Daf Ditty Yevamot 22: The Curse That Keeps On Giving

Nathan confronts King David for his adultery with Bathsheba, an affair that
produced a mamzer. Bronze bas-relief on the door of La Madeleine, Paris.

"Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field. I will meet
you there."

Rumi (Mevlana)

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MISHNA: In the case of anyone who has a brother of any kind, that brother creates a levirate
bond causing his yevama to be required to perform levirate marriage if the first brother dies
childless. And he is his brother in all respects, except for one who has a brother born from a
Canaanite maidservant or from a gentile woman, as these do not have the legal status of brothers.

Similarly, in the case of anyone who has a child of any kind, that child exempts his father’s
wife from levirate marriage, since his father did not die childless.

And that child is liable to receive capital punishment if he strikes his father or curses him. And
he is his child in all respects, except for whoever has a child born from a Canaanite
maidservant or from a gentile woman, as these do not have the halakhic status of children.

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GEMARA: The Gemara asks: With regard to the statement that a brother of any kind causes his
yevama to be required to perform levirate marriage, what additional case does this come to add?
Rav Yehuda said: This adds the case of a mamzer, who, notwithstanding his status, is considered
a brother. The Gemara wonders: But isn’t that obvious? He is his brother. The Gemara explains:
This is necessary lest you say: Let us derive a verbal analogy between the word “brother” stated

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in the verse with regard to levirate marriage and “brother” stated with regard to the children of
Jacob. Just as there, Jacob’s children are of unflawed lineage and not of flawed lineage and are
not mamzerim, so too here, one might think that only brothers of unflawed lineage and not
brothers of flawed lineage, i.e., mamzerim, obligate the yevama in levirate marriage. Therefore,
this teaches us that a mamzer is considered a brother for the purposes of levirate marriage.

Steinzaltz

‫ת וס פ ות ד " ה מ אי ט ע מ א‬
Tosfos explains why we thought that a Mamzer child would not exempt.

‫הכא לא פריך פשיטא דבנו הוא כדפריך לעיל פשיטא אחיו הוא‬

Here we do not ask "this is obvious. He is his son!" like we asked above (22a) "this is obvious.
He is his brother!";
‫אלא אדרבה בעי מאי טעמא‬

Just the contrary! [Here] we ask "what is the reason [why he is considered his son]?"!

'‫והיינו משום דשני לעיל נילף אחוה אחוה מבני יעקב כו‬

This is because above, we answered that we would have learned Achvah-Achvah from Bnei
Yakov...
.‫ולהכי בעי מאי טעמא לא ילפינן מבני יעקב דלא זקיק ואם כן מיפטר נמי לא ליפטר‬

Therefore, here we ask why we do not learn from Bnei Yakov that he is not Zokek. If so, also he
would not exempt.

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The Gemara asks: And say that is indeed the halakha. Perhaps a brother who is a mamzer does
not obligate his yevama in levirate marriage. The Gemara answers: Since with regard to levirate
marriage, if the husband had a child who was a mamzer he would exempt the wife from levirate
marriage,

the husband’s brother also causes a levirate bond with his yevama even if he is a mamzer.

It states in the mishna that a child who is a mamzer is liable to receive punishment if he strikes
his father or curses him. The Gemara asks: Why should he be liable? Read here the verse: “You
shall not curse a ruler of your people” (Exodus 22:27), which is interpreted to imply that the
prohibition against cursing applies only to one who acts according to the deeds of your people.
However, this father must have engaged in sexual relations with a woman who was forbidden to
him in order to have a child who is a mamzer. Therefore, he did not act according to the deeds of
the people. In that case, why should this son be liable to receive punishment for hitting him or
cursing him?

