The Naked Truth

Another article by my friend Moshe Mordechai for this week of the Breishit Torah reading.

 

There is a Hebrew word that appears a lot in the first Section of the Tora: arum, and its derivatives. When it relates to Adam and Eve and later others it's translated naked, when it concerns the snake it's construed as clever, cunning, and when it applies to inanimate objects later on in the Tora it's explained as to stack. Rabbiner Hirsch sought to find one source for all of them; he clarifies that if you add small deception on small deception you get cunning. But nude seems farther away then ever.

 

Since the arum people and the arum snake are in successive verses (2:25, 3:1), I thought to find a common understanding for this Hebrew word. (I don't imply that there has to be one meaning to the same word in different settings. The same word can even mean different things in one verse, as a word does in verse 3:5, according to most Commentators and to Jewish Law; the second keilohim means as rulers, the first Ellokim means: the strict G^d.)

 

I changed the order of the Root Letters of arum and got meira': from Evil. As in the above examples this should then be the opposite of arum. The opposite from this is: innocent, which then should be the meaning of arum. This translation works in all the verses. Adam and Eve were not ashamed because they were innocent (2:25). The snake appeared innocent - it had nothing of the wild beasts (3:1). Adam and Eve realized that they had been innocent (but not anymore) (3:7, 10 and 11). (In the last verse Mi (Who) refers to G^d as in Mi chamocha... (Who is as You...): It was Me that told you not to eat from that tree.) The walls of water that G^d erected to pour over the pursuing Egyptian army He purified with the airflow of His nose (so to speak) (Exodus 15:8), maybe (like we poor water over our hands in the morning) so that the spoils would be free of tumat hamet: death's impurity, so that we could pick them up freely. Capital punishment for the deliberate murderer who acts innocently (Exodus 21:14).

 

Now, I have no doubt that arum also means without clothes, not only without Sins. Is there any connection between naked and innocent? Sure there is. It's only four hundred years ago that wealthy gentlemen had their portrait done in the nude. They were not trying to seduce anyone, Heaven forbid--to the contrary. Nude here meant: I'm innocent, I have nothing to hide. And from Jewish life: when David the Sweet Singer of Israel dances with all his might (2 Samuel 6:14) the Midrash (Bamidbar Rabba 4:20) explains that his flesh got exposed but it didn't disturb him. I say: he had nothing to hide.

 

I just couldn't imagine that no one had found the commonality between innocently naked (Adam and Eve) and feigning to be innocent (snake) in the first section of the Tora. As we learn from Ethics of the Fathers I found someone who basically brings the same idea: Rabbi Psychiatrist Michael Bernstein in his Windows to the Soul (2000): cunningness works through pretending to have nothing to hide.

 

Last but not least, the Blessing acknowledging that G^d clothes the naked that we say early every morning. I like to remember that this means that for Him we're then still in the nude, although He clothed us. (Likewise He makes the blind see: whatever we see, we are still greatly blind compared to Him or to what we should be able to see.) Could this Dedication now also mean that G^d clothes the innocent? He made the first clothes for Adam and Eve. In a way they stayed innocent and so are we. Especially after we are serviced at night: cleaned up from Sin, in Heaven, so that we can start the day with a clean slate, and be our true selves.

 

Have a good week and a great Month!

MM