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...

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...

  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...

Image from IMDb I had to make a second post because Green’s text reminded me of a pop culture reference. The second point I would like to bring up is in response to the midrash that we interpreted on Tuesday. Green wrote that “odor, whether pleasing or foul, enters almost every aspect of our lives- its subtle pervasiveness affects our attitudes and judgments toward both the mundane and the sacred.” This quote reminded me of the movie “Parasite” where the rich Mr. Park comes to hate his housekeeper/driver simply because his scent is one of poor people. Green wrote about how fragrance provides a lens through which to view hierarchy, social constructions, and theological motifs, like those in the Bible, and it also affords the same lens for viewing the families in this movie. As Mr. Park begins to notice the unsettling and distasteful aromas of the Kims, the audience also becomes hypersensitive to their presence, and the Parks’ privileged position leaves them feeling entitled to dictate w...

Photo of the three essential oils that I used the most this week (L to R): Uplift (sweet orange), Calmness (geranium, vetiver, grapefruit), Asleep (lavender) I was unsure what to write about this week because, to be honest, I had a rough week. My uncle Fred passed away, and I couldn’t go to the funeral or wake, so I had to grieve in isolation away from my family which was difficult. The best thing that I did for myself this week was concentrate on “self-care,” as one does when they are sad, and part of my self-care was putting on my essential oil diffuser in my room to change my mood. You might be able to tell where this is going.  When I was being consoled by my friend this week, I told her about this recent self-care practice of mine, and she took out her collection of essential oils to let me smell them and borrow one. For ones like lavender and sage, I realized that I didn’t need to open them to smell them because I could already imagine the scent, probably because I have them ...

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 ...

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...

  “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 ...

After reading the first chapter of Ackerman's Natural History of the Five Senses, the thing that resonated with me the most was the section about anosmia. Today in class I spoke about how taste is my favorite scent, but after reading this, I realized that taste is not the same without scent. One of the chefs that my mother knows owns a restaurant in Providence and his food is absolutely explosive with flavor. It is some of the best food I have ever had and I cannot imagine not being able to taste it to its fullest. His is the only food that I have ever described as being explosive with flavor, no matter what it is. This section also struck a chord in me because of a young girl I babysit who has no sense of smell. It does not seem to bother her, but then again, she has never known what it is like to have a sense of smell, unlike the man Ackerman wrote about. When she grows up and eventually lives on her own she will get a service dog to detect gas leaks or smoke. This ...

While Reading the First Chapter of NHS, I learned/realized a lot while flipping through the pages. The first that really stood out was just how little things had actually changed between back then and now. Specifically in regards to how we feel sensations and how they play a major role in our lives in ways that were barely aware of. I never really considered it before but whether it be 50, 60, or hundreds of years ago, people may have acted differently then we do now but almost all of them still feel the same sensations we do in regards to 5 senses and using them as a means to enjoy food or smell pleasant Aromas. Some also believed that certain nice smelling items could be used like aphrodisiacs which may seem ridiculous...until you remember we still have ads today about tons of people falling in love upon first sniff in all these perfume and body spray ads. This chapter actually got me to remember this one ad in particular for axe body spray that came out a loooong time ago where 1 gu...

Image from mickeyblog.com Ackerman describes how smells move us in profound ways because we cannot describe them. She writes " smells are often right on the top of our tongues - but no closer - and it gives them a kind of magical distance, a mystery, a power without a name, a sacredness" (9). About two years ago, my family took a trip to Disney. We went on the Avatar Flight of Passage ride, twice, and, goodness....it smelled. Bad. It made me, my siblings, and my father nauseous. My mom loved it. Disney is notorious for their scents and smell machines (dubbed "smellitizers") which enhance the experience of their parks and make your memories that much stronger. Such was the case on this specific ride. When doing my Christmas shopping this year, I came across a small Etsy business called "Main Street Melts Candle Co." that specializes in capturing those Disney scents and recreates them through candles, essential oils, etc. So, naturally (or artificially, I s...