Kommentar zu Bereschit 2:25

ולא יתבוששו AND THEY WERE NOT ASHAMED — for they did not know what modestly meant, so as to distinguish between good and evil. Although he (Adam) had been endowed with knowledge to give names to all creatures, yet the evil inclination did not become an active principle in him until he had eaten of the tree, when it entered into him and he became aware of the difference between good and evil.

And they were not ashamed. They used their limbs solely for the service of their Maker, not the pursuit of base pleasures. Therefore they considered marital relations no different than eating and drinking and their reproductive organs no different than their mouth or hands.

ויהיו שניהם ערומים האדם ואשתו ולא יתבששו. Man and his wife were both nude and did not experience a feeling of shame. Before the sin the upper "face" and the lower "face" were equally holy. The element of evil which attached itself to man after the sin concentrates on the lower part of his body. This is the reason that the holy covenant between man and G'd, i.e. circumcision, has to be performed on his sexual organ. The foreskin, ערלה, is the symbol of what kabbalists call the קליפה, the shell or peel which makes penetration to the holy essence difficult. This is why G'd commanded its removal. Inasmuch as all adulterers are victims of the sexual urges burning within them, G'd ordered that this part of man, the source of these abominations, be hidden from view, be covered. Our sages have added the prohibition not to touch that part of one's body (unnecessarily). אורח חיים ,ב,א even tells us to avoid having to look at these parts of our body when we get up and get dressed. The Talmud Shabbat 108 coined the phrase יד לאמה תיקצץ, that the hand which touches the male organ deserves to be cut off. This is because the touch of the hand on the male organ causes sexual arousal, or אש זרה in the language of our sages, something that was not the case before the sin. Henceforth man would expose himself to the danger of that alien fire consuming him if he touched those parts. Let us look for a moment at what Abraham commanded Eliezer before he sent him on the mission to find a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24,2). He instructed his servant: שים נא ידך תחת ירכי, "place your hand under my thigh." At first glance the instruction for Eliezer to place his hand on Abraham's male organ seems incompatible with what we have just explained. Our sages explain that Abraham was not comparable to his peers in this respect. The touch of a hand on this part of his body did not cause arousal. The act of circumcision he had performed on himself on that organ at an advanced age had made him far more resistant to the evil urge than others. His whole body could be considered as almost pure. The same applies to our verse, that prior to the sin the body was not subject to this אש זרה, the burning passion of sexual arousal. Another meaning is based on the use of the future tense by the Torah. We would have expected ולא נתביישו, "they were not ashamed," instead of "they will not be ashamed." The Torah teaches us then that notwithstanding the fact that Adam and Eve were both nude they had no reason to become ashamed as a result. The Torah mentioned this so that we would know who caused the subsequent division between man's upper and lower body respectively.