The Gemara answers: As Rav Pineḥas said in the name of Rav Pappa with regard to a different
matter: This is referring to one who performs repentance. Here too, it is referring to one who
performed repentance after the mamzer was born. He is thereafter considered to be living in
accordance with halakha, and so his mamzer son is liable to receive punishment for cursing him.

he Gemara objects: Is he in fact able to repent after fathering a mamzer? Didn’t we learn in a
mishna that Shimon ben Menasya says: Which is: “That which is crooked cannot be made
straight” (Ecclesiastes 1:15)? This is referring to one who engaged in intercourse with a

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relative who is forbidden to him and fathered a mamzer with her. This implies that he has no
possibility of achieving total repentance. The Gemara responds: At least now, after repenting, he
is considered as one who acts according to the deeds of your people. Although he cannot totally
rectify his transgression, his child is liable to receive punishment for cursing or hitting him.

Summary

Introduction1

A wife of a deceased husband is liable for yibbum only if her husband had a brother and no sons.
Our mishnah defines what types of brothers cause the woman to be obligated for yibbum and what
types of sons exempt them.

If one has any kind of brother, [that brother] requires his brother’s wife to have
yibbum, and he is his brother in every respect, except for a brother born from

1
https://www.sefaria.org/Yevamot.22a.11?ven=William_Davidson_Edition_-_English&vhe=William_Davidson_Edition_-
_Vocalized_Aramaic&lang=bi&p2=Mishnah_Yevamot.2.5&ven2=William_Davidson_Edition_-
_English&vhe2=Torat_Emet_357&lang2=bi&w2=English%20Explanation%20of%20Mishnah&lang3=en

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a female slave or a non-Jewish woman. If one has any kind of son, [that son]
exempts his father’s wife from yibbum, and he is liable for striking or cursing
[his father], and he is his son in every respect, except for the son of a female
slave or a non-Jewish woman.

Any kind of brother, even a mamzer, requires the brother’s wife to have yibbum or halitzah. This
brother is his brother in every respect. For instance, if his brother is a mamzer, his brother is still
eligible to inherit from him. If one brother is a priest and his brother is a mamzer, for instance his
father was a priest and had an adulterous affair with a married woman and they had a child, the
priest is still allowed to become impure to help bury his mamzer brother. [Priests can only become
impure for their seven immediate relatives.] The only exception to this rule is his brother from a
slave or non-Jew. Since the child of a slave or a non-Jewish woman is not considered to be related
to his father, for the child is not Jewish, the child is not considered to be related to his paternal
father.

This section basically teaches the same law with regard to a son. Any son exempts a wife from
yibbum or halitzah, even a mamzer son. For instance, if a man had an adulterous affair and a child
was born, and then the man subsequently married another woman and died without any more
children, his wife is exempt from yibbum, because he already has a child. This child is considered
his in all legal matters. For instance if he strikes or curses his father he is liable for the death penalty
(see Exodus 21:15, 17). He inherits his father, and if his father is a priest his father may become
impure in order to bury him. Again, the only exception is the son of a female slave or non-Jew,
who is not considered to be related to his father.

Sisters, Brothers and Mamzerim2

2
http://dafyomibeginner.blogspot.com/2014/10/

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Secondary forbidden relationships, those defined by rabbinic law rather than Torah law, carry on
from generation to generation. For example, one's wife's granddaughter and great-granddaughter
are forbidden to the yavam. The rabbis argue whether certain forbidden relationships carry on to
the third, fourth, or infinite generation/s. We learn in a note that Rambam's opinion is our
halacha. His rationale for "concluding" these prohibitions is that we are to rule leniently regarding
uncertain rabbinic decrees.

A new learning regarding conversion: a convert is described as a person newly born. This means
that s/he has no legally binding relationships with Gentile family members. The rabbis argue about
the impacts of this legal fiction on the requirements of yibum. A Jew who has converted is not
subject to numerous secondary forbidden relationships; he is permitted to marry his maternal
grandmother, for example, which would otherwise be a forbidden secondary relationship. We also
learn about the testimony of converts who are related to each other.

Another aside: a paternal half-brother who is a yavam always requires yibum or chalitza, even if
there are questions about his lineage. A maternal half-brother, however, is not considered a yavam
if his mother is a Gentile or a Canaanite maidservant. Any person who dies and has a child -
regardless of that child's lineage - exempts his wife from the status of yevama and the obligation
of yibum. This Mishna reminds us that such a child is legally bound as his child. This means that
if the child strikes his/her father, the child is liable to death. The only exception is a child of a
Gentile woman or Canaanite maidservants - such a child is not having the legal status of his child.

