The Scents of the World

Smell is like a love hate relationship for us... It is a sensation that we, as human, can absolutely love or hate. Sometimes we want to always smell the scent of that amazing food, or love to be around someone who has an amazing smell to them. However, sometimes we cannot stand scents, like if we are driving behind a trash truck, or that kid that sat the side of you in your history class your senior year of high school who had the worst smell of BO, and you wanted to put on a face mask...

Throughout the book, The Aroma of Righteousness: Scent and Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature, written by Deborah Green, she explores the ways that rabbis’ reading of biblical texts along with intimate experiences with scents allows for further and better interpretations of the text. This is such a important aspect of religion because scents and aromas can play so much more a larger roll than we think.

For instance, part of the Wiccan ritual, sacred scents can actually awaken the sense of smell. It crazy to think about but for many religions, scents can play such a large roll in a various amounts of ways. It is much more than just walking into the kitchen during dinner time and something smells absolutely delicious and automatically makes you happy, interested, and intrigued.