Besamim (spice box)

At the twilight of the seventh day, when the light of Shabbat fades and the return to ordinary time draws near, Jewish tradition has fashioned a subtle rite of passage: the Havdalah, the "separation." At the heart of this ceremony, a modest yet often sumptuous object occupies a singular place — the bessamim, the spice box. An openwork vessel, frequently shaped like a tower, it holds the aromatics one inhales to mark the transition between the sacred and the profane. This delicate filigree silver box served to pass around the fragrant spices during the Havdalah service, the ceremony that marks the conclusion of Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath.

The object condenses within itself several strata of meaning: liturgical, mystical, artistic, and social. It is at once a ritual implement and a work of silversmithing, a witness to intimate devotion and a marker of a community's status. The present work undertakes to retrace the history of this heritage object, from its Talmudic roots to its European metamorphoses, scrupulously distinguishing what belongs to established archive, to transmitted tradition, and to their fruitful intersection. For the bessamim is among those objects where spiritual memory and historical documentation answer one another without always coinciding, inviting the historian to a nuanced reading [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

The use of spices during Havdalah is part of an ancient ceremony whose origin dates back to the first centuries of the Common Era. The practice of Havdalah likely originates during the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE), when Jewish sages sought a formal way to mark the end of Shabbat. The ceremony combines several blessings accompanied by precise gestures. It opens with the recitation of selected biblical verses drawn from Isaiah, Psalms, and Esther, followed by four consecutive blessings — each accompanied by a specific action — three of which are recited over wine, spices, and light, while the fourth praises the Almighty.

The blessing over the aromatics, Boré miné bessamim (« Creator of the different kinds of spices »), is the moment when the bessamim comes into play. One blesses the fragrance of the spice with the formula « Boré miné bessamim », creator of the various kinds of spices. The substances used are diverse but codified by custom. Cloves and myrtle sprigs are generally used, but any spice or plant with a pleasant fragrance is suitable; many households have a spice box specially designed to hold the Havdalah aromatics. Cinnamon sticks are also commonly used as bessamim in the Havdalah ceremony.

Halakhah also regulates the choice of substances. Spices that are not intended to produce a good smell but to eliminate bad odors — such as the air fresheners placed in bathrooms — should not be used as bessamim; according to many opinions, no blessing is recited over them. This distinction reveals how deeply the olfactory gesture is conceived as an act of discernment, the very extension of the spirit of Havdalah, which separates the sacred from the profane [Shulchan Aruch 217:2].

The act of inhaling the spices cannot be reduced to a mere sensory pleasure; it is rooted in a rich theological speculation on the neshamah yeterah, the "additional soul." The neshamah yeterah, "additional soul," refers to a popular belief according to which every Jew receives an extra soul from the beginning of each sabbath until its end. This belief originates in a passage from the Talmud (Beitza 16a): Resh Lakish taught that, on the eve of the sabbath, God gives man an additional soul.

The departure of this soul, at the close of Shabbat, is precisely what motivates the use of aromatics. At the onset of each Shabbat, the soul of every Jew is elevated by the presence of a neshamah yeteira, an additional spiritual dimension, a "Shabbat soul"; at the departure of Shabbat and the arrival of a new week of profane labor, this neshama yeteira withdraws, leaving sadness behind it. Fragrance then comes to bring consolation. We inhale the spices as part of the Havdalah, savoring a sweet scent to comfort the soul that remains when our additional soul departs.

This interpretation, where the Talmudic archive meets the mystical tradition transmitted from generation to generation, illustrates the "intersectional" nature of the bessamim. According to certain beliefs, the Neshamah Yeterah, the additional soul that every Jew receives on Shabbat, withdraws during the Havdalah, and the bessamim are meant to revive us after this loss. The sense of smell, regarded as the most spiritual sense in Jewish thought because it provides no direct material gratification, thus becomes the privileged vehicle of this consolation [Chabad.org; Encyclopedia.com].

If the blessing over the spices is ancient, the vessel that holds them has known a distinct and later formal history. The tower shape, which became emblematic, only established itself in the modern era. In Ashkenazi circles, the spice box took many forms, from the flower to the miniature train; the most widespread, however, from around the sixteenth century, was the tower shape, stylistically influenced by local architecture.

This diffusion became more pronounced over the following centuries. Created at some point in the sixteenth century, the tower form of the Havdalah spice holder grew in popularity throughout Europe in the eighteenth century and has retained a largely identical form from then until today, with its pedestal and its spice receptacle. Silver, and particularly filigree, established itself as the material of choice for these delicate objects, sometimes enhanced with stones or corals [Spertus Institute].

Nineteenth-century Russian silverwork offers remarkable examples of this refinement. This spice tower was made in Russia around 1892–1894; it bears a coral cabochon at the top and three others around the base, as well as finely worked details depicting rabbinic figures carrying musical instruments. Such objects, preserved today in the great museums, testify to the persistence and sophistication of the tower form across Central and Eastern Europe [Metropolitan Museum of Art].

