Reiach: the Sense That Came Through Eden Unbroken

Of the five senses, one is singled out by the Gemara as a transaction the body is not party to.

אֵיזֶהוּ דָּבָר שֶׁהַנְּשָׁמָה נֶהֱנֵית מִמֶּנּוּ וְאֵין הַגּוּף נֶהֱנֶה מִמֶּנּוּ

What is it from which the soul benefits but the body does not? Smell. Berachot 43b

The blessing over fragrance exists for that reason. It is not permission to enjoy something bodily, the way a blessing over food is. It acknowledges an event that happened entirely on the other side.

Smell is also the one sense that took no part in the eating from the Tree (Bereishit Rabbah 19; Rashi on Bereishit 3:6). Every other sense was implicated in that rupture. This one came through intact, which makes it the last channel where heaven and earth were in contact with nothing in between.

The skeleton the word is built on

Smell, רֵיחַ, shares its resh-chet skeleton with spirit, רוּחַ, with mercy, רַחֲמִים, and with the womb, רֶחֶם. The Zohar has the divine presence engaging creation through that root before light was spoken (Bereshit 15a), which makes the hovering of Bereishit 1:2 a breath, a spirit and a scent at once. The first act of creation was olfactory.

The skeleton has one more limb, and it is width. רָחָב, wide, grows from the same two letters, and the Tanach hangs a rescue on it.

Yehoshua sends two spies into Yericho, a city whose name is reiach walking around as a town, and they go straight to the house of a woman called Rachav, the Wide One, whose house is built into the city wall itself (Yehoshua 2:1, 2:15). The breach in the wall of the smell-city is a woman named Wide. She lowers them on a cord the verse calls תִּקְוַת חוּט הַשָּׁנִי, and tikvah is the word for hope, so the scarlet line in her window is the first hope strung over Yericho (2:18). The Gemara finishes her: she converted, married Yehoshua, and prophets and kohanim descended from her, Yirmiyahu and Chuldah among them (Megillah 14b).

The wide road out of the narrow place

Egypt is מִצְרַיִם, built on מֵצַר, a narrow place, and the Psalmist gives the exit in one line.

מִן הַמֵּצַר קָרָאתִי יָּה, עָנָנִי בַמֶּרְחָב יָּה

From the narrow place I called; He answered me with the wide. Tehillim 118:5

Merchav, rechov the street, rachav the wide: the same resh-chet running outward from reiach. Leaving Egypt is a change of width rather than an act of force, and the offerings ascend under one fixed name, רֵיחַ נִיחוֹחַ, a pleasing scent.

Every crossing has a toll, and scent is the coin the upper port accepts.

The nose is also where wrath lives

אַף means nose and it means anger. One organ carries both, and the thirteen attributes describe God as אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם, long of nose, slow to anger (Shemot 34:6). The ketoret answers nose with nose. A pleasing scent entering the divine nostril lengthens the af and cools the wrath before it rises, which is how smell arrives upward without passing through judgment on the way.

The nose also does not stop when a person does. The Arizal has the soul ascending during sleep to do repairs in other lifetimes and other rungs of the cycle (Shaar HaGilgulim, Hakdamah 22), while the body breathes on its own, two nostrils moving the breath through a house nobody is home in.

Four things smell has already done

The first pleasing scent in the Torah is Noach’s offering after the flood, and what it produced is the most consequential promise in history, that the earth would not be destroyed again.

וַיָּרַח ה’ אֶת רֵיחַ הַנִּיחֹחַ

And God smelled the pleasing scent. Bereishit 8:21

The second is a name. רָחֵל splits into רֵיחַ and אֵל, the scent of God. Rachel was buried on the road rather than in Machpelah, and Yirmiyahu stations her there weeping as the exiles pass (Yirmiyahu 31:15-17). A woman placed on the route out is standing on the route back, and what she works with is her own name.

The third is the covenant. Yitzchak was blind when he passed on the blessing of Avraham. Sound deceived him, the voice was Yaakov’s. Touch deceived him, the goatskin was on the hands. The Zohar has him smelling Gan Eden itself on Yaakov (Toldot 142a). Smell was the sense that could not be falsified, and the whole covenant travelled through it.

The fourth is a rescue. When the plague broke out after Korach, Aharon ran into the camp holding the fire-pan of the ketoret and stood between the dead and the living.

וַיַּעֲמֹד בֵּין הַמֵּתִים וּבֵין הַחַיִּים, וַתֵּעָצַר הַמַּגֵּפָה

And he stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was held back. Bamidbar 17:13

Not an offering sent up in smoke, and not a prayer sent ahead. Incense carried by hand into the middle of the dying, and the dying stopped at the line he drew with it. It is the one place in the Torah where death is halted outright, and the instrument is scent.

The bar that runs the whole length

There is a piece of the Mishkan the Torah describes by what it does rather than by what it is.

וְהַבְּרִיחַ הַתִּיכֹן בְּתוֹךְ הַקְּרָשִׁים, מַבְרִחַ מִן הַקָּצֶה אֶל הַקָּצֶה

And the middle bar within the boards, running from end to end. Shemot 26:28

בְּרִיחַ, a bar. The single piece that passes through every board along the entire length of the dwelling. The boards stand separately; the bar turns them into a building by travelling through all of them, which is a different kind of holding than pressure.

Those four letters carry a second reading. בְּרֵיחַ, b’reiach: in the smell.

Everything argued above is a description of something that runs the length of a structure and holds it together by touching every part of it. A sense that came through Eden unbroken, carried a covenant past blindness and past touch, and stopped a plague at the line where a man stood holding it, is the middle bar of the thing.

Creating and running, one letter apart

Aleph and chet sit in one family, the gutturals, and letters of a family trade places throughout the language. Take בּוֹרֵא, the participle at the head of every blessing said over creation, and set a chet where the aleph is. What stands is בּוֹרֵחַ, the one who runs.

The letters carry numbers. Aleph is one; chet is eight. Creation is the work of the one, and the running is that same work carried out in eight, which is where the count picks up after seven has finished. Asked what will be different in the days of Mashiach, the Sages reach for an instrument and add a string: the harp of the Temple had seven, and in that time eight, from לַמְנַצֵּחַ עַל הַשְּׁמִינִית, for the Leader, on the eighth (Arachin 13b, on Tehillim 12:1).

The word there is הַשְּׁמִינִית. Shemen, shmoneh, the eighth string.

What it means at a table

The Zohar reads the Shabbat candles as drawing the Shechina into a home, with the woman who lights them compared to the kohen gadol lighting the Menorah (II 167b). The candle already brings אוֹר. Adding scent brings רֵיחַ. Together they run the arrangement of the Mishkan in a house, once a week.

The halachic footing is not delicate. Abaye and Rava hold that anything with healing in it does not fall under the ways of the Amorite (Shabbat 67a). A practice escapes that category when something comes of it.

None of it is past tense, because the redeemer himself is described as judging by smell.

The full argument is in Kol Tehom, free in English and Hebrew. The practice is here, and the oils are here.

Keep reading

• The Mashiach Judges by Smell  Yeshayahu 11:3 rules out sight and hearing for the redeemer
• Chorev  a mountain whose name is the running of the men who reached it
• With Smells We Smelt Light  a furnace needs fire and a flux, and Havdalah is both

The map shows how all of it connects.