The Gemara discusses mamzerim: though a mamzer would exempt a yevama from yibum, if the
brother of the deceased man is a mamzer, yibum is still a legal obligation; the levirite bond still
exists. After looking further into the notion of kin relationships and mamzerim, the rabbis look at
mamzerim who curse their parents and are sentenced to death. We watch the rabbis argue this
point; it seems as though they are uncomfortable with such a harsh ruling. Perhaps we should
remember the sins of the father; perhaps we should think about the implications of repentance.

The Sages discuss the degree of punishment that face those who have sexual relations with their
sisters who are the daughters of their fathers' wives. The punishments are simply offerings -
nothing close to the death sentence facing a disrespectful child. We learn that the notion of marital
rape does not exist such a yavam is not liable to yibum with a sister from a woman who had been
raped. She is considered his sister because she is the daughter of his father's wife; a rape victim
could only have resulted from intercourse between his father and another woman -- such a woman
would not be called his sister at all.

We end the daf with more disturbing interpretations. The rabbis teach us that when a man's father
rapes a woman (not, of course, his wife, for that does not exist as a concept), that man is allowed
to marry the woman's daughter of another man. However, if the woman's daughter was the man's

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paternal half-sister, the half-sister would be forbidden to him in marriage. We learn in a note that
the punishment the man would receive for marrying his half-sister would be because she was his
sister and not because she was the daughter of his father's wife.

It is clear that our rabbis are working very hard to define the boundaries of their society. They
regulate sexual relationships carefully - far more carefully than what was described in Torah law
- in order to create a fence around those primary forbidden sexual relationships. However, they
also regulate sexual relationships as a means to reinforce the structure of society. Men are
ultimately in control of their destinies based on the decisions that they make. Women, however,
live lives as decided by the men around them. If they are raped, they are married - unless a man
steps in to challenge that decree. If they are widowed and without children, they are subject to the
actions of their brothers-in-law. It is disheartening to read about the live of my ancestors today.

ONE'S DAUGHTER'S DAUGHTER'S DAUGHTER

Rav Mordechai Kornfeld writes:3

The Gemara concludes its list of the Sheniyos l'Arayos with the six additional Sheniyos of Rebbi
Chiya. His first four Sheniyos are the daughter of the third generation through one's son, the
daughter of the third generation through one's daughter, the daughter of the third generation
through one's wife's son, and the daughter of the third generation through one's wife's daughter.
RASHI (DH Shlishi and DH v'she'b'Bito) explains that these relations refer to the daughter of the
son of one's son, the daughter of the son of one's daughter, the daughter of the son of one's wife's
son, and the daughter of the son of one's wife's daughter.

According to Rashi's explanation, why does Rebbi Chiya discuss only the daughter of the son of
one's son or daughter, and not the daughter of the daughter of one's son or daughter? Similarly,
why does he mention only the daughter of the son of one's wife's son or daughter, but not
the daughter of the daughter of one's wife's son or daughter? According to Rashi, Rebbi Chiya
mentions only cases in which there is a woman at the end (obviously, since he is discussing a
prohibited woman) and at the beginning, but not when there is a woman in the middle generation.
Why does Rashi exclude all other cases of equivalent relatives from Rebbi Chiya's list of Sheniyos?
(Indeed, the RAMBAM in Perush ha'Mishnayos and the BARTENURA include such cases in
their list of the Sheniyos of Rebbi Chiya.)

