Mamar Chazal About Cosmetics – Followup

Hi all,

Thanks for your answers to my post a couple months back. I stumbled across what I was looking for. Actually, I was incorrect the Medrash is talking about purfume (maybe it can be stretched to cosemetics).

It is in Medrash Rabba (Breishis,Parsha 17:8) it says as follows (skipping the parts that aren’t relevant):

They asked Rebbi Yehoshua…Why does a women require perfume and a man doesn’t require perfume? He said to them,”Adom is created from earth and earth never decays. And Chava was created from bone. Mashel – If you leave meat for 3 days without salt it starts to putrefy.”

As I was getting at in my first post the Medrash implies that perfume isn’t just an enhancement for women rather it is an intrinsic need like salt for meat.

Please post your response in the existing thread instead of starting a new one. thanks.

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/looking-for-a-mamar-chazal-about-cosmetics

— YW Moderator-25