Scents of Connection

Scents can be personal and affecting, like the comforting aroma of a grandmother’s kitchen or a newborn baby’s head. A statement in the Talmud even declares them spiritually uplifting:

Reactions to scent can feel instinctive and visceral. Why does this statement characterize scent as spiritual?

In this week’s parsha, when Isaac is old and visually impaired, his son Jacob approaches him with his arms sheathed in wool, trying to “fleece” his father and secure the firstborn blessing. Confused by the disconnect between what he hears (Jacob’s voice) and feels (Esav’s hands), Isaac trusts his sense of smell. While he agrees to bless the son before him after feeling him (verse 23), he still questions whether it is actually Esav (verse 24), until he catches his scent:

Reactions to scent can feel instinctive and visceral. Why does this statement characterize scent as spiritual?

The fragrance evokes positive associations: It is not just “earthy” or “field-like” but “the scent of a field which God has blessed.” According to the verse, Isaac smells the scent of the clothes Jacob is wearing, clothes which belong to Esav (as per verse 15). Esav’s scent (on the clothes) is familiar and comforting and Isaac associates it with inevitable blessing. 

A midrash in Bereshit Rabbah (later quoted by Rashi) interprets the fragrance differently:

According to Rabbi Yohanan, the scent of goat skins is particularly repulsive and so Isaac, who is moved to blessing, must be smelling something else. Instead of Esav’s odor or the odor of goat skins, Rabbi Yohanan thinks Isaac perceives the scent of the Garden of Eden, generated by Jacob’s righteousness. Even within this interpretation, we should still think that Isaac believes this scent arrives with Esav, not Jacob, since he is stunned when Esav actually arrives soon after. Yet the midrash suggests that – though he doesn’t know it consciously – Isaac smells the true essence of the person before him.

These two interpretations of the fragrance – as Esav’s body odor or Jacob’s paradiscal aroma – reflect different aspects of the sense of smell: It can be associated with particularly intimate or emotional knowledge, as it is in the first interpretation. It is also sometimes used to denote intuitive understanding of essence, through instinctive attraction and repulsion to good and evil, as in the second interpretation (see also the Bavli’s interpretation of Isaiah 11:3, in which the messiah is said to be able to determine whether people are good or evil by smelling them, B. San 93b).

In the former interpretation, in which Isaac smells the scent of paradise, he discovers that he has previously misjudged his children. In the latter, he is shaken by the unreliability of his senses, the deceit of one child, and the possibility that he has blessed the wrong one.

These different interpretations affect how we might read other elements of the story. If Isaac truly smells the fragrance of Eden, then he is right to trust his nose: It enables him to perceive truths about his children that he is otherwise blind to, providing evidence that ultimately the right child has been blessed. In contrast, if we think Isaac smells the mundane scent of Esav’s clothing, the one sense he instinctively trusts proves misleading. According to the former interpretation, his initial trust of scent indicates the appropriateness of the blessing. In the latter, it’s a sign of the comfort of his relationship. In these different interpretations the heartbreak Isaac feels at the revelation of betrayal might also differ: In the former interpretation, in which Isaac smells the scent of paradise, he discovers that he has previously misjudged his children. In the latter, he is shaken by the unreliability of his senses, the deceit of one child, and the possibility that he has blessed the wrong one.

The Talmudic statement above (B. Ber 43b) characterizes scent as spiritual but not physical sustenance. This could be because scent is impossible to see or touch and is associated with essence. However, I’d like to suggest that scent can also be seen as holy because it evokes feelings of relationship. When Isaac smells the everyday scent of Esav’s clothing, he experiences holiness in the familiar scent of his son, which arouses love and inspires blessing.

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