3
https://dafyomi.co.il/yevamos/charts/ye-ct-022.htm

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RAV ELAZAR MOSHE HA'LEVI HOROWITZ answers that the Gemara later questions
whether or not the Sheniyos of Rebbi Chiya have a "Hefsek" (they extend to further generations).
In the case of the daughter of one's daughter's daughter, in which the first, second, and third
generations are all women, it is obvious that the prohibition extends through the generations
because both the first generation (one's daughter) and the second generation (his daughter's
daughter) are Asur mid'Oraisa. Whenever there is any generation of a particular relation which is
Asur mid'Oraisa, that relation is Asur throughout all of the generations (as Rashi explains on 21a,
DH v'Eshes; see Chart there). Accordingly, if Rebbi Chiya refers to the daughter of one's daughter's
daughter, the Gemara would not question whether it has a "Hefsek" or not.

The question applies only in the case of the daughter of the son of one's daughter. In that case,
although the first generation (his daughter) is Asur mid'Oraisa, the son in the middle interrupts the
Isur; there is no case of an Ervah with a son in a middle generation, following a daughter, which
is Asur mid'Oraisa. Hence, the Gemara asks whether or not the prohibition of the daughter of the
son of one's daughter continues for ensuing generations.

THE PRINCIPLE OF "ANY RELATIVE WHO, AS A FEMALE,

IS ASUR AS AN ERVAH, AS A MALE HIS WIFE IS ASUR
MID'RABANAN (A SHENIYAH)" (12)

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 Any Brother or Any Child

Steinzaltz (OBM) writes:4

In order for the commandment of yibum to come into effect, the two most basic components are
for a married man to die with no offspring, and to have a living brother who can marry his widow,
thus fulfilling the mitzva. The Mishna on our daf teaches that having any brother will allow the
commandment to take effect, except for a brother that was born to a non-Jewish woman or slave;
similarly, having any child will keep the commandment from taking effect, except for a child that
was born from a non-Jewish woman or slave.

The Gemara interprets the use of the expression “any brother” and “any child” to include even the
case of a brother or child who was a mamzer – a child born as a result of an adulterous or incestuous
relationship – who ordinarily is not allowed to marry into the Jewish community
(see Devarim 23:3) – deriving this from the passage u-ven ein lo (Devarim 25:5) that
the mitzva of yibum takes effect when he has no son. The expression ein lo is interpreted by the
Gemara to mean ayyen alav – investigate his situation carefully; that any evidence of offspring
will eliminate the mitzva of yibum. This interpretation is explained by the Sma to mean that the
Torah requires us to check that truly ben ein lo – there is no evidence whatsoever of a child.

Although the Gemara clearly indicates that the teaching of the Mishna comes to show that
a mamzer is considered a legitimate sibling or child with regard to the rules of yibum,
the geonim and rishonim add another case that needs to be considered.

What should the halakha be with regard to a sibling who has become an apostate? Do the rules
of yibum still apply? Will we insist that the widow refrain from marrying anyone else if the
apostate refuses to participate in a Jewish religious ritual? Similarly, if the apostate brother dies
with no children, will his wife become a yevama to his brothers (assuming, of course, that he was
married to a Jewish woman)?

The first approach to these questions was to affirm that Jews remain Jews, even if they committed
sins as severe as apostasy. Later on there were some geonim who suggested that we must
distinguish between a situation where the brother’s apostasy took place before or after the wedding.
In the event that already at the time of marriage the brother was an apostate, the suggestion is that
the marriage took place conditionally with an understanding that the apostate brother was not to
be included in the family for these purposes.

4
https://steinsaltz.org/daf/yevamot22/

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Rav Mordechai Papoff writes:5

If a man has a child “in any way,” his wife is exempt from yibum. What does this come to include?

The Gemara explains that it means even a son who is a mamzer, born through a union forbidden
by karess.

What if, ask several Acharonim, a man leaves behind a son who is a treifah, someone whose life
is in danger and is not expected to live more than 12 months? Will that also exempt her from
yibum?

The Ginas Veradim (Klal 2 Siman 4) quotes another sugya, in Niddah 43b, which states that even
a one-day-old child suffices to exempt his mother from yibum. However, Yevamos 35b indicates
that the child must be a ben kayama, one who is able to survive. Inferred from this, the Ginas
Veradim continues, a treifah would not be considered offspring to exempt from yibum. But isn’t a
similar halachic situation, a gosess (one who is dying), enough to count as a child? They are
different, he explains.

