On Adam and Shehechiyanu

My younger son (S2) is currently in fourth grade. Like most fourth graders in Orthodox yeshivos, S2 comes home every week with Divrei Torah to tell by the Shabbos table. He came home this week with four Divrei Torah to tell over. I was generally pleased with them - with one exception.

The exception deals with Genesis 3:21:

וַיַּעַשׂ ה אֱלֹקים לְאָדָם וּלְאִשְׁתּוֹ, כָּתְנוֹת עוֹר--וַיַּלְבִּשֵׁם
And Hashem made for Adam and his wife leather garments and clothed them.

S2 then asked (via his rebbe) why it had to be leather garments, rather than, say, linen or wool garments.

The answer, according to S2's rebbe, lies in a Halacha in Shulchan Aruch which states that one must make a Shehechiyanu for new garments. However, leather garments are an exception from this rule because an animal had to die in order to produce the garments. Now, if God had made for Adam wool garments, he would have had to make a brachah on them before putting them on -- which he could not do because he was naked! So, in order to save Adam from having a shailah as to whether or not to have to make a Shehechiyanu, God made leather garments for Adam.

Now, I certainly don't have a problem with the rebbe teaching B'raishis literally, even if I personally don't put a premium on the literal view of it. I do have a problem, however, the Rebbe teaching that Adam somehow knew Shulchan Aruch and was even remotely concerned with making a bracha of Shehechiyanu on his new garments. Adam certainly knew nothing of the brachah of Shehechiyanu and certainly knew nothing of the concept of making this brachah for new clothing (clothing had never been in his experience before anyway -- why would he know any halachos of clothing?

Of course, this is not the first time I've heard of this sort of "anachronistic scholarship." The same principle is applied to explain what Ya'akov's sons did with the money that they got from the sale of Yosef. As the reasoning goes, they bought shoes with the money so that they would not have to make a Shehechiyanu on the ill-gotten goods (as if after having committed an act of kidnapping and selling, they were suddenly such tzadikkim as to be worried about a bracha on a piece of clothing).

But it's very interesting how this "anachronistic" knowledge of halacha disappears in other places. Amram, Moshe's father married his aunt. Didn't he know that it was against halacha to do so? Sure, it was before the Giving of the Torah and technically permitted -- but then again, there was no requirement to make a Shehechiyanu on clothing before Mattan Torah too (or even after it, of course -- the requirement to make a Shehechiyanu on new clothing is only a Rabbinic enactment).

I find it sometimes quite hysterical how the stories of our ancestors and biblical personages get hopelessly complicated by assigning to them knowledge of events or Jewish law that they could not possibly have had. They take our original ancestor and somehow turn him into someone who not only had knowledge of the Torah, but also the Rabbinic requirement of making Shehechiyanu on clothing and an expert on the parameters of that ruling.

The Wolf