Besamim (Havdalah Spice) Bags

We celebrate Havdalah to say goodbye to Shabbat, when three stars are visible in the sky on Saturday nights. Havdalah means ‘separation,’ and part of the ritual involves a prayer said over precious spices. Their sweet scent is meant to uplift our souls - to console us for the loss of the spiritual rest and groundedness of Shabbat, and remind us that Shabbat will come again, that better times will return. 

Whether or not you make Havdalah a regular part of your weekly rituals, all of our souls need uplifting sometimes. Keep this beautiful bag of precious spices close for sensory delight as needed. In my family, we use ours to make Havdalah every week that we remember to…and I often lift the bag off the shelf to inhale the scent and calm my anxiety or find grounding. A friend keeps theirs in the car…

These bags are hand-sewn by me from scraps of cotton fabric that I designed and had custom printed. Each contains a small organza bag with just under an ounce of my personal favorite Besamim mix:

• Whole Cloves - Dried flower buds. A ‘preferred’ spice for Havdalah as their bracha is borei minei besamim, a traditional Havdalah prayer. For channeling power, promoting clarity, and relieving anxiety. Cloves and clove oil have antimicrobial properties.

• Rose petals - Symbolizing love and passion, but also strengthening of the heart; as in support for holding good boundaries. 

• Cardamom pods - Seed pods of plants in the ginger family. For calming, grounded, alert energy. 

• Cinnamon - Strips or chips of bark from Cinnamomum or Cassia genus trees. A key ingredient in sacred anointing oil in ancient Judaism, mentioned several times in the Torah. For healing, restoration, and alignment with divine calling. 

• Lavender - Dried flowers. For calming, centering, and relaxation.

• Orange peel - Dried peel of orange fruit. Oranges are a symbol of inclusion and solidarity on many Seder plates. For spiritual uplift, energy, brightness, and abundance.

The clove scent note dominates, but is softened and rounded out by the other spices, creating a heavenly full-bodied scent profile. 

The spices are all certified organic and I did my best in a very opaque supply chain to source varieties that test negative for the presence of lead and other heavy metals and are grown organically with fair working conditions and compensation for farmers. 

Kept in a closed container, these spices will remain fragrant for years. Kept in the open air they won’t last quite as long - but you’ll get a lot of joy from smelling them every day. Temperature and humidity fluctuations (as in a car) will diminish the scent profile the fastest.

Leah Bry is a Mom, a voracious reader, a Jewish, fat, and living with chronic illnesses in Denver with my family and cats. She runs Artful Riot.