Why the Soul Takes Only Smell
Four of the five senses feed the body. Sight, hearing, taste and touch all arrive through flesh and all serve it. Smell is the exception, and the Gemara says it plainly.
דָּבָר שֶׁהַנְּשָׁמָה נֶהֱנֵית מִמֶּנּוּ וְאֵין הַגּוּף נֶהֱנֶה מִמֶּנּוּ
A thing from which the soul benefits and the body does not. Berachot 43b
The line is said about besamim, and it settles something larger. Every other pleasure is shared. Bread feeds the body and the soul rides along. Scent is the one place where the body gets nothing, which means scent is the only thing a soul can be paid in.
Why this matters at havdalah
Besamim are passed around as Shabbat leaves, when the soul is losing what it held for a day. The remedy chosen is smell, given to the part of a person that cannot eat.
What follows from it
A soul kept in a body for seventy or a hundred years is working the whole time, and it is being fed through one narrow channel. Open that channel deliberately and you are not decorating a room. You are paying something that has no other income.
See the full collection of oils, each labeled with its source.
Keep reading
- Reiach the one pleasure the body is shut out of
- Smell and Remembrance God remembers Noach, then smells the scent
- The Home as Mishkan Berachot 55a moves the altar to the table
The map shows how all of it connects.
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