Smells and Bells

  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...

  Sacrifice, not necessarily bloody after all? (The Aroma of Righteousness) Calliope Mills  Personally, the associations I have with incense are related to late nights in rooms where the amount of tapestries on the walls is a fire hazard two times over, and the smokey, spicy, and multifaceted aroma of thinly coated burning wood is working overtime to mask the smell of freshly blazed “mary jane”.   It is also connected to small corner stores that sell gold-plated trinkets and scrolls covered with Tibetan prayers. I also have memories of it in my home, where my mother would light a stick while she was reading in the late evenings, on nights when my dad was off on his own adventure, as his deeply asthmatic lungs cannot cope with the light haze it cast over the downstairs area.  Before encountering the words of Deborah Green or taking part in this class, I would not have put such peaceful and slow images in the same frame as the word “sacrifice”.  This word for me h...

Perfuming As Obedience By Ava Barry ... The word obedience often has a negative connotation to it, but what if something was telling you to act obediently every day? Every second? What if I told you that almost all people are obedient to standards set by society and/or religious doctrines. In Deborah Green's book, The Aroma of Righteousness, she speaks about the importance that scent has in both rabbinic life and scripture. Green shows the reader different interpretations of scent from different midrashim. Therefore, women putting perfume on shows that it inherently is a form of obedience. “‘And why does a woman need to perfume herself, but a man does not need to perfume himself?’ He said to them, ‘Adam was created from the earth, and the earth never decomposes. But Eve was created from bone. For example, if you leave meat three days and it is not salted, it becomes putrid.’” (Gen. Rab. 17:8) Green, 137 This quote emphasizes how this midrash speaks of women perfuming themselves n...

Religion & the Senses Religious Properties of Smell By Genesis Lantigua Introduction:      Candles, incense and essential oils have become our best friends when cleaning and perfuming our homes. Most of us also do not step outside our homes without first taking a shower and layering ourselves with lotions, deodorants and perfumes. Where does this obsession with scent come from and why is this a conversion in religious studies? Let's sniff into history and find out.     Diane Ackerman has composed a beautiful and easily captivating text, A Natural History of the Senses, where she clearly illustrates the historical component of each of the senses. For this posts' sake, we will analyze Ackerman's first chapter on smell. The History of Aromas     According to Ackerman, perfumed scents were first used in Mesopotamia as incense offering to “sweeten the smell of animal flesh burned as offerings” (Ackerman, 56). Perfumes were eventually conside...

     I wrote a previous blog post about my brother’s gross Luigi hat. I now return with an update on the hat. About a month ago my brother had to say goodbye to his hat. Although many would have drawn the line in the sand when it started to turn a different color, or when the brim began to fray, or even when it became possible to see through the hat because of how threadbare it became, the final nail in the hat’s coffin was the latch on the back of the hat. The piece of fabric you use to tighten or loosen a hat fell off, meaning that there is no physical way for my brother to wear his hat anymore. Apparently, he even tried to approach members of my family asking them if they would be willing to sew the piece back onto the hat, but all of us were wise enough to say no. Now my brother has officially moved onto the new Luigi hat, albeit begrudgingly.  Although this may seem like a victory, the Luigi hat remains. He immediately started wearing the new Luigi hat and h...

  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...

I wasn't sure what to write about for this reading until yesterday. After class, I reread the last section of the reading from Tuesday and it gave me a lot to think about. The sentence "The aroma of victory and the stench of death, decay, and defeat are identical in terms of smell but represent opposite values..." struck a chord in me because of the atrocities currently occurring in Ukraine. What do bomb sites smell like, or burning bodies, or homes that have been abandoned by the people who once celebrated life there.  https://nnc.com.ng/ One of my closest friend's entire family is from Ukraine and I remember what she told me after coming home from a three week long trip to visit her family there many years ago. Apparently, it is customary in Ukraine for visitors to be fed a lot and they cannot say no or else it is considered extremely impolite. My friend laughed as she remembered how much food was being given to them everywhere they went and how the "offering...

  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...

The concept of martyrdom is interesting. Growing with this idea of martyrdom as a straight pathway to heaven, Green brings up an interesting point in " Ephemerality and Fragrance." This is probably a terrible point to bring up, but I don't think I ever thought about the physical sacrifice  aspect of martyrdom. At least in Catholicism, there are so many saints who were burned alive. In my history class, we just read St. Perpetua's account of her own death and that of St. Felicity, where they were sentenced to death by cow (this is important, I will mention this later). Now, Perpetua and Felicity weren't burned at the stake. St. Joan of Arc was, and probably a few others I can't name.  Again, this is a rather gruesome take-away from Green's writings, but I was so morbidly fascinated by this line from page 207: "God can [...] be soothed by the burning flesh of martyrs." That's a weird line. It's a really weird line to hyperfixate on, but it...

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...

  “The suggestion of wafting aroma, emotional arousal, and the allure of the exotic” (Green 64). For some reason, the only thing this intro section reminded me of was that trope in cartoons where a character starts floating towards a freshly made baked good, like in this clip. Joking aside, scent really is everywhere in the Bible and rabbinic literature, with the example that stuck out to me being a callback to an Old Testament class I took last semester: offerings to God were burnt not so that He could taste them, but because the odor was pleasing to Him. The confusion of different terms all relating to scents and incense helps solidify this: there wouldn’t be so many different words for the same thing unless it was important enough to deserve precise categorization. Interesting to see that the instructions for making and anointing with sacred oil indirectly confirms that the ancient Israelites were making and anointing themselves with other oils. Also interesting to see ...