With an undertone of skepticism, he uncharacteristically avows his faith in the credibility of the text: “This is the end of our investigation. Ibn Ezra’s rationalism could take him no further. But after that farfetched conjecture, there were no more. And finally, Ibn Ezra quotes yet another opinion to the effect that, back then an animal lived that bore the shape of a human which God had skinned for human benefit. Second, the phrase “garments of skin” could simply be understood as garments to cover their skin. Now, out of concern, God girded them with an epidermis. Perhaps that was all they needed in the protective environment of Eden. Anatomically, they consisted wholly of flesh and bones.
First, Adam and Eve had been created without an exterior layer of skin. He came up with three possible explanations. In the twelfth century, Abraham Ibn Ezra, a major Spanish biblical commentator of a decidedly rationalistic bent, tried to fathom what actually happened in this gross instance of anthropomorphism. Hence, God’s solicitous gesture seems both unexpected and unnecessary: a fleeting expression of sorrow over the fate that awaits humanity outside the Garden. Immediately after their sin “they perceived that they were naked and sewed together fig leaves, making themselves loincloths” (3:7). What is more, Adam and Eve were no longer naked. In the narrative, this sudden display of divine tenderness follows directly upon the harsh punishments meted out by God to Adam and Eve and the snake for their failure to heed the one explicit prohibition that governed human life in the Garden.
ADAM AND EVE ONLINE SKIN
Before Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden for having eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God provided them with clothing: “And the Lord God made garments of skin (‘or with an ‘ayin) for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (3:21). The change of a single Hebrew letter rendered the inert fecund. My example to illustrate this spiritual ferment is a single verse in this week’s parashah, a telling detail in a gripping narrative that proved to be a deadend for the rationalists but a font of inspiration for the mystics. Midrash ends up being the polar opposite of a fundamentalist worldview. Faith in the godliness of the text transmuted its words and letters into materials almost infinitely malleable. Without some knowledge of Hebrew, it is nearly impossible to appreciate the inventive use of the language by Jewish exegetes as a tool to preserve the fluidity and fruitfulness of the biblical text. My determined effort to convey a sense of the vast storehouse of creative Torah interpretation amassed by Jews through the ages carries the same fervent plea. When Franz Rosenzweig published his unconventional German translation of ninety-two Hebrew poems by Judah Halevi, he headed his afterword self-effacingly with a plea from a German translator of The Iliad: “Oh dear reader, learn Greek and throw my translation into the fire.” Ismar Schorsch Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish History and Chancellor Emeritus
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