The Oil of Yonah’s Gourd
The Torah calls Devorah eshet Lapidot, and the Gemara asks what that means. Lapidot are flames.
מַאי אֵשֶׁת לַפִּידוֹת? שֶׁהָיְתָה עוֹשָׂה פְּתִילוֹת לַמִּקְדָּשׁ
What is “woman of flames”? She used to make wicks for the Sanctuary. Megillah 14a
A prophetess and a judge of Israel takes her title from the part of the lamp nobody watches: the wick, mostly hidden, mostly soaked, spent into the flame the way a prayer is spent into its answer.
The oil the Mishnah turns away
The second chapter of Shabbat is a list of what a wick and an oil may be. One oil on it has a story behind it.
וְלֹא בְּשֶׁמֶן קִיק
And not with shemen kik. Mishnah Shabbat 2:1
The Gemara asks what kik is and gives three answers. Shmuel says a sea bird. Rav Yitzchak says the oil of the kaza. Reish Lakish answers with a verse.
רֵישׁ לָקִישׁ אָמַר: קִיקָיוֹן דְּיוֹנָה
Reish Lakish said: the kikayon of Yonah. Shabbat 21a
The kikayon is the plant God raised over Yonah’s head to shade him, and took away the next morning to teach him what he had refused to learn about the city of Nineveh: that God wanted them included. Rabbah bar bar Chana adds that he saw it himself, growing at shop doors, its seeds pressed for oil, its branches giving shade to the weary.
A property of the oil alone
Rabbah gives the reason for the whole list, and it is mechanical. The disqualified oils do not draw after the wick. The flame will not stay attached to the fuel, and a person ends up tending his lamp on Shabbat.
That reason describes an oil by itself. Every perfumer knows half the best materials cannot be used straight. Labdanum will not pour. Oakmoss is a paste. A thick material has always gone into something that moves. The poskim divide over whether a blend permits these oils for Shabbat, and the book takes no position on the psak. It takes a position on the shape.
The foul spice counted in
The House is the precedent. Eleven spices went into the ketoret, one of them foul on its own, and the Gemara draws a rule straight from it.
כָּל תַּעֲנִית שֶׁאֵין בָּהּ מִפּוֹשְׁעֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֵינָהּ תַּעֲנִית, שֶׁהֲרֵי חֶלְבְּנָה רֵיחָהּ רַע וּמְנָאָהּ הַכָּתוּב עִם סַמְמָנֵי קְטֹרֶת
Any fast that does not include the sinners of Israel is no fast, for galbanum smells bad and the verse counts it among the spices of the ketoret. Keritot 6b
Kik is the oil of the plant that shaded a prophet who did not want the city included. It was withdrawn from him as a lesson about inclusion, and it comes down through the tractate as the one oil left outside the lamp. A blend that carries it does the thing Yonah refused.
Blend your own
Kik sounds like kick, and a few drops are that: you turn the engine over and the carrier keeps it running. Castor oil, the English name for it, lubricated racing and aero engines for most of a century, which is where Castrol took its name.
The picture the book wants on every table: no single bottle sold to everyone. Each person blending their own, the way people baked their own bread before someone sold it back to them, making a scent nobody has smelled before, with a wick in it, on a Friday.
Start with the full set of oils.
From the second book of Kol Tehom, NoiZ: Already Infinite.
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