Although most gosesim are niftar, in the meantime they are alive, and may yet recover. A treifah,
on the other hand, is classified as definitely unable to survive, as the Gemara says if someone kills
a treifah he is not guilty of murder.

Another great posek from several hundred years ago, the Chikrei Lev, argues on this psak (Even
Ha’ezer 57). The Ginas Veradim bases his opinion on the Mishnah in Yevamos 35 which reads,
“If one took his yevama and discovered she’s pregnant: if the child is not a ben kayama, they may
stay married.”

From here he assumed a treifah is similar. The Chikrei Lev insists that they are not comparable.
That Mishnah is discussing a newborn child, and we need to ascertain he is a ben kayama and not
a naifel (a baby who will not survive). Until this is proven, he is regarded as being not alive. This
doubt applies to newborn babies. One cannot derive from here anything about a treifah, though!

5
https://res.cloudinary.com/ouinternal/image/upload/v1594990793/outorah%20pdf/Yevamos_022_EnglishTopicsonChoveres.pdf

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The Chikrei Lev further disagrees with the distinction made between a gosess and treifah and
asserts that regarding yibum a treifah will suffice to exempt his mother.

In our generation, the Tzitz Eliezer (Vol. 1 Siman 23) was posed this question, and he cited more
sources to support the second view, to consider a treifah a viable child.

Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank wrote to him, quoting a Tosfos Hari”d in Shabbos 136 who states this
explicitly. Since Tosfos was a Rishon, Rav Frank opines that the Ginas Veradim (an Acharon)
would not have had his opinion had he seen the sefer; indeed, it was not yet published in those
days.

As another proof, the Tzitz Eliezer extrapolates the same from a teshuva of the Chasam Sofer (“All
Beis Yisroel relies upon his psakim, in all matters,” emphasizes the Tzitz Eliezer). Although a
child who becomes a treifah before he is 30 days old is not required to have a pidyon haben, it is
only because of a derasha to that effect. In all other areas, says the Chasam Sofer, a treifah is like
everyone else. This, then, should include yibum, as well.

In a teshuvah concerning aveilus for a child, the Minchas Yitzchak echos the Chasam Sofer’s
reasoning, that only pidyon haben has a source to exclude a treifah. Once a child lives past 30 days
(so is certainly no longer a naifel), his passing would evoke aveilus.

The Shulchan Aruch itself indicates as such, since only regarding pidyon haben it says a treifah is
pattur, but not in hilchos aveilus (Shu”t Vol. 9:120). In a related sugya, Rav Menachem Zemba
Hy”d (in the sefer Gur Aryeh Yehuda) ponders if the mitzvah to eradicate Amalekim applies to
one who is a treifah! He says it depends on the reasoning of mechiyas Amalek. Is it a mitzvah to
avenge Hashem’s honor, as the Torah tells us, or a punishment to their nation for their crimes? If
it’s categorized as punishment, it would not be relevant – a treifah is not liable to punishments in
Beis Din. But if it’s our mitzvah to carry out, it could be done even with such a person.

He quotes a fascinating proof to the second line of thinking from a Meiri in Sotah. The Torah
commands us to bring an eglah arufah to atone for a Jew found murdered (Devorim 21). What if
the fellow was already a treifah – as mentioned, if one kills such a person, he is not chayiv misah?
The Meiri says that even so, they must perform the ceremony. It is not quite a punishment on the
community as much as a mitzvah that is incumbent upon them to carry out. (This fits with what
Rashi says there, that the arifah – axing the calf – signifies the truncation of the victim’s life and
loss of future mitzvos he could have done. Even a treifah could do mitzvos.) So too may be
mechiyas Amalek.

A practical application of this sugya is whether one can be mechalel Shabbos to assist a person
deemed a treifah. In the contemporary sefer Rosh Eliyahu (O.C. 57), he quotes the Minchas
Chinuch as being unsure about it. The Ramban holds that one cannot be mechalel Shabbos to save
a fetus, so one may say the same for a treifah, who is assumed to soon pass away. On the other
hand, if one is trapped under a collapsed building, we are mechalel Shabbos to save him – so a
treifah should be in the same category. The Rosh Eliyahu rules that certainly we should be
mechalel to save a treifah, as prolonging a Jew’s life always overrides Shabbos.

