“The two of them were arumim, naked, the man and his wife, yet they felt no shame (Breisheet 2:25)." In the Garden of Eden, in the world as it was originally envisioned, the physical and the spiritual worlds were in perfect harmony. There was no reason for the most modest of persons to cover any parts of their body. The body was part and parcel of the divine creation and there was no shame in being naked.
Yet that all was to change all too soon. The snake literally turned the world inside out and upside down, earning the snake its well-deserved reputation. In the very next verse, the Torah tells us that ,“The serpent was arum, the shrewdest of all the wild beasts that the Lord G-d had made” (Breisheet 3:1). While the Torah uses the same word arum, to describe the nakedness of man and the shrewdness of the snake, their respective meanings could not be more different. Adam and Eve were arumim, naked with nothing to hide. What you saw is what you got. The snake, on the other hand, was arum, hiding his intentions[1] as he surreptitiously enticed man to sin. Often what reveals the true nature of a person is what they (try to) hide[2].
Upon the eating of the forbidden fruit, the harmonious interaction of the physical and spiritual had ended. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they perceived that they were naked; and they sewed together fig leaves and made themselves loincloths”. Apparently, they thought that by putting on clothes they could escape the spiritual world and focus on their physical beings. But while we can cover our bodies, G-d sees beyond our clothes. Hearing the voice of G-d in the garden, they hid from G-d, not realizing there is no covering up anything from G-d.
Called by G-d “Ayeka, where are you?", Adam rather naively responded that, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid”. The clothes that man made were of little value. They would need a new set of clothes. “And the Lord G-d made garments of skins for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Breisheet 3:21).
Commenting on this new set of clothes, Rav Simlai teaches, “Torah, its beginning is an act of kindness and its end is an act of kindness. Its beginning is an act of kindness, as it is written: ‘And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them’. And its end is an act of kindness, as it is written: ‘And he [Moshe] was buried in the valley in the land of Moab” (Devarim 34:6).
After dressing Adam and Eve, G-d then banished them from the garden. With their divine clothes man is now ready to face the world and attempt to bring back some harmony between the physical and spiritual worlds. We can do this by helping others physically, and thereby ourselves spiritually, uniting people and worlds.
On Yom Kippur, the day we abandon our physical selves becoming like angels, our Sages chose for the Haftarah the words of Yishayahu who delivers G-d’s message to us on this most spiritual of days. “Behold, this is the fast that I have chosen—loosening the bonds of wickedness, undoing the straps of the yoke, sending the oppressed free and breaking every yoke of tyranny. Break your bread with the hungry and bring the impoverished into your home; clothe the naked when you see them and do not hide from your own flesh” (Yishayahu 58:7). Clothes are to be transformed from that which hides our imperfections to the way to help others, a way to become closer to man and G-d.
Jewish law mandates that upon the death of an immediate relative one must rip one's clothes. For the deceased it marks the end of the tension between the physical and spiritual worlds as they return to G-d’s embrace. For the mourners left behind it is a charge to ensure that we understand that our clothes may cover our physical bodies but leave us exposed to G-d. We are to use our divine clothes to bring comfort to others.
[1] Our Sages go so far as to say that the snake wanted Adam to sin and die so that he could cohabit with Eve.
[2] This Torah makes great use of contronyms, where a word has opposite meanings, conveying very powerful messages. Earlier in the parsha the Torah tells us that a man is to “azov” meaning both leave and help, his parent's home. It was with the birth of Enosh that “az huchal” man began to call in the name of G-d, or profaned the name of G-d.
English examples of a contronym include “sanction” “overlook” and “cleave”.