Surprising: How The Sense Of Smell Of The Mashiach Will Distinguish Truth And Lies?

The Mashiach will judge people through the sense of smell, as the Gemara says. There's a story of Bar Kokhba who claimed he was the Mashiach. The sages sent a messenger to him and saw he lacked the ability to judge people by smell, concluding he wasn't the Mashiach.

The Gemara learns this from the verse in Isaiah, 'And he shall breathe in the fear of Hashem, and will not judge by the sight of his eyes, nor decide by the hearing of his ears.' The Gemara explains that the Mashiach has a unique trait allowing him to judge not by seeing or hearing, but by smelling.

To understand the special significance of judgment by smell, we need to understand the uniqueness of the sense of smell granted to humans.

A person's thinking develops in stages. In the first stage, the person thinks concretely—thinking similar to the sense of sight. Concrete thinking deals with the mechanical aspects of the world, perceiving the reality before you.

After concrete thinking, around adolescence, comes abstract thinking. Abstract thinking doesn't deal with the mechanics of the world but with its nature, topics like good and evil, truth and lies. These abstract concepts are approached through the ears, listening, and learning.

The month of Tishrei is under the sign of the scales. The scales symbolize judgment, and the reason is that like scales, judgment deals with decision-making between two sides. This is why the ear is called 'ozen,' from the word 'balance'—because it balances the body, as it keeps equilibrium, and from the word 'scales'—because through them a person judges themselves and decides between two sides, bad or good.

This is why it is said about morality 'hearing', 'Listen, my son, to the discipline of your father,' and not 'knowing,' because a person must decide towards truth, not just know it.

The Gemara in Berachot says about smell, 'What is a sense that the soul benefits from but not the body? That is smell.' Here, smell is not described as a sense that provides information about this world, but something higher, connected to the soul. Therefore, we smell spices at the end of Shabbat to ease the departure of the extra soul.

Rashi on the Gemara in Kiddushin, 'There are three partners in a person,' writes: 'Explained in a Baraita in Niddah, a man contributes the whiteness, a woman contributes the redness, and Hashem breathes in the soul, sight, hearing, and speech.'

The Baraita doesn’t describe the granting of the sense of smell in man, but the breathing in of the soul, which is through the nose. The sense of smell isn't an ordinary sense. Sight teaches us directly what happens to things, without the need for analytical thought. Hearing can teach us about the essence of things, but only after analysis from information heard and known. But the sense of smell shows us the essence of things without any analysis at all, just like the eye sees the mechanics of things. Therefore, a person can say that food stinks, defining its essence without perceiving it through sight or hearing, thereby knowing if something is bad or good, all by smell.

Hashem created a nature in creation where food unfit for consumption is detectable by smell. Imagine our lives without this simple reality. Every food we wanted to eat would need laboratory testing... We've been given a wonderful measurement tool that provides reliable information in two seconds: open a can of food, and if there's a health risk, we get a warning in one second. And since a person might be tempted to consume unhealthy things, it's not just an informational warning, but also a repulsive action, a bad and repulsive smell that no one will eat.
Judgment in court is based on sight—witnesses, and hearing—questioning witnesses, through which we see if testimony is truthful or false. But the Mashiach can smell a person's soul, know its true nature without abstract deduction, but through an absorption of truth as it is, just as sight absorbs the mechanics of the world. This is his alert mechanism, and he can distinguish between good and evil in an instant. It is a high level, suitable for filtering out a false Mashiach, claiming to possess high rank, but doesn't.