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The full verse in Shemos 22:27 instructs us not to curse a judge nor a prince.6

It reads, “You shall not curse a judge, and you shall not curse a leader among your people “.(‫)בעמך‬

The Gri”z notes that the qualification of not cursing one “among you” is only mentioned in
reference to the but not in reference to the judge. The reason is that the positions of king and
prince are passed through inheritance.

Conceivably, it could be that a leader could die, and his son might rise to his position of power
even though he is not worthy. The son might be a ‫רשע‬, one who is in the category of “not being
among your people.”

The Torah therefore admonishes us not to curse a leader, as long as the leader conducts himself as
a righteous person. If the king or prince is a ‫רשע‬, this prohibition does not apply. In fact, the Gemara
(Sanhedrin 85b) learns that there is no prohibition for striking or cursing anyone who is evil, as we
associate the sin of striking and of hitting.

If the person does teshuva, however, the prohibition is reinstated, as our Gemara points out. A
judge, however, does not assume his position just because his father was a judge. Only a person
who is qualified and competent is appointed as a judge.

Accordingly, it is not common to have a judge who is a ‫ רשע‬and does not conduct himself “as a
member of our people.” This is why the Torah does not note that the judge must be “‫בעמך‬.

If regarding the ervah herself, if not for the concern that people will say that converts come
from greater sanctity to lesser sanctity the Rabbis would not have decreed [a prohibition.]

Rav Ovadiah Yosef (1) was asked his opinion regarding a person who is converting to Judaism in
Eretz Yisroel, but his father’s family originated from Europe. After converting, should he follow
the customs of Shulchan Aruch which were accepted as binding in Eretz Yisroel, or should he
follow the Ashkenazi customs in accordance with his European ancestry?

Rav Yosef begins his discussion by citing the Gemara (2) that states that a convert is like a
newborn; consequently, he does not bring with him liability for the sins he committed before his
conversion. Even those sins that apply to Jews and nonJews alike, e.g. idolatry, cursing Hashem,

6
https://www.dafdigest.org/masechtos/Yevamos%20022.pdf

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etc. do not carry over into his new existence and he is exempt from the death penalty following his
conversion.

The fact that a convert is completely disassociated from his ancestry is evident from the halacha
mentioned in our Gemara that technically, a convert is permitted to marry his natural mother or
sister. The only reason it is prohibited is because it could lead people to think that he went from a
higher degree of sanctity to a lower degree of sanctity. However, according to the letter of the law
it is permitted. According to this principle he is considered completely detached from his idolatrous
existence and will take on the customs of the location of his conversion.

The Radvaz (3) uses the concept to explain why Yaakov Avinu was permitted to marry two sisters
despite the fact that the Avos fulfilled the entire Torah. He explains that since Rochel and Leah
converted before they married Yaakov, they lost their status as sisters, thus the prohibition against
marrying two sisters was never violated.

An interesting application of this concept (4) would be the case of a person who was born to a
Jewish father and a nonJewish mother. Since his mother is not Jewish he is required to convert to
Judaism. As a convert he is not seen as connected to his biological father and he is not bound at
all by his father’s customs or ancestry.

Our Gemara teaches that one who is born to a Jewish mother is Jewish while one born to a non-
Jewish mother is not.

One of the things we see from this is the pivotal role of the Jewish mother in the education and
development of her child. Since the mother generally sets the tone in the home and ensures that
the atmosphere is suffused with Yiddishkeit, her Jewishness is absolutely essential to the future of
the children.

