What a google search revealed a nard to be Starting on Valentine’s Day, we started reading The Aroma of Righteousness by Deborah Green, explores the imagery of fragrance in rabbinic literature. Two months later, we had Dr. Rachel Herz from Brown give a lecture on her work unraveling the neural processes of olfaction and gustation. The readings and lecture gave the class a well-rounded understanding at how scent is employed in ritual for invoking emotion. As mentioned earlier, our sense of smell is the most memorable due to its proximity to the pre-frontal cortex. Although research behind this phenomenon is relatively recent, practitioners of religion understand the influence of associating scents with divine concepts. In her introduction, Green mentions how we lack a vocabulary to describe our sense of smell, and refer to such using simile, metaphor or simply naming the scent. The explanation for such is that the olfactory bulb is located so “far down” that the circuitry co...
Taste presentation Memorable Moments: time and place Dear REL-365-B01-2025, I had the privilege of taking SMells and Bells in the second semester of my senior year. JBK and I planned for me to take this course one year prior while planning out my religion minor. It was a really long year but I am so glad I got to take this course when I did. Class meetings for this course were some of the more challenging and more calming for me throughout the semester. Some days I anxiously sat out of conversations while scrolling through apartment websites and wondering if I needed to look for another job. Other days we made s’mores, celebrated the trees’ New Year, and went on a walk in the Wheaton Woods. New Years for the trees Pilgrimage to the Bra Tree As always I deeply appreciated hearing from my peers especially when we disagree. I am honored to be seen as a safe person to disagree with. I am thankful for anyone who shared especially in particularly small and vulnerable classes like ...
Smell is something most of us can perceive, however, most of us have a difficult time putting a name to a particular scent. We can all describe, with great detail and accuracy (at least, we feel that we are being accurate), what a scent reminds us of, or what it's like, but finding one definitive label is difficult for us. Diane Ackerman in A Natural History of The Senses observes that the easiest way for us to most accurately describe smell is by relating it to memory. Smells can trigger some of the most visceral feelings and memories we have. And furthermore, those feelings and memories are a crucial part of understanding ourselves within the greater context of reality. Imagine you're walking down a random street in your childhood hometown, you don't go by there often, but today you chose to take the long route to work which passes through the neighborhood. You pass by a bakery, but immediately, not upon sight, but upon smell, you know it is not just any bakery. It...
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