Smell and Remembrance
The clearest place the Torah ties scent to memory is the flood, and it runs in a sequence.
וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹהִים אֶת נֹחַ
And God remembered Noach. Bereishit 8:1
The water goes down from there. Noach leaves the ark, builds an altar, and the chapter closes on what rises from it.
וַיָּרַח ה’ אֶת רֵיחַ הַנִּיחֹחַ
And God smelled the pleasing scent. Bereishit 8:21
The resolution never to curse the ground again follows in that same verse. Remembering opens the sequence and scent closes it.
The portion actually named memory
The mincha offering has a part burned on the altar while the rest is eaten, and the Torah gives that part its own name.
אַזְכָּרָתָהּ
Its memorial portion. Vayikra 2:2
Azkarah is built on zecher, memory. The piece that goes up as scent is the piece called the remembrance, and the piece that stays behind is the one people consume. The naming is not decorative. The offering divides into what is eaten and what is remembered, and the remembered half leaves as smell.
Why it works on people too
Smell reaches memory without passing through argument first, which anyone who has walked into a room and been returned to a year already knows. The Torah assigned memory to the one sense that cannot be reasoned with.
Over a hundred oils, each one labeled with its source.
Keep reading
- Why the Soul Takes Only Smell why the soul gets smell and the body gets nothing
- Reiach the one pleasure the body is shut out of
- The Home as Mishkan Berachot 55a moves the altar to the table
The map shows how all of it connects.
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