Rav Shimon Hirschler, shlit”a, relates the following story about his own childhood: “When I was
a boy, I learned in Gateshead’s Jewish Boarding School. One time, Rav Elya Lopian, zt”l, came
to speak to us. ‘Children,’ he said, ‘the Torah begins with the letter “‫“ ב‬instead of the “‫“ א‬that we
might expect. Why do you think this is? “

We were all spellbound by the soft voice and penetrating gaze of Rav Elya Lopian and didn’t make
a sound. Rav Elya continued, ‘The letter “‫“ ב‬is spelt ‫בית‬, which is a bayis, a “house.” The whole

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Torah is based on the way the home is built. The house must smell Jewish, sound Jewish and look
Jewish.’ He explained, ‘Jewish children should grow up used to the smell of challos baking and
fish being cooked for Shabbos. They should be used to hearing the sounds of Torah being studied
in the home, of zemiros being sung on Shabbos, and divrei Torah being spoken. They should accept
as natural that the walls are hung with pictures of gedolim, and the shelves are full of seforim.’
‘This is what we mean with the which is a ‫’בית‬, he said. ‘The home is the introduction to the whole
Torah!’”

Portrait Of A Father And Son by Florentine School

Mark Kerzner writes:7

Any son that a man has relieves his wife from the mitzvah of yibum or chalitzah, which she would
otherwise have to do after her husband's death. The Torah said that only when "and one of them
dies childless" does the mitzvah of yibum apply.

What did the teacher mean by "any child?" He could have said it shorter, "A child." – Even a
mamzer – a son born from a woman married to another. But how do we know that? Maybe the
Torah discusses only a legitimate son? – From the words "And he has no son," - "U ben ein lo."
The term "ein" can be understood as "ain," which would mean an eye, telling us to look into the
matter and discover any existing son. For example, if he has a daughter, she also exempts her

7
www.TalmudIlluminated.com

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mother from yibum. The exception to this case is a child born from a slave or a non-Jewish woman,
who is not considered the man's offspring for the purposes of Jewish law.

In a similar vein, “any brother” to whom the mitzvah of yibum applies also includes a mamzer. He
is also a real brother for burial – so that if the father is a Kohen, and this son of his dies, then other
brothers are permitted to go to the cemetery for his burial. This brother also inherits together with
the other brothers, and he is liable for cursing his father.

The last point needs explanation. The Torah said, "Do not curse a prince (and anyone in general)
in your people," so this prohibition only applies to people who observe Torah laws and do "the
conduct of your people." This father sired a mamzer, and he is not doing the right thing, so the son
should not be liable for cursing him!? – The father repented. But the mamzer is alive, so the
repentance cannot work! – No, it can, because at least now the father behaves appropriately.

Sara Ronis writes:8

The mishnah on our daf discusses exactly what kinds of brothers are required to perform yibbum:

Anyone who has a brother of any kind, that brother creates a levirate bond causing
his yevama to be required to perform levirate marriage. And he is his brother in all respects,
except for one who has a brother from an enslaved woman or from a gentile woman.

According to the mishnah, children follow the legal status of their mothers — so the son of an
enslaved woman is himself enslaved, and the son of a non-Jewish woman is not Jewish. Since
yibbum is only a requirement for those who are Jewish and free to contract a marriage, these two
kinds of brothers are exempt from yibbum.

But all other brothers — those who are Jewish and free — require the widow of a childless man to
perform yibbum or halitzah.

The Gemara notes that the mishnah’s phrase “of any kind” seems redundant. Why not just say
“anyone who has a brother” — and the next sentence makes clear that we mean a free and Jewish
brother?

“Of any kind” — what does this add?

Rav Yehuda said: This adds a mamzer.

A mamzer, a child born of a forbidden sexual relationship, is often treated differently in halakhah.
So Rav Yehuda read the redundant words as meant to clarify that a mamzer counts as a brother for
yibbum purposes.
8
Myjewishlearning.com

21
But isn’t that obvious? He is his brother. Lest you say: Let us derive a verbal analogy between
the word “brother” stated in the verse with regard to levirate marriage and “brother” stated with
regard to the children of Jacob. Just as there, Jacob’s children are of unflawed lineage, so too
here, we refer to unflawed lineage and not brothers of flawed lineage. This teaches us that a
mamzer counts for yibbum.

