A View from the Pew - "Salt" by Dan Smolnik

A View from the Pew

"Salt"

Dan Smolnik

Bread and salt are inextricably linked in religious traditions around the world, so it seems to follow my previous AVFTP piece on bread that I might now contemplate salt. It turns out, though, that consideration of salt necessarily includes bread, but for reasons I had not expected. Once I took a look at the landscape, the connection become clear. The fabric binding religion, bread, and salt is seamless.

In the 1947 Frank Capra classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, banker and neighborhood bulwark George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) and his wife, Mary (Donna Reed) accompany the Martini family to their new home, the purchase of which a loan from George’s bank enabled.  Mary and George greet Mr. and Mrs. Martini at their new doorstep and proffer gifts with these blessings:

Mary to Mrs. Martini: "Bread that this house may never know hunger."
Mary to Mrs. Martini: "Salt that life may always have flavor."
George to the Martinis: "And wine, that joy and prosperity may reign forever. Enter the Martini castle."

These invocations of “never,” “always,” and “forever,” all take on the proportions of an oath. George and Mary, here assuming more than vaguely prophetic roles, promise redemption from the previously inescapable oppression of Henry Potter (Lionel Barrymore) whose megalomaniacal devotion to taking over the town, and especially George’s building and loan company, darkens every corner of Bedford Falls. I cannot help but wonder - from where does the Bailey’s covenant spring? More specifically, I understand the bread and the wine metaphors as broadly evocative. The salt oath, however, seems less germane. Why not a flavor gift of say, oregano or cinnamon?

The salt covenant turns out to be wired into our historical noumenon and is a thread connecting us to our earliest spiritual stirrings.

The idea shows up three times in the Old Testament, each time in a different setting. The first time is in Leviticus where God instructs Moses to add salt to the grain offerings, thereby incorporating the salt into the offering covenant.

The next invocation of the salt covenant appears in Numbers, when God tells Moses to inform Aaron and the Levites that care of the Tabernacle was their responsibility. They also learn that they would receive no inheritance in the land, but all the offerings made by the Israelites, except the burnt offerings, would belong to them in order to sustain them. This, God tells them, is His “everlasting covenant of salt” with them.

The persistence of the ritual of including salt with holy offerings is echoed in Leonardo’s painting of The Last Supper, in which Judas is depicted, at the moment Jesus announces his betrayal, as having knocked over the salt cellar on the table.

Finally, in II Chronicles, God gives the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever through a covenant of salt. While the prior two salt covenant references were made in the context of offerings, this one is made simply by God to David.

We might imagine just what a covenant signified by salt could be, and why the reference to salt appears to have raised a covenant from a mere promise to a holy commitment.

Salt is understood to have a quality of permanence. It cannot be readily destroyed, and, when washed away, it simply reestablishes itself in a new place. It is always there. It doesn’t change into something else.

The Bible’s first reference to salt is the reference to Lot’s wife, who unadvisedly looked back upon the iniquitous city she and her family were fleeing and “became” a pillar of salt. The Hebrew use of the passive voice in this instance departs from the active voice that accompanies much of the rest of this story of God’s cleaning house. The writer doesn’t state that God turned her into salt. Rather, she simply becomes a condiment. This literary event of transmogrification can have no other purposes than to impress on us its irreversibility. Salt is forever.

In a more recent context, we can understand that the salt covenant, when juxtaposed with the life essence of bread, perhaps improves the flavor and texture of the bread. When I recently had a meal at a nearby rustic Italian restaurant, I asked the waiter why the basket of Tuscan bread was accompanied by oil and salt. “È senza sale” he replied, gesturing to the beautiful loaf of warm bread. It is without salt. He explained briefly that the ancient tradition of baking bread without salt helped the bread last longer.

A little digging into the mythology of Tuscan bread alerted me to the rich cultural and religious history of which the bread. . .and the salt. . . are an intimate part. Among the more colorful stories is that of the salt war between the City of Perugia and Pope Paul III. The Pope needed to raise money to fight wars of two fronts and a salt tax seemed an expeditious and effective way to accomplish that.  A century of freedom from the pope’s salt monopoly ended in 1540 when the new pope reasserted it and doubled the price. The good people of Perugia insisted on their right to purchase salt on the open market and declared their independence from the Holy See. On April 18, 1540, they added a new religious icon to their Cathedral of San Lorenzo, a crucifix to which the residents symbolically entrusted the keys to their city. To this day, the figure is known as Salt Jesus, and remains, as does saltless bread, a reminder of their indominable spirit.

As engaging as this story may be, the fact is that the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was not under papal rule, so the salt war would appear not have affected that area, leaving unexplained why Tuscan bread is saltless, the travails of their neighbors 100 miles to the south notwithstanding.   As well, there is no small number of historical records indicating that Perugia was not a great consumer of salt even before the tax dispute. Rather, their tradition is that the relationship of salt to bread is determined by the last person to touch it – the person eating it. Perhaps it is this individual culinary autonomy that is the real lesson of the saltless bread.

Salt’s long and storied history as a nutrient, preservative, flavor enhancer and bonding agent among people establishes it as an essential ingredient in life. No less than bread, salt is irreplaceable.

Jesus reminds us of our essential responsibilities toward each other serval times in the Sermon on the Mount, but my favorite two metaphors occur when he calls us “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” Implied are two important life directives: be the salt that others need, and shine.