Smells and Bells

 As someone that doesn't really use incense or candles or anything, I feel this blog post will be a little lacking. However, this will not stop me. Scent is important. If you know anything about it, you know that we use it to eat, to love, to identify, to do pretty much all the important things we do. A main component of memory is scent. "... while buried in the hair of one’s wife it might remind a husband of the desire he felt for her on their wedding day." - Green In this blog post, I will be examining my own sensory perception of different scents. As I mentioned, I don't use incense, but my close friend does. When I go to her room, I feel calm, content, maybe a little excited beyond that. I used to not really like the smell of incense; all of it smelled too strong for me, too earthy and smoky. Now, I just think of her. It makes me think of her immediately, filling my senses with the memory of tangled limbs and laughter. Instead of pulling a, perhaps, more...

 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...

Green’s subtle feminism throughout Aroma of Righteousness sparked many ideas in my head. In another course I’m taking, Psychology of Women, we recently discussed Freud’s “groundbreaking” psychological theories of women and girls being born with this innate “penis envy”, yes, penis envy. His theory proposes the idea that men are superior, and when girls get to an age when they realize that they do not have a penis, they realize their inferiority and are therefore envious. As a rebuttal to Freud’s prospections, psychoanalyst Karen Horney proposes that power inequalities, not biology, cause the psychological differences observed in girls and women and that there is more likely to be “Womb envy” present among men- an envy of women’s reproductive ability, which motivated men’s desire to dominate women. This made me think of the ways in which, throughout religion specifically, scent has been so heavily associated with women and their oh so evil seductiveness and sexuality. I get really confu...

I'm not surprised that the most memorable sense is smell; there are certain scents, where as soon as I smell them, I'm taken down memory lane. A specific kind of soap immediately reminds of my pediatrician's office, and a certain cologne reminds me of warm summer days with an old friend.  While Ackerman describes smell as something constant, a sense that is stimulated every time you breathe, I've never really thought of it that way. My sense of smell is not exactly strong, so when I'm not actively smelling something, it's often like I'm not smelling anything at all. Obviously, we all go noseblind to things when we're in the same environment for a long enough period of time, but there will be times when I have to double check that I can still smell things because either I've gone noseblind to the scent of wherever I am, or the scent is so neutral that I just don't notice it. The paranoia of covid has also made this something I do pretty often.  It...

I enjoy thinking of the senses in whimsical ways. Our noses act as time machines transporting us back to our fondest memories. Magic happens inside of our eyes and brains popping images of anything we’d like to see into our minds. Our eardrums get tickled by invisible waves, causing us to dance. Butterflies flutter in our tummies at the touch of someone special’s lips to ours. Life is granted to us through tasting the flavors of the world.  I’ve contemplated the absurdity of our ability for sight specifically for a few years now. As I became older I naturally began having many revelations regarding how the world really works . One being the fact that the reason we see things is simply because our eyeballs capture the light reflected off of.. well literally everything. I learned about this process during my junior year of high school in AP Pysch, how our retinas capture the light reflected off of objects to create images in our brains, but never realized the actual hecking craz...

  Web Blog Sensory Interpretation Blog Prompt or 6? 5 senses... Welcome!  Here is the Web post  Assignment for our class, and general guidelines for what to include in your posts Sensory Interpretation Web Blog Posts  (6 posts on each of the senses, 5% each, plus one summarizing blog post the last week of class 10%, for a total of 40%).  Short reflection writing assignments to be posted on a blog set up specifically for this class  here . Students will "log" what they are learning about the relationship between the senses and "religious" experience throughout the term, and be able to comment on one another's questions and insights.  You should make at least 7 posts, @one every two weeks. Make sure you have one post each tagged with "taste", "smell", "hearing", "sight", "touch" or "6th sense."  To assure you will get credit for covering each of the six senses in your blog posts, edit them to make sure th...

