Smells and Bells

  Sacraficial Smell Last year I started meeting 1-1 with an InterVaristy staff for mentorship and descipling. Our relationship formed from a conversation I had with her under the impression I would see her maybe once or twice more before graduating. I had been introduced to her a few times at different events, but she staffed a different campus and was only at Wheaton for the day. I had recently returned from a very difficult study abroad. I was entirely disillusioned with my school work and felt only stress when I thought about Wheaton’s Christian fellowship which I was leading. I was in need of serious rest. I let the staff know all of these things because I thought there would be no consequences. She however, had a lot more flexibility in her schedule than I was aware of and committed to meeting with me for direction for as long as I wanted up until graduation. One of the first things we ended up speaking about was Sabbath. I was not aware of the Sabbath as a spiritual practice...

  Associative Learning;  Smell as a None Instinctual Sense An interesting feature we commonly do not think about when we talking about smell, is the fact that it is a learned sense. When we are growing up, we tend to be taught what scents are good versus bad, as opposed to knowing, instinctually, whether it is good or not. A great example of this, is the fact that we start to associate smells with certain memories, which makes us believe the smells are good. I tend to think of freshly baked cookies as a smell we associate with good memories. For me personally, I remember the smell of cookies as something that always arose in the winter, especially Christmas, so I have those warm and fuzzy Holiday feelings. Author Deborah Green talked a lot about the association between different scents and their cultural influences. “ More intriguing, however, is R. Yohanan ben Zakkai's response, which turns bad odor into a positive” ( The Aroma of Righteousness ) An interesting thing about sc...

  Deborah Greene begins the sixth chapter of her novel, Aroma of Righteousness, by writing that fragrance, like death, is fleeting (197). Immaterial. Ultimately and unavoidably ephemeral. And I agree with this, to a point. The sensation of scent tends to only permeate for a few moments, and while its memory may linger for years to come, smell remains trapped in a muted paradox, inaccessible and unspeakable until the physical source returns. However, I believe that in cases of great emotion — like the examples of martyrdom Greene presents — smell can transcend its liminality.  I’ve heard documentarians describe places of great human tragedy as retaining a smell decades after the actual event. Almost as if the locations are haunted not just by memory of suffering but the sensations of it as well. For Auschwitz, it’s the “smell of death,” for the Cambodian killing fields, it’s “the smell of rot,” and for me, it’s the smell of formaldehyde. Allow me to explain.  When I was...

  Deborah Green's “ The Aroma of Righteousness” addresses the erotic and appealing nature of scents in the context of rabbinic texts in a very eye opening way and I was quite drawn to her statements on women and smell. It was and still is common practice for women to use perfumes in order to have an appealing smell to them, even a bit expected of them. The consequences of patriarchal societies are seen in all kinds of historical texts and in Greene writings you can really see the impact that this has on women and how they are depicted and seen in a religious context. Women are expected to smell good, though when that smell is recognized and thought to have a seductive pull, those women are now viewed as erotic temptations that test and wickedly trick mankind. It was surprising to see how such suggestive texts can be seen in religious contexts, but the ways that these are often used against women was not as shocking to me. This can be seen in current society just through beauty prod...

     In The Aroma of Righteousness, Deborah Green writes in depth about the associations of smells in rabbinic interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. One aspect I found particularly interesting was the concept that fragrance was and is used as an interpretive tool to communicate with God and show the love and sanctity between Israel and God. The interpretation part seemed key to me, especially since the experience and opinions of smells can be so polarizing. One person might love a particular smell and another might despise that same smell. I also really liked how Green mentions that part of the reason smell has been ignored in religious scholarship is because perfume and similar things are associated with women and femininity, and so, in our patriarchal society, “women’s issues” are often not talked about enough.      Another idea that we discussed in class was the possibility of multiple rabbinic interpretations being true at the same time. This seems very ...

 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 centur...

