Fragrance of Eden
It is the most suspenseful moment of the story.
At the behest of his mother Rebecca, Jacob donned the garments of his older brother Esau, he covered his arms and neck with goat skin in order to appear as hairy as Esav. He entered his father’s room hoping to trick his father into blessing him with the blessings with which his father intended to bless Esav.
Would the deception work? Would Isaac be fooled?
Isaac hesitated:
And Isaac said to Jacob, "Please come closer, so that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Esau or not."
Jacob drew near to Isaac his father, and he felt him, and he said, "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau."
Isaac ate the food. He turned to bless his son, but his attention turned toward the garments Jacob was wearing:
and he (Isaac) smelled the fragrance of his garments, and he blessed him, and he said, "Behold, the fragrance of my son is like the fragrance of a field, which the Lord has blessed!
Why did Isaac's attention drift to the fragrance of the garments? Rashi addresses this question:
Is it not so that there is no odor more offensive than that of washed goat skins? But this teaches us that the fragrance of the Garden of Eden entered with him.
The fragrance of the garments was the fragrance of the Garden of Eden. Rashi is telling us that in order to understand the story of the blessings, we must keep in mind the fragrance of Eden. Eden was a place of egoless purity. Adam and Eve felt only their souls when they were in Eden. Their bodies and all bodily functions, eating, drinking and even intimacy and pro creation, were but a garment and a tool for the soul to fulfil its purpose. In Eden, Adam and Eve were naked yet they experienced no shame. The physical reality was not perceived, it was merely an expression of the holiness of the soul.
When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they shattered the purity of Eden. They desired the fruit of the tree of knowledge because they wanted to experience a sense of self. They were therefore expelled from the purity of the Garden of Eden.
Isaac was about to bestow blessings of great material abundance (“And may the Lord give you of the dew of the heavens and the fatness of the earth and an abundance of grain and wine...”). Isaac sensed that his son standing before him possessed the fragrance of Eden. His desire for material success was selfless, and, as in Eden, it was solely for the purpose of serving the soul’s sublime needs. Isaac sensed that within the Jewish people, embodied by Jacob, the desire for material success was not for a self centered materialistic purpose, but rather the desire contained the fragrance of Eden. Because for the Jew, “the dew of the heaven, the fatness of the earth”, as well as the “abundance of grain and wine” is a tool to assist the soul in achieving its mission of filling the earth with goodness and kindness.