The Ketoret

The job nobody got twice

Temple jobs were given out by lottery, as the Terumat HaDeshen passage explains. The incense lottery had its own rule. The officer called out: "New ones to the incense, come and draw." Only kohanim (priests) who had never burned it could enter. The Gemara (the rabbis' discussions built on the Mishnah) says nobody ever did it twice, and Rabbi Chanina gives the reason: it makes a person rich. Rashi (the classic commentator, France, died 1105) adds: so they did not let anyone repeat it.

Alone in the room

The Mishnah (the core text of the Oral Torah) records that the kohen was coached on the spot: be careful not to start on the side near you, so you do not get burned. He needed it. He had never done this before. Then the officer said "burn it," everyone else withdrew, and he was alone inside. The Gemara brings a teaching on what the incense atones for: harmful talk about other people. "Let something done in secret come and atone for something done in secret."

A secret from the Angel of Death

The day after Korach's rebellion ended, the people blamed Moshe and Aharon for the deaths, and a plague broke out. Moshe told Aharon to take a pan of incense and hurry into the crowd. Aharon ran. "He stood between the dead and the living, and the plague stopped." How did Moshe know incense would work? The Gemara says that when he went up to receive the Torah, each angel gave him something. Even the Angel of Death did: this. "If he had not told him, how would he have known?"

The offering brought for joy

A Midrash (early rabbinic teachings on the Torah) has God say: of all the offerings you bring, none is as dear to Me as the incense. Its reason: the others answer a need. A sin offering comes for a sin, a guilt offering for guilt. The incense is brought for none of that. It comes for joy, as Mishlei says: "Oil and incense gladden the heart." The same Midrash adds that the Mishkan (the desert sanctuary) was built and everything was set in place, but God's presence did not come down until the incense was burned.

Why it comes before the prayers

The Zohar (the central book of Kabbalah) gives a reason. Prayer, it says, was set up in place of the offerings, and none of the offerings counted like the incense. It was the incense that removed what was foul and made the Mishkan clean. So, the Zohar says, the incense passage has to come before prayer, every day, to clear what is foul out of the world.

Twice a day, then and now

The second passage sets the schedule: every morning when Aharon cleans the lamps of the menorah, and every afternoon when he lights them. Rashi explains "cleans": he cleared out the ash of the wicks that had burned overnight. The reading keeps the same clock. The Zohar speaks of saying the incense passage twice a day, morning and evening, and points to these verses. Siddur Sefard prints these same lines again before Mincha, the afternoon prayer.

Two passages, one mitzvah

After the opening line you read two pieces of the Torah, out of their order in Shemot. The first is how to make the incense. The second is how to burn it. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) lists both among the Temple passages that some people say each morning. Sefer HaChinukh (a book from the 1200s that explains each of the 613 mitzvot) notes that the classic lists count the making and the burning as one mitzvah: the only point of making the incense was to burn it.

One heart

The Zohar (the central book of Kabbalah) describes what happened to anyone who smelled the incense as its pillar of smoke went up. Their heart became clear, ready to serve God. The dirt left by the pull toward doing wrong was taken off them. And they were left with only one heart, turned toward their Father in heaven. The incense, the Zohar says, breaks that pull from every side. Think of the last time you wanted two opposite things at once.

וְאַעְבָּר מִנֵּיהּ זוּהֲמָא דְּיֵצֶר הָרָע, וְלָא הֲוָה לֵיהּ אֶלָּא לִבָּא חֲדָא, לָקֳבֵל אֲבוּהָ דְּבִשְׁמַיָּא.

Prayer repairs. Incense ties.

The Zohar asks what the difference is between prayer and the incense. Prayer, it answers, repairs what needs repair. The incense does more. It repairs, it ties knots, and it makes more light than anything else. It clears away the dirt, so that everything is lit up and tied together as one. Elsewhere the Zohar adds a play on words: the Aramaic for a knot, ketiru, sounds like ketoret.

צְלוֹתָא אִיהוּ תִּקּוּנָא לְאַתְקְנָא מַה דְּאִצְטְרִיךְ, קְטֹרֶת עָבִיד יַתִּיר, מְתַקֵּין וְקָשִׁיר קִשְׁרִין, וְעָבִיד נְהִירוּ יַתִּיר מִכֹּלָּא.

What the destruction did not reach

The opening line says our ancestors burned the incense "when the Temple stood." Rav Kook (the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, who died in 1935) does not pretend that nothing was lost. The gap between then and now is huge, he writes, in how much of God's glory and wonders could be seen. But he ties the incense to the inner life of the soul, and on that level, he says, the destruction left no mark. So he makes a strong claim about these lines: saying the incense passage "really does" what the burning itself did when the Temple stood.

