Skin:

A Teaching For Rosh Hashana 5762

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

I was reading the Rambam's laws of teshuvah, as I often do during Ellul. He says, in chapter 5,"It is in the hands of every individual, if he desires, to direct himself to the good path and be righteous; it is in his hands. This is what is written in the Torah, 'And he shall be as one of us, knowing good and evil.'" That last line is a proof-text, a line from the bible which is used by the Rambam to prove his point This particular line is from the story of the fall, after Eve and then Adam eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and God says, oh no, now they'll be like us, knowing good and evil. And Maimonides goes on in the same vein:

"That is to say that the human species is unique in the world; there is no other species like him in this matter - that he himself in his knowledge and thought knows good and evil and does all that he desires; and no one can. force him to do good or evil. And because of this, (here's another proof text) 'lest he put, forth his hand'".

I thought I knew the story of the fall pretty well, but, as I was taught to do in school, I went back to look at the proof text. And when I did, I noticed something I had forgotten. You remember the story too: the serpent tempts Eve; she eats the forbidden fruit; gives some to her mate; he eats it too, and suddenly he realizes that they are naked. He makes clothing of fig leaves. God says, "Hey, who told you you were naked?" The man says, SHE DID!. God curses the snake, the woman and the man Then two things happen, both of which had long ago slipped out of my memory. First, it is at this juncture that Adam gives Eve her name, eve, havvah, life. And then there follows this incredibly poignant and odd line: "And Hashem God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin, and He clothed them." And this is the point at which God says the line that the Rambam quotes: "Behold Man has become like one of us, to know good and bad; and now", (there seems to be a verb missing here) "lest he put forth his hand and take from the Tree of Life and live forever!"

I can't stop thinking about that line about God making garments of skin -- katnot (or overcoats) of skin -- and clothing the miscreants whom God had just so thoroughly cursed a minute before. Garments of skin. And it makes me wonder, before this happened, didn't they have skin? Were Adam and Eve skinless in Gan Eden until they were about to be expelled?

This in turn makes me think about a spiel I always give to couples when we're planning their wedding. This comes from my teacher of blessed memory, Barbara Myerhoff, who was in turn quoting the anthropologist Victor Turner, though over the many years since I first heard this idea am sure I have twisted and turned it this way and that. Myerhoff quotes Turner saying that he observed from studying so-called primitive tribes that, when people undergo a change in personal status, they enter into what he called a "liminal period". When a person is going from childhood to adulthood; when a person is going from single to coupled, from couplehood to singleness, from having parents to being an orphan -- at any of these times of change of status a person becomes extremely vulnerable -- skinless. And it is for this reason, says Myerhoff quoting Turner, that ritual is needed at these times. The person in a liminal state -- the skinless person in the process of change of status -- needs protection. And so the village gathers; the family comes; the ancestors chime in with a set of instructions. Why do a couple at their wedding circle each other three times and drink two glasses of wine and put rings on each other's fourth finger (or if you are from some European countries, the forefinger) and then stamp on the glass? Because they need protection, and ritual provides protection. From Turner's point of view, it doesn't matter WHAT the ritual is -- just that there be some series of steps to provide structure at a time when internally people may be flying apart. It gives these extremely vulnerable, liminal people something organized to do so that they don't completely implode from the intensity of their nakedness.

We need coats of skin -- sometimes. We need protection when we go through difficult passages, when we are about to leave the garden for the unknown. But there is something very precious and pure about Adam and Eve's nakedness. Skin is a concession, evidence of our more complicated post-apple inner lives. We might wish that we were safe enough sometimes to be naked and unself-conscious.

The Zohar agrees with me on this: "At first they had coats of light, which procured them the service of the highest of the high, for the celestial angels used to come to enjoy that light... Now after their sins they had only coats of skin, good for the body but not for the soul." Another passage says something similar, but then adds, "Nonetheless, the beauty of those garments was incomparable. " This little teaching is based on a pun: the word skin, "or" sounds like the word light, "or." They're not spelled the same. But the sound of light is, one might say, hidden in the sound of skin.

