(כא) וַיַּעַשׂ֩ יְהוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים לְאָדָ֧ם וּלְאִשְׁתּ֛וֹ כָּתְנ֥וֹת ע֖וֹר וַיַּלְבִּשֵֽׁם׃ (פ)
(21) And the LORD God made garments of skins for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
(35) the Israelites would see how radiant the skin of Moses’ face was. Moses would then put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with Him.
(א) ויעש. ומאז הוצרכו למלבושים וה' נתן בינה בלבם לעשות כתנות עור, שכבר התנוצץ בו השכל המלאכתותי והתחיל לעסוק באומנות ומלאכות, וכמ"ש חז"ל על וחרשים המה מאדם שהאומניות התחילה מאדה"ר, וחכמי החקירה יאמרו כי מאז היה האדם מוכן שיקבל תורה אלהית כתובה על גוילין של עור ללמדו דרך איך ינצל מעטיו של נחש, שתחלה היתה התורה כתובה על לוח לבו והיה מלא רוח דעת ויראת ה', ועתה שנטה מן המסלה העולה בית אל יצטרך לתורה כתובה. ובתורתו של ר' מאיר מצאו כתנות אור, כי פנימיות התורה הוא אור בהיר תשים כל מחשך לאור ומעקשים למישור:
(1) "And he made." And from there, there was a need for their clothing, and the Lord gave their hearts binah (understanding) so they could make leather garments, for in [the man] there had already sparked creative knowledge, and so he began to deal with arts and craftsmanship. For as the Sages (of blessed memory) said about the following passage: "They are craftsmen, are merely human" (Isaiah 44:11), craftsmanship began with the first human, and the investigating Sages would say that from that moment was the human ready to receive divine Torah written on animal skins (vellum) in order to teach him (the human) how he would be saved from the ways of the serpent. Originally, the Torah was written on the walls of his heart and was full of the spirit of knowledge and the fear/reverence of the Lord, and now that he had deviated from the path that leads to the house of G-d, he would need a written Torah. In Rabbi Meir's Torah, there was found the phrase "garments of light", for the inner nature of the Torah is a bright light that will turn all darkness to light and turn all who are stubborn onto the straight path.
(ג) וילבישם. ראוי היה שיאמר כתנות עור ללבוש כענין שכתוב (בראשית כ"ח כ') ובגד ללבוש. אבל ע"ד הפשט רצה ליחס פעולת ההלבשה אליו יתברך להורות על אהבתו וחמלתו על יצוריו שאע"פ שחטאו לא זז מחבבן והוא בעצמו השתדל בתקונם ובגמילות חסדים.
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(טו) ויש לך להסתכל איך העניש את הראשונים שהיו מאותו הכת שהם לחרפות לדראון עולם, ולפי שלא זכו לחיי עולם ושמעו לקול החומר העניש את גופם ואת נפשם ובאותו העונש לא הזכיר בהם שמו יתברך. אבל בכתוב הזה בכת שהם לחיי עולם מזכיר בהם שמו יתברך ואמר ויעש ה' אלהים. והכתוב הזה עבר במקום עתיד כדרך הנבואות.
(3) וילבישם, “He clothed them.” It would have been more appropriate for the Torah to write כתנות עור ללבוש, ”coats of leather to serve as clothing.” According to the plain meaning of the text the Torah simply wanted to relate the fact that they were being clothed to G-d Himself to show G-d’s loving concern and His pity for His creatures. Even though they had sinned, this did not mean that G-d no longer related to them with feelings of fondness. He, personally, engaged in the act of dressing them.
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(15) It pays to look closely at the verses in which G-d’s punishment for Adam and Chavah are described. Whereas G-d’s name is mentioned in connection with the curse of the serpent, the Torah refrains from mentioning G-d’s name in verses 15-19 when the punishment meted out to Adam and Chavah is described. G-d is referred to repeatedly only in the third person as “He.” This teaches that G-d makes every effort to prove that evil never originates with Him. Hence He is careful to dissociate His name from it. By contrast, when it came to describing infinite life in the future as symbolised by the last verse in the paragraph, the Torah makes a point of attributing these כתנות עור to ה' אלוקים, to G-d personally, directly. This whole verse, although phrased in the past tense, actually is a reference to the future as we find in connection with many prophecies.
(16) Though Man is born without clothing, the Torah tells us that his first sin differentiated him from the other creatures around him and made him feel a need to cover himself. Once he felt this need, it led to two different outcomes: First man clothes himself by sewing together fig leaves (Bereshit 3:7).181 A bit later, Adam strangely tells God that he is still naked (Bereshit 3:10).182 God then responds by clothing him anew in what the Torah describes as “skin-clothes” (Bereshit 3:21).183 On the surface, the second set of clothes would seem redundant, since Adam’s claim that he was still naked was simply untrue. To leave it at that, however, would give us merely a superficial understanding of the event. Based on our experience with the Biblical text’s sophistication and nuance, we know that we have to look further to understand what the Torah is trying to express.
(90) This insight notwithstanding, the clothing of Adam has even more fundamental undertones. When man is sent into the world as a result of his sin, he immediately becomes aware of the world’s imperfection. At the same time, according to Jewish tradition, bringing the world back to a state of pre-sin pristine harmony, of tikkun, stands at the center of man’s historical challenge. This presents an obvious problem; namely, how can we strive for a perfection of which we, as mortals in an imperfect world, are not experientially aware?241 Man cannot know much about the perfection that he is trying to create, since he has never really seen it.
(91) In order to give man a model to guide his efforts towards tikkun of the human world, there is a need for him to experience what perfect communication could be. This is the clothing that God gave Adam, and which, according to one tradition, was passed down from generation to generation.242