Smells and Bells

During the week of February 5, we finished A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman, read excerpts of Authors of the Impossible by Jeffrey Kirpal, and hosted a TuBishvat Seder, the first class activity of the semester. The seder was a way for the group to experience a religious ritual that engages the senses in a celebratory context. About three weeks later, we read Rabbenu Bahya on how to elevate the dining experience by incorporating holy texts at the table. I saw the connection with TuBishvat, and for this reason I am incorporating the two weeks’ of responses into one. T he other senses may be enjoyed in all their beauty when one is alone, but taste is largely social. Humans rarely choose to dine in solitude…As Brillat-Savarin says, “every…socialibulity…can be found assembled around the same table: love, friendship, business, speculation, power, importunity, patronage, ambition, intrigue…” If an event is meant to matter emotionally, symbolically, or mystically,...

Everything as we know it, has a cycle; a beginning and an ending.  All living creatures and plants experience the cycle of birth and death. Cycles are the most natural part of our life. The cycle of four seasons that we pass through each year, the cycle of the moon waxing and waning and even on a molecular level; the death and regeneration of each one of the cells in our body.  All of these cycles are natural and therefore considered positive aspects of our lives but there are certainly negative cycles that occur and that humans often fall into. Cycles often referred to as bad habits, such as chewing all the skin off our figures or worse, addiction to substances that give our bodies a craving that make it almost impossible for one to break the unhealthy cycle of ingesting it. There is one very important, massive cycle, which none of us can truly comprehend, but which Rabbenu Bahya ben Asher and many others believe to be the most negative cycle in existence and one that we w...