Why the tower? The question has fueled abundant hypotheses, oscillating between symbolic interpretation and material explanation. The most widely circulated reading links the form to the civic and defensive structures of the medieval European city — belfries, watchtowers, town halls — which Jewish silversmiths are said to have transposed into their ritual art [Jhom.com]. The tower would thus evoke the spiritual fortress, or even the verse from Proverbs that makes the divine name a strong tower toward which the righteous runs.

Recent scholarship, however, has called into question certain overly confident genealogies. A study published in Ars Judaica proposes a rereading of the material context of the late Middle Ages. The architecturally shaped spice box must be situated within the context of domestic material culture of the late Middle Ages. An object once preserved in the synagogue of Friedberg illustrates this work of critical reexamination. The spice box was included in two catalogues of Jewish ceremonial art from the regions of Hesse and Nassau, published in the early twentieth century by Rudolf Hallo, which made it the object of scholarly attention.

The same research warns against retroactive attributions, notably the idea of a medieval Sephardic origin of the spice tower. There is no evidence that spice towers were ever used in Havdalah ceremonies in Sefarad before the Expulsion; nor is it a practice associated with modern Sephardic observance, and the use of myrtle branches rather than spices by Sephardim was recognized. The debate remains open, and the historian must recognize in it an acknowledged measure of editorial conjecture [Ars Judaica, 2023].

While the tower dominates the collective imagination, it is far from exhausting the creativity displayed by Jewish communities. The spice box was a privileged terrain for artistic expression, where liturgical seriousness readily coexisted with whimsy. Many Jewish cultures approached the box containing these spices as an object of art, an occasion for magnificent and often playful craftsmanship.

Nineteenth-century Europe thus saw the flourishing of unexpected forms. In the second half of the nineteenth century, European Jewish communities experienced a vogue for playful objects. The bessamim took on the appearance of fruits, flowers, fish, windmills, or even locomotives, reflecting both the decorative tastes of the era and new industrial techniques. This diversity shows that the object, while remaining anchored in its ritual function, accompanied the material and aesthetic transformations of the surrounding world [Posen Library].

This formal plasticity also distinguishes cultural spheres from one another. While the Ashkenazi sphere multiplied ornate containers, certain Sephardic traditions favored the direct use of fragrant branches, particularly myrtle (hadas), without necessarily resorting to an elaborate receptacle. The bessamim as a manufactured object is therefore, in part, the product of a specific cultural history, and not a universal and immutable feature of the rite [Ars Judaica].

Having become an object of collection and conservation, the bessamim has been the focus of sustained museal and bibliographic attention, which today ensures its transmission beyond ritual use alone. The great institutions hold representative specimens: the Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves a Russian spice tower, the Spertus Institute a silver filigree box, and the University of Michigan a sterling silver tower 8.5 inches in height, shaped as a tower surmounted by a flag, of Russian origin, classified among spice boxes, Jewish liturgical objects.

Scholarly literature has accompanied this movement of patrimonialization. The reference work edited by Marilyn Gold Koolik, Towers of Spice: The Tower-Shape Tradition in Havdalah Spiceboxes, was published in Jerusalem by the Israel Museum in 1982. To this are added the works devoted to competitions and collections, such as the volume edited for the Philip and Sylvia Spertus Judaica Prize, which have helped to document and showcase this object [Judaica Index].

Thus, the bessamim pursues a twofold existence: it remains a living instrument of the Havdalah in countless homes, while also asserting itself as a heritage witness, studied, exhibited, and catalogued. This duality—between use and conservation, between domestic intimacy and museal institution—ensures the permanence of an object in which the sensory and the sacred intertwine [Israel Museum; Spertus Museum].

At the end of this journey, the bessamim appears as an object of remarkable density, where several histories converge. A liturgical history, first, rooted in the ceremony of the Havdalah and the blessing of the aromatics, whose origins likely date back to the era of the Second Temple. A mystical history, next, tied to the consolation of the soul deprived of its Sabbatical companion, the neshamah yeterah. An artistic history, finally, marked by the rise of the tower form from the sixteenth century onward and by the prodigious inventiveness of European silversmiths.

The historian will retain above all the necessity of distinguishing the registers: what the archive establishes — the spread of the tower, the dated pieces, the catalogues —, what tradition transmits — the meaning of the fragrance and of the additional soul —, and what scholarship still conjectures, such as the exact origin of the architectural form. Far from weakening the object, this acknowledged uncertainty reveals its richness: the bessamim is less a closed answer than a place of memory where, at the end of each Shabbat, centuries of devotion and beauty are inhaled [Encyclopaedia Judaica; Ars Judaica].