Something in this season makes me think about skin and nakedness, about the many ways we cover ourselves -- naturally, habitually, reasonably, appropriately. But then sometimes we find ourselves lonely inside our skin. It's like the "or" remembers the "or"-- the garment of skin remembers and craves the lighter, freer garment of light. And then there are the ways we become calloused, the ways we bundle up, the scabs, the scars. Sometimes we are wrapped up so tight it is like we are choking.

Now that you can do these things using a CDROM and a search engine, I looked at lots and lots of sources about nakedness and skin. And it is certainly true that the overwhelming sense of Torah is that nakedness is a shameful and sometimes horrifying thing. The Talmud elaborates on this theme at amazing length: you can't read Torah naked or even stand a room with a sefer Torah unclothed. Cursed, one source even says, is the man who makes love with his wife naked!

But here and there some source shines through from the opposite side of the page, as it were. A passage in tractate Sotah quotes R. Yose ben R. Hanina, who says, "Words of Torah only remain with him who renders himself naked on their behalf as it is said, I wisdom have made nakedness my dwelling." A wonderful unattributed passage in Tractate Yoma says, "Power buries those who wield it. Naked came man into the world, naked he leaves it. Would that his coming forth would be like his coming in!" If only we could make ourselves naked of power in our coming forth! If only we could render ourselves naked and vulnerable to the piercing quality of Torah. If only we could get rid of this thick skin and go back to the garments of light.

One way of thinking about sin is that it is hidden in the word "skin", Sin is the very natural process of letting stuff stick to us -- accruing a coat of mistaken ideas, uninformed attitudes, unmanaged impulses, less than stellar participation in relationships, an outer coating of dullness, indifference, fatigue, anxiety, lack of confidence, hopelessness -- sin as the usual detritus of daily life forming a skin over our inner light. Sometimes we are coated over by wrong moral decisions, but just as often it is from bad habits or lack of urgency about the quality of our life. It all forms a skin, hides the supernal light. "Now, after their sins, they had coats of skin, good for the body but not for the soul."

When God made coats of skin for Eve and Adam, it was a compromise. God was expelling them from the Garden --from the supernal light, from play with the angels -- but God wasn't going to let us go out there completely unprotected. Hence the invention of skin. The Zohar says of skin, bones and sinews, "All these are garments upon that which is inward, which is also the mystery of the Supernal Man, who is the innermost." We need skin to survive. But it covers our inwardness, our radiance, our pure, innocent shine.

Skin compromises relationships too, We are hidden from each other, opaque, hard to get to know. We seem one way on the surface, and no one can know that deep inside it is entirely different. We scratch and claw and poke through each other's thick outer coats to get to the light within. We need skin to survive each other. But at the very same time, skin frustrates the very endeavor of relationship

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are really one holiday, one ten-day period of heightened intensity devoted to spiritual transformation. Unlike most of our other festivals, which typically focus on history and community and nature, this period is particularly concerned with the state of our individual souls This combined holiday, uniquely, perhaps, of all our holy days, offers us the opportunity -- and the terrifying prospect -- of becoming skinless and transparent, of ascending for a time from the world of compromise. So it is not surprising if our coats of skin hang especially heavy right now, if we feel something like a twinge of nostalgia for the time when we were lighter, clearer, when things weren't so heavy. I wonder if at Rosh Hashana, the date called "the birthday of the world," we aren't sometimes lonesome for the time before we had skin, when we were all light, before we had the knowledge of good and evil, with all the complexity and difficulty this knowledge necessarily brings The Rambam seems to admire this unique quality of the human being, our moral sensibility. But it can be a burden too. Being in this world sometimes hangs heavy on our souls. Knowing good from evil, but not always being able to do good, leaves us with a sticky coat of compromise on top of our sweet, light-filled souls. There are contemporary commentators who say that God was secretly happy when Eve and then Adam ate from the Tree. It was part of growing up. Children have to leave home, even when home is the Garden and the companions of one's childhood were angels of light. So God took us to the door, as it were, sent us out, and, as we stepped through the threshold, handed us coats.

And then, as one last gift, just as we were walking out into the sunlight -- something God had been saving for us since the very beginning -- God tucked a little package into our pocket. In it was Rosh Hashana, a day when we could come home, hang up the heavy overcoat of skin, and nestle naked, transparent and completely safe in the arms of our Divine Source

Copyright 2001 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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