowly, the old arguments creep back in. As if we’re being pulled back into the same circle.

Chevre, we must break the cycle!!!!

And maybe the deepest place this applies is inside of us.

This Purim opened something in many of us. When life suddenly feels fragile, it becomes so much easier to turn to Hashem.

The challenge is what happens when the intensity fades.

The yetzer hara whispers: “See? You’re back where you started.” And then we fall into a circle of frustration, of judging ourselves, of giving up.

But breaking the circle doesn’t require perfection. It requires us to refuse to surrender to the belief that we’re doomed to repeat the same patterns forever!

Ki Tisa is reminding us:
*the Jewish people are not meant to live in circles.*
*We move forward. ישר אל Straight to the Ribbono Shel Olam.*

To break the cycle of the עגל and walk the path that leads to geula.”

Standing there, something else suddenly became clear.
Looking closely at the apple cross section, I noticed something I had not fully seen before.
The circle is not empty.
The seed is at the center.

This directly answers the challenge that has puzzled my for decades…   
*“When you reach the center of the circle you’ll see there is nothing there.”*

But the fruit itself reveals the opposite.
The center holds the seed!!!

And the seed is the beginning of the next life.

 The nekuda pnimit נקודה פנימית
the center point
is the point everything unfolds.

The Arizal explains the קו / ray enters the עיגולים / circles through the center point.
The Seed of all life.

The seed always is in the center of the fruit
because the center is where continuation begins!!!

Suddenly the apple revealed the answer!
The circle is not a trap.
The seed of transformation sits at the center.
And that seed can break the circle open!

Rav Shlomo Katz said the idolatry of our times is intellectualism. The intellectuals go around and around the periphery of the circle but never arrive to the center!

Something else struck me.

Preparing for Shabbat Para I felt the rishimo / impression of עד דלא ידע - ad d’lo yada, the place beyond knowing.

And now, in the quiet days that follow, what was hidden begins gently to unfold …
day by day
outside as missiles are falling all around me
and
inside the ordinary moments of life.

Look.
The deeper we move
toward the center of the circle
the more light appears.

ישראל Yisrael is
ישר אל  straight to Hashem

From gel hazahav, the Golden Calf
to פרה אדומה Parah Adumah.

From repetition
to purification.

From circle
to גאולה - geula.

מה רבו מעשיך ה׳
Look closely.

❤️Rachel Leah