A Thought On Parshas Ki Tisa
A Thought On Parshas Ki Tisa
"...bsamim rosh..."
"...the finest fragrances..." (32:22)
I have always appreciated nice fragrances. Incense was very popular when I was growing up in the 60s. I inhaled but didn't smoke it. On Yom Kippur each year, I have a selected array of spices and herbs for people to recite brachos over and savor their varied scents. I have carefully avoided any effort to compound the incense described in our parsha as it has been identified by our sages; to do so would violate a serious prohibition, for that blend was solely for use in the holy Temple. One the other hand, I can still appreciate trying to find any of the eleven ingredients which our sages cite as comprising the sacred ketores. However, many of them have names which are difficult to translate with any certainty, and the best of our English translations and our traditional commentaries do not make the task any more precise. Ever since the art of compounding the incense was hidden, we Jews have more or less distanced ourselves from incense. This is mentioned in Shulchan Aruch in different contexts.
Nonetheless, I have continued to wonder about the incense. I have studied our ancient sources, as well as some of the writings of great mekubalim. This has focused more on the halachic structure and the mystical revelations associated with that incense. But my sensory thirst (yes, in some halachic circles, inhalation is referred to as drinking) has never been quenched. I have purchased saffron, balsam, frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon, among other spices. The one that has always eluded me is nerd.
Now, I have been called many things, and the noun nerd is one of them, but here I refer to an ingredient of the Biblical ketores spelled (in the Holy Tongue) nun raish dalet. NRD, or naird. In fact, our sages take it a step further, for even though its Biblical name is nerd, we refer to it by its Mishnaic name, shiboles nerd. A shiboles is a stalk, ear or floral spike. Nerd is some type of flower. A number of translations use the word "spikenard" when they come to the words shiboles nerd, or just nerd. If a shiboles is a spike and a nerd is a nerd, then we can understand that the translation spikenard is only half a translation, leaving the second syllable in almost the original Hebrew.
Well, I can remember many years ago walking in to a parlor meeting for Rav Wasserman's yeshiva held in the home of the late Rabbi Akiva Shlussel z'l. I breathed in a strong scent wafting from a flower arrangement and asked someone what it was. No one knew. Some time later, I was browsing in the spice section of a health food store and sampled jasmine. It was something like that other fragrance, but not quite the same. So, I found out which store that flower arrangement had come from and asked the florist what flower smelled like jasmine but without the bitter undercurrent. He directed me to a tuberose.
Well, for years afterwards, I would try to get a nice tuberose stalk for my Shabbos flowers. Maybe no one else appreciated it (I once asked Mrs. Debbie Rechnitz if she liked the scent and she said "It reminds me of the perfume that old Russian ladies wear.") Some time later, I switched flower stalls and to my relief, the South American vendor who spoke little English also sold tuberose. One Friday, I asked him what it is called in Spanish. He said "nardo."
I froze. Nardos. Nerd. The stalk of the tuberose. Shiboles. A stalk or spike. Nerd, Nardos. Could tuberoses be nardos, and could spikenard be a spike of nerd? I began imagining that I had finally located one of the long lost fragrances which has been disguised as something unknown called spikenard. For years, I would tell myself that my tuberose was a good scent to inhale on Shabbos, as a mild commemoration of the incense. I said a bracha and I would inhale the tuberose.
This week, so many decades since the 60s and so long since I have been daydreaming about my imagined connection between tuberose and the Biblical nerd, I sat down to learn my weekly parsha with the Bechor Shor. When he comes to shiboles nerd, he casually translates into French "narda." Narda. Nardos. Nardas. Nerd. Perhaps I am not such a nerd after all. Could the Bechor Shor have also concluded that nerd was the tuberose?
But I looked further. It seems that spikenard is thought to be a flower native to the Himalayas and is part of the Valerian family. Lavender is known in Greek as naardus, after a Syrian city called Naarda. Now, lavender in French is called aspic. Interestingly, the Bechor Shor offers that Shiboles Nerd may also be aspic, or lavender. However, I did some more research. It seems that the French word for lavender is indeed aspic, but the word aspic itself means a spike, which is more or less the shape of a lavender. I believe that what the Bechor Shor intends, then, is that Shiboles Nerd translates into two French words. Nerd, of course, translates into narda. Shiboles translates into aspic. This would mean that the Bechor Shor also believes that Shiboles Nerd is spike-nard. That would mean it isn't lavender at all, but it is the Himalayan flower which is called spikenard. The bottom line, however, is that no one says that it is tuberose. No one says that nerd is identical with nardo. However, I did verify that in Spanish, tuberose is nardo. And I verified that in Spanish and in French, spikenard is nardo or nard. So, the Bechor Shor has it right. It might be lavender but it is probably spikenard. And I like tuberose.
A sweet Shabbos and a rosy Purim. D Fox
"...bsamim rosh..."
