Parashat Tol’dot: A Hidden Collaboration Par 3

The following essay is continuation of the revised version of the d’var Torah I posted here in 2023, 2024 and 2025, each time adding more supporting commentary. This year I have re-edited it also into 3 part:

According to the Zohar (142a), when Jacob walked into Isaac’s room disguised as Eisav, Isaac saw the Shekhinah resting on Jacob. Isaac knew that Jacob was ready for his blessing. The Torah explicitly says that Jacob does all these steps to be like Eisav, such as “So he went, and he took, and he brought” (27:14). He put on Eisav’s best clothes – the best attributes! It is not for the touch and smell to “fool” his father, but for Jacob’s own benefit. 

The Zohar continues, saying that also when Rivkah gave Jacob the outfit, she saw the Shekhinah resting on Jacob. Rivkah is so trusting in HaShem and her husband that she says “the curse is on me” (27:13). All of our actions/intentions matter when we let them matter and when we assert who we are, and thus what we believe. Does she say this also so that Jacob does not feel guilty? I ask because  there are no obvious curses on her later in the story. This is unlike with Rachel and the teraphim later on in the Torah, where Jacob makes an open-ended curse and she does indeed die. 

So, I believe that if Jacob later seems to be punished measure-for-measure by being tricked into marrying Leah instead of Rachel, it is a manifestation of his guilt for being deceitful, because in his mind he deceived his father. Perhaps after his blessing, his parents should have communicated a little more with him. 

When Isaac gives the blessing, if you pay close attention to everything he says, the objectives are to make Jacob question himself and to bring out the good attributes of the blessing that Jacob needs in order to have empathy. This seems to hint at the fact that Rivkah and Isaac are both privy to this so-called “deception”, and that it is a pedagogical device intended to teach Jacob that he could outsmart “evil.”

The first thing Isaac says when Jacob shows up in disguise is, “How is it that you have found [it] so quickly, my son?” (27:20). He says this first because he is trying to bring out bitachon (reliance on God) in him. To be in a state of bitachon is a prerequisite for any blessing. He wants Jacob to see his own capability because the Infinite Intelligence is helping him now, and in fact, Jacob responds correctly that it was thanks to Adonai.

To bless someone, you need to regard him/her as a new person, but before that, the individual needs to see him/herself as someone new. Both perspectives change at the same time because we are spiritually connected. Even though Isaac says that he does not recognize Jacob, this is to say that he is already transforming from the person he originally was to the personification of the kabbalistic meaning of Jacob.

The Torah continues: “‘Please come closer, so that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Eisav or not.’ So Jacob drew near to his father, who felt him, and said, ‘The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Eisav.’ And he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like the hands of his brother Eisav, and he blessed him” (27:21-23). His father sees the newfound multidimensionality of his son and encourages him to embrace it as well.

Isaac says, “Are you [indeed] my son Eisav?” and Jacob responds, “I am” (27:25). This is to inspire Jacob to ask himself if he has reached the level of empathy he needs – a level which we only achieve when we can imagine ourselves as a new person, connecting to the transformative aspect of God. 

Isaac continues, “Behold, the fragrance of my son is like the fragrance of a field, which the Lord has blessed!” (21:27). He senses the special outfit. Notice that he doesn’t say the fragrance of Eisav, but rather, of the field – a general characteristic that was previously missing in Jacob.

When Isaac continues to speak, it sounds a lot like what the Infinite Intelligence had told Rivkah near the beginning of the parasha: that there will be two kingdoms, and the younger would serve the older, who will be mightier. So maybe Isaac did know something about this prophecy, because, again, it is difficult to believe that the one time Rivkah spoke with Hashem, she would not have told her husband about the experience, and therefore what Hashem said. 

Jacob now has a multidimensionality and complexity. When the Torah says Isaac loved Eisav and Rivkah, Jacob, I think it refers to which parent worked more on each child’s development. Isaac also saw all the potential Eisav had in him.

The Zohar (Toldot, 138a) gives a metaphorical description that it was like Rivkah’s “heart” was struggling with her “liver”. The liver processes what is good and what is not needed in the body, acting as a filter. This made me think that someone like Eisav, who saw a lot of what was not good, represents how we can find meaning when we are like this by refining what is good from what is not. Maybe with the right wife (as suggested by his parents’ dissatisfaction with his marital choices), he would have been able to do this. After the blessing, he married Ishmael’s daughter, because he was trying to appease his parents.  

Blessing others (whether done individually or jointly), means understanding the subjects’ needs, seeing them not only as what they are, but as they can be now, by fulfilling their true potentials and revealing their deeper selves. This starts with expressing bitachon – not just having faith, but expressing it with the choices and actions taken. All actions can matter: what we wear, where we go, what we do, etc. 

Jacob just followed what his parents told him to do in order to receive the blessing and become a source of blessings. We can also relate to this story in how Jacob’s parents are metaphorical of reality/the Infinite Intelligence, always acting in our favor to give us opportunities to reveal more of who we are with our choices. Our actions are the most natural way to affect how we feel about our lives and identities. Reality is always working with us to make us into the person that it gives us the deepest pleasure to be. We go with the flow of the wave, or we tame the wave by taking everything it gives us as an opportunity to keep consciously revealing who we are.