Over the past month, I got really sick. It got to the point where they thought I had gotten the coronavirus and I spent a really “wonderful” day visiting 2 hospitals and being put in the COVID section. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t open my eyes to see because light would send piercing pain throughout my head. I got accustomed to being wrapped in a blanket when I got intense chills. I couldn’t smell because of my stuffed up nose. I was used to hearing my doctor on the phone asking the question, “have you been in contact with anyone who has been investigated for corona?”  My senses were overloaded and not working at the same time. I couldn’t enjoy what I used to enjoy. Have no fear, I did not have the corona. Instead, I got a really fun case of mono. How’d I get that in quarantine? I have no idea. Already being chronically ill, getting any other disease makes it feel ten times worse.   The view I had of my crocs in hospital room #2  All I wanted was to go back t...

I wasn't sure about how I wanted to finish the blog posts for this course, so I decided to spend some time with my senses and just share some observations. It is a sunny evening and so I figured it would be perfect to sit outside and reflect on what I have learned over the course of this semester. Smell : The smell of nature is difficult to describe, but there is definitely a smell. I don't know if I can put the smells of nature into words, but I feel like there is a slight smell in the air after a snow or rain storm or in the morning when there is still dew on the grass. Ackerman states that "nothing is more memorable than a smell" and I couldn't agree more (Ackerman, 5). When I thought about the smell of nature it made me immediately think about mornings walking to the bus stop as a kid after it had snowed and there was always a fresh smell in the air. Taste : I don't know if there is a specific taste that I notice right now as I sit on the porch, but ...

Some of my favorite activities and memories are held during the holiday season. As someone who goes to college in a different state, coming back home for winter break makes it even more meaningful. It’s a time to catch up with my family, enjoy home-cooked meals, annoy my siblings, and sometimes find some peace and quiet during the busy holiday season. My Mom's Santa  One of my favorite things about the time leading up to Christmas is how my mom burns incense. It's always a comforting smell to me. Maybe it's because I have grown up Catholic so I am used to it, but it just adds that extra Christmas feeling. I've caught myself saying, "it smells like Christmas" when I walk into the house and my mom has lit the little Santa. My parents  Even when it is not winter, the smell of incense makes me think of being home at Christmas time. I can hear my dad complaining to my mom that the smell gives ...

Smell, memory, and emotion are deeply connected. The Olfactory receptors (where smell is processed) are directly connected to the limbic system (center of emotions). This interaction happens before the cortex can recognize the odor itself. Emotional responses and memories linked to the scent are triggered by the primitive brain before other parts of the brain can cognitively recognize the scent separately from the individual's personal connection with it (11). Something I wonder about is if the reason aromatherapy is effective is because of the scent itself or the memories attached to it. Do we smell floral oils and the brain produces chemicals in response to that scent or does our brain take a trip back to a springtime of our younger selves when the flowers were blooming and we were calm, happy, and carefree? According to Dr. Herz, smell is not hard-wired. People will react differently to smells based on their past experiences and memories with those smells. What calms one ...

Smelling Smells My Most Influential Sense  Out of all of the senses, I would say that my smell sense has the most influence. As mentioned in "A Natural History of Senses" by Diane Ackerman, olfactory is connected to our memories. When picking through my memories and trying to find the memory I'm looking for, its much easier to do if I smell something I associated with it, than have someone tell me about the memory verbally. Post my traumatic brain injury in 2013, smell has always been the best way for me to connect to the memories I don't consciously remember.  I have an oil diffuser in my dorm room, as i'm sure some of you also do. I have three oils that I rotate using to make my room smell good: orange citrus, eucalyptus, and "ocean breeze". Ocean Breeze is my favorite because rather than smelling like the salty air I associate with the ocean, it smells like clean, fresh out of the dryer laundry. I was disappointed at first, but grew to love...

