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Rabbi Eliezer’s brothers were once plowing on the plain, while R. Eliezer plowed on the mountain. R. Eliezer’s cow fell and was maimed. It proved fortunateforhimthathiscowwasmaimed,becausehefledfromhisbrothers and came to the famed R. Yoḥanan ben Zakkai to study. But now R. Eliezer was poor and had nothing to eat, so he ate clods of dirt until his mouth had a bad odor. The other students went to their teacher and complained about their fellow student’s bad breath. The rabbi turned to his odiferous student and said, “Just as the odor of your mouth caused you to smell bad for the sake of Torah, so will the fragrance of your learning go from one end of the world to the other.”1 This brief narrative describes the sacrifice of a young rabbinical student and the prediction by his teacher of that rabbi’s future greatness. To accomplish its goal, the narrative relies on our personal experience—not with how difficult it may be to plow a mountain, or the distress with which a family mightreceivenewsofitscowbeinglame;theseareexplainedwithinthecontextofthenarrative .2 Rather,theclimaxandresolutionofthevignettedepend upon our firsthand knowledge of bad breath. And this remains unexplained. That is, the narrator relies on our personal experience so that we will empathize with the students, for we all know how repulsive bad breath in others can be. At the same time, because we know how difficult it is to perceive bad breath in oneself, we might also have sympathy for R. Eliezer (as if his being destitute and eating clods of dirt weren’t enough to render us compassionate ). More intriguing, however, is R. Yoḥanan ben Zakkai’s response, which turnsbadodorintoapositive—evenworthy—attribute.R. Eliezermayemit an offensive odor in pursuit of Torah, but once he has acquired knowledge and begins the teaching of Torah he will emit a perfumed fragrance to which people will be drawn. Bad or offensive odor is rendered not only positively 1 Tracking the Trail of scent: An introduction 2 the aroma of righteousness but as perfume. The rabbi’s odor wafts abroad, attracts students to him, and draws them in. They, in turn, teach the rabbi’s teachings and spread the perfume from one end of the world to the other. Bad breath becomes fragrance, and fragrance is Torah. What appears to be a simple legend is, on closer perusal, a deeply encoded metaphor and lesson. Sacrifice and suffering for Torah operate in the world as perfume, seducing others to believe. This book examines rabbinic imagery of fragrance and explores how the ancient rabbis employed aromatic images to propagate their social, theological , and religious claims. It focuses on the many midrashim3 that mention specific spices, such as frankincense, myrrh, and balsam, and those that reference the more general language of perfume, incense, anointment, and fumigation. At its most poetic, this study uses the lens of aroma to examine rabbinic reflections on such topics as love, righteousness, death, the Divine, and the “other.” At its most mundane, it explores and describes the utterly quotidian. That is to say, it seeks out the impulse for these comparisons and finds them in everyday experience: the fumigation of clothing and rooms, the use of incense in the rituals of various religions, the application of medicinal unguents and ointments, and the bathing and anointing of the body with oil. In the late Roman and early Byzantine periods, these daily activities meant that one inhaled the scents of exotic places in the marketplace , the bathhouse, and the home. These experiences, along with rabbinic reflections upon them, which ranged from the apprehensive, to the soothing , to the sublime, form the backdrop for the astounding layers of metaphor and meaning found in the many “aromatic” midrashim. When I first began my work on fragrance, I believed that the Hebrew Bible served as the primary impetus for rabbinic images of fragrance. After all, the ancient rabbis interpreted every element of Scripture. I therefore spent much time and energy locating almost every reference to olfaction, aroma, and particular spices in the Hebrew Scriptures. I evaluated the terms, studied clusters of terms, and noted that these groupings quite naturally gravitated to spheres of priestly, royal, or erotic topoi. I explained that these groups sometimes overlapped and that the terms themselves often served as the bridge from one metaphor to another. I then turned my attention to the rabbinic interpretive literature, and there it appeared that the rabbis picked up these biblical terms, along with their associated meanings and valences,4...

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