אבל הערך הפנימי, שהקטרת קשורה בו, הוא עומד בהשויה אחת

Nothing is bad all the way down

The verse names three spices in a row: nataf, shechelet and chelbenah. Chelbenah (galbanum) smells bad. The Gemara says so outright. Why put it in the incense? Rav Kook: "to announce that there is no absolute evil in the world." He reads the two spices named before it as two powers. One takes the bad out of a bad thing. The other goes further and turns the bad itself into good. Then come the words "in equal parts." Rav Kook counts the bad-smelling one in. All three, he writes, are equal in value.

החלבונה שריחה רע, שנכנסה בסמני הקטרת, להודיע שאין רע מוחלט בעולם.

Going up is one thing. Staying is another.

Tehillim 24 asks two questions: "Who may go up Hashem's mountain? And who may stand in His holy place?" The Shem MiShmuel (Rabbi Shmuel Bornsztain of Sochatchov, a Chassidic leader who died in 1926) quotes the Maggid of Kozhnitz, an earlier Chassidic master, on why it asks twice. Even after going up, who can stay there and not fall? And someone who falls after going up falls harder. That, the Shem MiShmuel says, is what the incense is for. Ketoret is a word for a knot. It is there so that a person stays tied on and does not fall.

לזה היא מצות הקטורת שהיא לשון קשר היינו שישאר מקושר ולא יפול משם

I am short on time. How much of this do I need?

Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed) rules: even in a hurry, try to say the daily offering and these incense verses. The verses alone are enough, he adds, all the more since the recipe comes again at the end of the prayer. Still, he ranks the incense below the daily offering. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) lists it among passages "some have the custom to say." The Shulchan Aruch HaRav (the code of law by the first Chabad Rebbe) calls it "good to say."

Which is said first, the daily offering or the incense?

The daily offering, in the Shulchan Aruch and in this siddur. But in the Temple the morning incense was burned partway through it, says the Mishnah (the first written collection of the oral law): after the lamb's blood, before its limbs. The Magen Avraham (a 1600s commentary on the Shulchan Aruch) quotes Hagahot Maimoniyot (notes from the 1200s on the code of the Rambam, Maimonides): say the incense first. He quotes Seder HaYom (a guide to the daily prayers, 1599) for our order: the main atonement is in the blood.

It is still dark out. Can I say this yet?

Not yet, rules the Aruch HaShulchan (a code of law from around 1900): the daily offering and the incense passages are not said at night, because both were offered only by day. The Kiyor passage gives the wider rule. The Shulchan Aruch HaRav speaks of saying them at home "once the day has lit up." The Mishnah Berurah (a central commentary on daily Jewish law, from around 1900) leaves an opening: someone with no other time may say the offering passages at night.

The verse says morning and afternoon. Do I say it at Mincha?

Siddur Sefard prints it again before Mincha, the afternoon prayer. Peninei Halakhah: most early authorities required no offering passages here. Some wrote to say the daily offering and incense, and followers of the Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the Tzfat Kabbalist) are more particular. The Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary, early 1900s) calls it a correct custom. He tells of a God-fearing man who skipped them once, short on time. That night a dream asked why everyone prays a whole prayer and his was missing.

How many times a day is the incense said?

The incense has three places, says the Kaf HaChaim, citing the Arizal: in the morning after the daily offering, at the end of Shacharit, and before Mincha. No more, weekday or Shabbat. Siddur Sefard prints all three, though at the end of Shacharit it has only the recipe. The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, who added Ashkenazi practice to the Shulchan Aruch) also has it after the prayer, but records a custom to skip it on weekdays, when people hurry to work. The Mishnah Berurah: those who are careful say it every day.

Should I read these verses with the Torah-reading tune?

Seder HaYom says so. Where it sets out the incense at the end of Shacharit, it writes: first say the verses as they are written in the Torah, and they "must be said with the tune and the cantillation," the musical notes used for reading the Torah in shul. Then comes the recipe. The Kaf HaChaim collects more advice: look at the letters, and read from a book. He quotes Rabbi Chaim Palagi (the rabbi of Izmir, Turkey, in the 1800s): said in a rush and by heart, it does a person no good.

I have seen people read this from a parchment scroll. Why?

The advice is in Seder HaYom: write the whole incense passage on kosher parchment, in the script of a Torah scroll, and read it morning and evening with great focus. The Kaf HaChaim records reading it from such script as a segulah, a practice credited with bringing merit, wealth and success. The Rema asks for less: some wrote to take care to say the incense recipe from a written text, not by heart.