As a kid, I loved the smell of perfumes, but I never had any myself. In elementary school I hated "girly things" such as the color pink, perfume, concerns about my hair or appearance, but as I grew older I began to embrace the change that comes with being an adult. I don't know much about perfumes, and I'm sure there's science about it I could learn, but I usually go off of how pleasant the smell is to me, which I don't think is based on statistics.   "Eros Perfume Bottle" Last semester I went to Syracuse, New York to visit some friends, and we went to the mall where I picked out my first perfume. If I had to describe it, I would call it complex, mature, something that doesn't quite fit my image but I'm okay with that. In A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman, she meets with a perfumer who talks about the mechanics of making a successful scent to then sell to the public. As a kid I didn't know what the big deal was; I ...

Fish Smell is an important yet often overlooked part of our experience with the outside world. Smells carry a world of meaning that is largely undescribed. Fish smells like fish; and anything that smells similar is said to smell like fish. In a strange way, we only describe smells based on other smells, hoping that whoever we are talking to knows the comparison smell. Even if people disagree on whether or not a scent is pleasant or repulsive, the scent itself is assumed to be uniformly understood. Meow What is one of the first memories of the zoo? For me, there smell was always a distinct memory. The smell of a zoo is distinct but I cannot truly describe it unless I compare it to a farm or other place with certain animals. Smell exists in our memories in a peculiar way, extremely vivid and easy to recollect, yet difficult to describe. While I can forget what the zoo, I went to looked like, or when I went there, I remember the smell. When I encounter that smell again, ...

In every culture, people associate smells differently. Through our society we learn about many spices and how they're used within our respective cultures. But it can be hard to grasp how other cultures percieve smells. Not only is it nearly impossible to describe smells, it's also hard to understand how other cultures associate scents. By Marco Verch (CC BY 2.0) In Deborah Green's Aroma of Righteousness she writes, “Not only was balsam the only spice actually produced in Israel and thus held in high esteem by the rabbis, many in the Roman Empire also thought it had the best fragrance; it was therefore highly valued by Jew and non-Jew alike. There is even less reason to associate the fragrance of cinnamon with the Bible. Cinnamon is mentioned in the Bible only three times (Prov 7:17; Song 4:14; and Exod 30:23), and never in reference to the Garden of Eden. It is thus unlikely that R. Aibu takes his cue directly from the biblical text. Rather, his association and its ...

I have never paid much attention to smell. To me it appears that the sense of smell is thought of as lesser sense or completely disregarded. Yet, Green and Ackerman would probably disagree with that statement. In The Aroma of Righteousness Green states that “...odor, whether pleasing or foul, enters almost every aspect of our lives—it’s subtle pervasiveness affects our attitudes and judgments…” and I often ignore this pervasive sense (or at least I thought I did) so I wanted to try and pay attention to my sense of smell for once. Olga Ernst 2018  © On Saturday morning (February 15, 2020) I could smell the freezing air, but does “cold” have a smell? Ackerman states in A Natural History of the Senses that “smells are our dearest kin, but we cannot remember their names;” so when I say that I can smell the cold, do we think of the same thing? When I think of smelling cold air I think of a fresh blanket of snow accented by a chilly morning wind, but perhaps someone else ma...

There is something that is intoxicating about the smell of someone you may not know. A woman that is other in the bible smells of spice and intoxicants, while a man smells of putrid meats. I cannot say that I am unaware of the way that one may smell to another. There have been countless times where I have been victim to the putrid smell of a random man on a bus. What fascinates me the most out of all of this chapter is the feminization of Israel and how many of the other nations that are masculine in nature and the polar opposite of Israel. The most prevalent example from the book that I can think of is Rome, in all rights the nation of Rome is the polar opposite from Isreal. The core of the matter is that Isreal is one of the first monotheistic religious nations, while Rome is known to be one of the most polytheistic nations before the Catholics took over. While there is the obvious statement that Isreal is the wife of God, it is also important to mention the infidelity of Isreal....