The Aroma of Righteousness: Scent and Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature

Chapter 4. Spicy Ideologies: Fragrance and Rabbinic Beliefs

The recontextualization of perfume and incense that begins in the prophetic texts is fully realized in the rabbinic interpretative literature. The rabbinic voices pick up the imagery of aroma, laden with all manner of erotic and priestlyassociations,astheyanalyzeandinterpretnearlyeveryversefromthe narrative and poetic sections of the Hebrew Bible—particularly the Song of Songs.Insodoing,therabbistransformtheimagesofthegarden,thebeloved, and mutual love into thickly layered teachings on such subjects as virtue, righteousness, and scholarship. The most erotic of these passages maintain their intimate and sensual electricity while they are overlaid with religious claims about piety and devotion. Likewise, the structural antinomies of scent (inside/outside, up/down, pleasing aroma/stench, arousal/calm) are not onlybroughttobearintherabbinicinterpretations;theyarealsotransformed in order to express new trajectories of thought and ideology. This chapter and the next explore the ways in which the rabbinic literature reworks and redeploys the concept of aroma, in all of its literary, structural, and cultural complexity. These chapters also peek behind the metaphor as they show that daily experience with aromatics “infuses” rabbinic interpretation. The rabbis’ personal experience with fragrance—in the bathhouse, the home, and the market—along with other cultural standards and traditions enables the deep reflections on olfaction evident in many of the rabbinic midrashim. The rabbis are clearly intrigued with scent and how it operates. Wherever they can, they address the biblical images of aroma. They interpret every verse from the Songs, layering one interpretation upon another in an effort to expound the text fully. Along the way, the rabbis take up and recouple the erotic and sacred scents in the Bible, as well as the attendant meanings and associations, as they reframe the biblical passages. But this is not all. The rabbis are so preoccupied with fragrance, and it so fills their 4 spicy ideologies: fragrance and rabbinic Beliefs Fragranceand Rabbinic Beliefs 117 daily existence, that they find ways to introduce aromatic images into biblical texts that have nothing to do with smell. Scent therefore migrates within rabbinic literature in much the same way that perfume migrates throughout the rooms of a house. For the rabbis, fragrance becomes another interpretive tool with which to express the love and sacredness of the relationship between Israel and God—often in the most ephemeral of ways. In midrash, the relationship between rabbi and student is likened to the pouring of perfumed oil. Israel’s acceptance of the commandments produces the “soothing odor” of sacrifice. And the “smell” of circumcision wafts up to God and arouses in him feelings of mercy and love. Aroma enjoys a primacy in the rabbinic texts not only because some of the Bible’s most beautiful images incorporate pleasing odor but also because, by its very nature, its porosity and ephemerality, fragrance becomes a powerful interpretive instrument. This chapter is organized around four themes. Two of them derive directly from the erotic motifs of the Bible and two are new rabbinic formulations . The first theme, the garden, concentrates on the “reassociation” of the garden with other locations, spaces, and even motion between places. Such places and spaces include the tent, the world, Eden, and heaven. The second theme involves shifting and ambivalent rabbinic attitudes toward the “other” (usually the female) as depicted by pleasurable and arousing fragrances . The other two motif themes, unique to the rabbis, are rabbinic values and historical moments. By “rabbinic values” I mean concepts consideredparadigmaticinrabbinicthought ,suchastheimportanceofstudy,good deeds, and righteousness. The midrashim link these values to fragrance and then compare, rank, and argue them. The last theme, historical moments, is the alignment of biblical images of aroma with the historical events and moments depicted in the Bible, among them the exodus from Egypt, the building of the golden calf, and the bestowal of the Ten Commandments. Like the biblical themes addressed in the previous chapter, these midrashic categories are admittedly somewhat arbitrary, and in several instances they overlap. Nevertheless, this arrangement is helpful in organizing such a vast array of intricate texts and in demonstrating the subtlety of the material. This chapter and the next address midrashim primarily but not exclusivelyfromSongof SongsRabbah(SongsRabbah),anexegeticalworkofinterpretation (midrash) based on the biblical book of Song of Songs.1 Because the Songs contain an abundance of “aromatic” images and the midrash is lemmatic (i.e., its interpretations correspond closely to the verse structure of the Songs), Songs Rabbah constitutes the largest single collection of these 118 the aroma of righteousness midrashim. Where appropriate, the investigation includes examples from...