Shifting Emphasis on Smell

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 While it isn't the only prominent example of smells in Jewish texts, one that logically made many appearances was the smell of the priestly offerings, both the offerings of animals or other sacrifices, and the burning of special incense. It's no wonder that this was considered an important smell during the time period that these texts was written. Until the destruction of the second temple sacrifice was essential to the way that the Jewish people worshiped. It's a theme of great importance throughout the Tanach and the commentary texts that followed. However in a modern context, smell is less prevalent of a sense in Jewish worship. It's not completely absent, aromatic spices are a major part of the Havdallah ritual for example, and probably others I just don't know about, but the burnt offering is no longer a part of Jewish life, which seems like it might take the central importance of smell out in some way too.

An example of a Havadallah spice box from 19th century Italy, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, UC Berkeley

With the absence of the temple as a central location to make burnt offerings, the focus in Jewish worship shifted to being on prayer which raises the question, if the central sense in worship shifted from scent to hearing, how did that effect the central sense in interpretation and study. Several of the midrashim that we looked at were from after this time period, so obviously smell didn't evaporate completely, but surely there was some change. It would take a lot of dedicated time to do the work to figure that out for sure though.

There are some examples that come to mind however, such as the importance of music in Hasidic traditions. While prayer had been very important for quite some time before the start of the Hasidic movement, they were seemingly the first to identify with the holiness of music outside of the influence of holy texts. The music itself, regardless of the words of prayer was thought to be influential in reaching into ones own soul and reaching out to G-d. Another Hasidic belief around music was that all tunes contained a holy spark, even those from gentile origins, thus began a practice of adapting popular tunes into vessels for prayer, one that still happens widely today.

Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausMarch 1, 2022 at 7:33 AM

    Are you suggesting that the sound of music works better for you than smells, at least as a way of connecting to Jewish traditions? We'll definitely see how that works in Indonesian Muslim culture with the musicality of Qur'an recitations and related Islamic music. But I agree with you about the power of Hasidic melodies and the ideas about them.

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