Fig Leaves

Torah Study June 21 led by Rabbi Jannet Marder

Genesis 3:7

What is the significance of Fig Leaves?

Some feel that the fig was the ‘forbidden fruit’ because of the proximity of the mention of fig leaves in this part to the eating of the fruit.
Fig leaves are big and strong and shaped like a hand.

In early Greek culture the naked body was a symbol of heroism, it was mostly Christianity that brought modesty.


Fig leaves were attached to art in the middle ages. It was about that time when modesty and shame of nakedness became the way people thought.

Book Reference: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form by Kenneth Clark


There was a discussion on how fig leaves were added to art ..


There is a good description about this on Wikipedia

Queen Victoria received a copy of Michelangelo's David – and made fig leaves to attach with hooks to make it “presentable”

Then we spoke of the metaphorical interpretation of the use of the term “fig leaf” as a cover up for wrong doing.

Poem Reference: The Naked And The Nude by Robert Graves

For me, the naked and the nude

(By lexicographers construed

As synonyms that should express

The same deficiency of dress

Or shelter) stand as wide apart

As love from lies, or truth from art.



Lovers without reproach will gaze

On bodies naked and ablaze;

The Hippocratic eye will see

In nakedness, anatomy;

And naked shines the Goddess when

She mounts her lion among men.



The nude are bold, the nude are sly

To hold each treasonable eye.

While draping by a showman's trick

Their dishabille in rhetoric,

They grin a mock-religious grin

Of scorn at those of naked skin.



The naked, therefore, who compete

Against the nude may know defeat;

Yet when they both together tread

The briary pastures of the dead,

By Gorgons with long whips pursued,

How naked go the sometime nude!

This poem emphasized the different terms and their different implications.

We discussed the attitudes in different cultures regarding wearing of clothes.

Also discussed the issue of what clothing conveys about people in different environments.

The notion of privacy and clothing was addressed.

On the Jewish attitudes toward clothing R. Marder read an essay by: Gila Manolson
on the Jewish mitzvot of "tsniut" ("modesty")

You can read part of it here

The concept of wearing modest clothing, as she presents, relates to seeing a person for who they are on the inside and not for seeing them physically for the outside or what they wear.

It is a nice argument. However many do not agree that this is really the way it is.

And is our Torah Study style we also discussed the Hebrew word for Clothing: Beged – the root of this word in Hebrew also will mean to Betray or Traitor or Lie.

An interesting article about this

A dress of fire and a burning betrayal by Rami Saari

“A person who devotes herself completely to literary creation is often a naked person.
Dahlia Ravikovitch's poem 'A Dress of Fire', like the root of the word 'article of clothing' in the original Hebrew, beged, connects, in a manner foreign to most languages, two basic concepts of the Hebrew language and of human culture: beged: a piece of clothing that covers the body, hides its nakedness and prevents others from seeing one's private parts - the naked truth; and bgida (from the same root, but meaning betrayal), a ticking bomb wrapped like a candy box, a Trojan horse meant for one person only, its goal revenge, to triumph over that person. “