Seeing with Smell
Thoughts on Toledot 2018
Click here to view as PDF
As Yaakov approached his father for the blessing of
the firstborn, Yisshak sensed that something was wrong. Although his eyesight
had diminished in old age, he was skeptical of the son who approached him. The
blessing was purposed for Esav, the bekhor, and Yisshak was unsure that
he was indeed the son who was now in his room.
“Come close, pray,
that I may feel you, my son, whether you are my son Esav or not” (27:21), Yisshak
requested. Yaakov did so, but Yisshak was still concerned. He remarked, “The
voice is the voice of Yaakov and the hands are the hands of Esav” (21:22). Substituting
his sense of sight with hearing and touch had only
confused him more. Yisshak ate the food which Yaakov served him, but then
resumed his investigation. “Come close, pray, and kiss me, my son” (27:26).
Beckoning Yaakov closer, Yisshak now hoped to determine his identity with smell.
And then something
clicked. Yisshak exclaimed, “See (re’eh), the smell of my
son is like the smell of the field that God has blessed” (21:27). He had
somehow bypassed the natural restrictions of sight in a state of blindness! Indeed,
Yisshak now saw better with his nose than he had ever seen with his eyes.
He had never truly understood the nature of his sons, erring back at the time
when he still saw with his eyes – “Yisshak loved Esav…but Rivkah loved Yaakov”
(25:28). But in this intense moment of revelation with Yaakov at his bedside,
Yisshak finally saw the truth – though not through his eyes. “At
this moment, the visual world symbolically returns in a density of assembled
moments,” Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg wrote, “Isaac is divinely inspired to see
without anxiety or rational inhibition.”[1]
Our tendency to an
increased perception when dealing with a diminished sense is well-known. At
times, losing one sense leads to an increased sensitivity in the others. Martin
Milligan, a philosopher who was blind from the age of two wrote that born-blind
people with normal hearing don’t just “hear sounds” – they “hear objects.”
He described “hearing” silent objects such as lamp-posts and parked cars with
their engines off. He sensed their atmosphere-thickening occupation of space
and the way they absorb or echo back the sounds of his footsteps.[2]
Other times, however, we seem to enhance the features of the very sense that
was diminished. Oliver Sacks described the case of Zoltan Torey, whose “mind’s
eye” increased after becoming blind. Torey singlehandedly replaced the entire
roof guttering of his multi-gabled home on the strength of an accurate and
well-focused mental visual imagery. In place of a natural eyesight, his visual
imagery had enabled him to think in ways that had not been available before. It
allowed him to project himself inside machines and other systems, envisioning
solutions, models and designs.[3]
Malcolm Gladwell
mentioned a similar phenomenon regarding an experiment performed several years
ago with a group of students at Princeton University. Half of the group was
first given a standard Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) – three questions which
measure the ability to understand when something is more difficult than it
appears. The students averaged 1.9 correct answers out of three. The
researchers then printed the same test questions in a font that was harder to
read – a 10 percent gray, 10-point italics Myriad Pro font – and
administered the test to the second group of students. This time the average
score was 2.45. The researchers explained that by making the questions
“disfluent” the students were forced to “think more deeply about whatever they
came across.” It caused them to use more resources on it, process more deeply
and think more carefully about what was going on.[4]
The philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked:
The aspects of things that are most important for
us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity…We fail to be struck
by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.[5]
R. Yohanan hinted
at this reality, as well, when he stated: “Since the day the Bet HaMikdash was
destroyed, prophecy was taken away from the prophets and given to madmen and
young children.”[6]
Moshe Koppel remarked that “madmen” are not idiots, but people who have not
internalized conventional wisdom and lack self-consciousness. They share these
two characteristics with young children. Faced with the large body of
information which had emerged in the wake of destruction, people were left
contemplating the “leaves” of halakhah instead of its “roots.” R.
Yohanan taught that it is only the madmen and children, who don’t internalize
the conventional wisdom, who are free of this limitation.[7]
Ironically, Yisshak
could only see that Yaakov was the rightful son for his blessing in a state of blindness.
“One is unable to notice something because it is always before one’s eyes,”
Wittgenstein wrote. When the reality seemed “simple” and “familiar,” Yisshak
remained shortsighted. Visually impaired, however, Yisshak’s perceptions were
sharpened. Using his smell to see, he could now understand what
had lay before him all along – “See, the smell of my son is like the
smell of the field that God has blessed.”
Experiencing life
at its fullest, delving into the depths of meaning and existence, requires that
we, too, “see with our smell.” It demands that we periodically step back from
the world as it seems, wipe our eyes clean of the distracting appearances of
reality, and then step in to see it again.
[1] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The
Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Conscious (New York, NY, 2009),
pg. 255.
[2] Bryan Magee, On Blindness:
Letters Between Bryan Magee and Martin Milligan (New York, NY, 1995), pg.
55.
[3] Oliver Sacks, The Mind’s
Eye (New York, NY, 2010), pg. 208-9.
[4] Malcolm Gladwell, David
& Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants (New York,
NY, 2013), pg. 104-5.
[5] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations 129. Cited by Oliver Sacks in The Man Who Mistook His
Wife for a Hat (New York, NY, 1970), pg. 43 and Seeing Voices (New
York, NY, 1990), pg. 115.
[6] Bava Batra 12b.
[7] Moshe Koppel, Meta-Halakhah:
Logic, Intuition and the Unfolding of Jewish Law (Lanham, MA, 1997), pg.
54-5.