Lately, the more I read about smell, the more enigmatic it seems too me, "Most of us cannot smell a fragrance of an orange by mentally concentrating on the idea of an orange" When I Initially read this statement, I tried to think of an orange and though in my mind, I know that its a fresh, sweet yet citrus smell, I know that I like the smell, but in that moment the orange in my mind, didn't have the smell. It makes me thing of the fleeting, impermanent yet highly impressionable nature of smell. It is able to stick in memory and trigger biological processes without us consciously processing it. Green talks about how its pervasiveness overwhelms our body when we inhale certain scents, but I also think its pervasiveness overwhelms our existence as a society.  The heavy description of Women though these opulent smells is testament of this idea. The way women smelt and the scents they used, as well as the scents used for worship being categorically different from the rest, are...

  CW: Accidental death. Mira and her two cats, Keko and Cuddles Before reading Deborah Green’s The Aroma of Righteousness , I was really excited to learn about the different scents mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and what they were associated with. I hadn’t realized the rich, religious histories behind, and uses for, some of my favorite scents: myrrh, frankincense, balsam, rose, flowers, etc. Amanda’s post on Green’s analysis of women and smell in Rabbinic texts definitely inspired me to think about the highly debated “scent of women”. My best friend Mira lives in a house with her mom and grandmother, two lady cats and a female yorkie terrier named Bella. I have spent a lot of time at this house filled with ladies and the scent of their perfume, cigarette smoke, candles, nail polish, incense, shampoo, lotion, and food on the stove. Mira’s Nana smokes Winston Reds inside, and it makes its way into everything in every room of the house. It’s faint, but it’s her signature touch! When I ...

  Image owned by: Marco Verch Well there's no denying the fact this book was a lot different from the ones I usually read but that doesn't mean I didn't like it. In fact, I found myself being quite interested through out a lot of the earlier sections of the book BECAUSE I've never read anything like it before so that was a nice experience at the very least. Towards the ending though, my feelings were a bit different but overall not that negative. On the plus side, I did like the ideas being presented and how Green gave the reader a chance to see how the rabbis back in the day thought while also dumbing down the stories for people like me who wouldn't get it. On the down side, apart of me couldn't help but feel like there was some serious repetition along the way and as a result the ending became a bit tough to get through in my opinion.  That being said, seeing how the rabbis chose to interpret these stories and how they relate to God, his relationship with Isra...

       Green spends quite a bit of time talking about Rabbinic tradition revolving around the perfuming and smells of women. To summarize what I understood of the readings, women perfuming themselves was popular, especially in the context of things like fumigating clothing and personal smells. However, the smells of women were of high debate, as there were various levels of respectability and rules regarding what smells could be used or how various individuals react to that smell. This also has to do with the role of the seductress in Rabbinic tradition, and something about that struck in me and I realized, after thinking of it, that typically attractive or seductive women are usually associated with smells.             I think primarily of women from the golden age of Hollywood, shown lounging in photoshoots with a cigarette and smoke, giving the cameras lust-filled looks. The animated pink “perfume” that waft...

As an avid gardener, I found myself drawn into the words of Deborah Greene in her “Aroma of Righteousness, ” and her description of how the Hebrew Bible uses gardening and its smell as a form of the erotic. To some, this may seem strange, but as someone who spends summers revering the dirt permanently under my fingers and having permanent dirt lines outlining my feet from my Chacos (the elite gardening sandal,) I appreciate and can see how this can be powerful as a form of passion and love. Greene speaks on the connection between the garden in the Song of Songs, how it is similar to the bond of the dove and Eve, and how the dove and garden are symbols of the beloved. She connected the garden of Eve and the garden of Songs by its “fragrant” spices and how through the closure of males from the gardens, the arguments spices also bring with it arousal. (120) While I don’t grow cinnamon or balsam in the gardens of Farm House, we do have an array of spices, that bring a range of emotions. W...

Ackerman and Green both make the same claims about the importance of scent in our daily lives, depicting our difficulty in describing smells to others without making a reference to something else, and arguing that studying smell is just as important in understanding culture as studying sociology and anthropology. As a natural scientist, I was skeptical about Green’s arguments—how could smell, something unable to be measured or quantified, be as important as objective, scientific theory? But as I read further, I began to resonate with this argument; scent’s subjective nature means that we cannot recover past articles of it. Our difficulty in describing them makes understanding their connotations difficult, especially when the only archaeological evidence we have are containers and jars for perfumes and topical oils. What did certain scents mean to ancient civilizations? Are there any patterns between how we react to smells and how they reacted to those same smells? Answering these quest...