"...the finest fragrances..." (32:22)
I have always appreciated nice fragrances. Incense was very popular when I was growing up in the 60s. I inhaled but didn't smoke it. On Yom Kippur each year, I have a selected array of spices and herbs for people to recite brachos over and savor their varied scents. I have carefully avoided any effort to compound the incense described in our parsha as it has been identified by our sages; to do so would violate a serious prohibition, for that blend was solely for use in the holy Temple. One the other hand, I can still appreciate trying to find any of the eleven ingredients which our sages cite as comprising the sacred ketores. However, many of them have names which are difficult to translate with any certainty, and the best of our English translations and our traditional commentaries do not make the task any more precise. Ever since the art of compounding the incense was hidden, we Jews have more or less distanced ourselves from incense. This is mentioned in Shulchan Aruch in different contexts.
Nonetheless, I have continued to wonder about the incense. I have studied our ancient sources, as well as some of the writings of great mekubalim. This has focused more on the halachic structure and the mystical revelations associated with that incense. But my sensory thirst (yes, in some halachic circles, inhalation is referred to as drinking) has never been quenched. I have purchased saffron, balsam, frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon, among other spices. The one that has always eluded me is nerd.
Now, I have been called many things, and the noun nerd is one of them, but here I refer to an ingredient of the Biblical ketores spelled (in the Holy Tongue) nun raish dalet. NRD, or naird. In fact, our sages take it a step further, for even though its Biblical name is nerd, we refer to it by its Mishnaic name, shiboles nerd. A shiboles is a stalk, ear or floral spike. Nerd is some type of flower. A number of translations use the word "spikenard" when they come to the words shiboles nerd, or just nerd. If a shiboles is a spike and a nerd is a nerd, then we can understand that the translation spikenard is only half a translation, leaving the second syllable in almost the original Hebrew.
Well, I can remember many years ago walking in to a parlor meeting for Rav Wasserman's yeshiva held in the home of the late Rabbi Akiva Shlussel z'l. I breathed in a strong scent wafting from a flower arrangement and asked someone what it was. No one knew. Some time later, I was browsing in the spice section of a health food store and sampled jasmine. It was something like that other fragrance, but not quite the same. So, I found out which store that flower arrangement had come from and asked the florist what flower smelled like jasmine but without the bitter undercurrent. He directed me to a tuberose.
Well, for years afterwards, I would try to get a nice tuberose stalk for my Shabbos flowers. Maybe no one else appreciated it (I once asked Mrs. Debbie Rechnitz if she liked the scent and she said "It reminds me of the perfume that old Russian ladies wear.") Some time later, I switched flower stalls and to my relief, the South American vendor who spoke little English also sold tuberose. One Friday, I asked him what it is called in Spanish. He said "nardo."
I froze. Nardos. Nerd. The stalk of the tuberose. Shiboles. A stalk or spike. Nerd, Nardos. Could tuberoses be nardos, and could spikenard be a spike of nerd? I began imagining that I had finally located one of the long lost fragrances which has been disguised as something unknown called spikenard. For years, I would tell myself that my tuberose was a good scent to inhale on Shabbos, as a mild commemoration of the incense. I said a bracha and I would inhale the tuberose.
This week, so many decades since the 60s and so long since I have been daydreaming about my imagined connection between tuberose and the Biblical nerd, I sat down to learn my weekly parsha with the Bechor Shor. When he comes to shiboles nerd, he casually translates into French "narda." Narda. Nardos. Nardas. Nerd. Perhaps I am not such a nerd after all. Could the Bechor Shor have also concluded that nerd was the tuberose?
But I looked further. It seems that spikenard is thought to be a flower native to the Himalayas and is part of the Valerian family. Lavender is known in Greek as naardus, after a Syrian city called Naarda. Now, lavender in French is called aspic. Interestingly, the Bechor Shor offers that Shiboles Nerd may also be aspic, or lavender. However, I did some more research. It seems that the French word for lavender is indeed aspic, but the word aspic itself means a spike, which is more or less the shape of a lavender. I believe that what the Bechor Shor intends, then, is that Shiboles Nerd translates into two French words. Nerd, of course, translates into narda. Shiboles translates into aspic. This would mean that the Bechor Shor also believes that Shiboles Nerd is spike-nard. That would mean it isn't lavender at all, but it is the Himalayan flower which is called spikenard. The bottom line, however, is that no one says that it is tuberose. No one says that nerd is identical with nardo. However, I did verify that in Spanish, tuberose is nardo. And I verified that in Spanish and in French, spikenard is nardo or nard. So, the Bechor Shor has it right. It might be lavender but it is probably spikenard. And I like tuberose.
A sweet Shabbos and a rosy Purim. D Fox
posted by Rabbi Dr. Fox at 10:47 PM
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