The rabbis are worried that one might make a false verbal analogy from Jacob’s children, who are
definitely not mamzerim, to the brothers of the deceased man and think that they must also be
definitely not mamzerim. So Rav Yehuda has to say explicitly that mamzerim count as brothers.

The first time I read this daf, I laughed out loud. As we’ve already seen, Leviticus 18 states that
“you shall not marry two sisters.” Of course, that’s exactly what Jacob did when he
married Rachel and Leah. No shade to Jacob — according to the biblical chronology, the Torah
had not yet been given, and he was not subject to the laws in Leviticus. But let’s be honest, if Jacob
had lived a thousand years later, some of his children would in fact have been mamzerim. So using
Jacob’s children as our model for an unflawed family lineage is a tad ironic.

But that choice actually tells us something important about how the rabbis think about family. For
the rabbis, family isn’t just something biological. If it was, the children of non-Jewish women and
enslaved women would have counted. It’s something contextual. Definitions of family change over
time with the revelation at Sinai and continued rabbinic interpretation.

The mishnah shines a light onto the complicated family dynamics of slaveholders. Enslaved
women don’t have the legal right to refuse and may have children by their enslavers. Those
children then occupy a strange position in the family, recognized as biologically related but not
halakhically considered brothers for the purposes of yibbum. Their exclusion hurts everyone —
they are excluded from inheritance and a range of legal protections, and if they are the only
biological brother of the deceased, they cannot perform yibbum and give their brother a legacy.
But the rabbis’ discussion of Jacob reminds us that definitions of family can and do change. As
they should.

Rabbi Johnny Solomon writes:9

A topic that is regularly addressed in Massechet Yevamot which, as those currently studying it
have come to discover, is a Massechet that examines various simple and not so simple
relationships, is conversion.

In our daf (Yevamot 22a), reference is made to the relationship of converts to their families, and
it is here where the Gemara makes the oft-cited statement that ‫‘ – גר שנתגייר כקטן שנולד דמי‬someone
who has converted is like a newborn child’.

9
Wwwrabbijohnnysolomon.com

22
In terms of the context in which this statement is made, we are being taught that a convert ceases
– in the most part - to maintain legal kinship to their biological family and is, in some ways, ‘born
again’.

However, it is important to pay attention to the precise wording of this statement, because the
Gemara doesn’t say that ‘someone who has converted is the same as a newborn child’. Instead, it
says that they are ‫‘ – כקטן שנולד‬like’ a newborn child, meaning that there are ways that a convert is
‘born again’, but also ways that they are not. For example, we are taught in our daf that while
paternal brothers, where one or both have converted, may testify together (because they are not
considered to be related and because there is a lack of certainty if they are born of the same father),
nevertheless maternal brothers may not (because, notwithstanding the fact that they have
converted, we still acknowledge their kinship).

As Rabbi Michael Broyde explains: ‘the convert does not have to wait thirteen years to become a
bar-mitzva, or twelve years to become a bat-mitzva. The convert has to repay any money that they
owed at the time of conversion and continues to own any property that they owned prior to their
conversion. In short: the convert is not a newborn child for most matters of Jewish Law’.10

Unfortunately, there are those who have undergone conversion, as well as those who have made
significant changes in their religious practice (e.g Ba’alei Teshuva), who have interpreted and
applied this teaching far more literally than it was ever meant to mean, and as a result, they have
completely severed ties with their biological family.

Yet, as should be clear from our daf, as well as from numerous other sources on the topic (see for
example R’ Broyde’s discussion about ‘Honoring One’s Biological Parents’11 this is not only a
flawed interpretation of the true meaning of this passage, but it can also lead the biological family
of the convert, or the family of a Ba’al Teshuva, to have contempt for the convert or for the
individual who has increased their religious practice because that individual has failed to show
their biological family the kind of ‘courtesies and gestures of respect’ deserving of their family.

What we learn from here is that while Jewish law does assert that a convert ceases to maintain
legal kinship to their biological family and is, in some ways, ‘born again’, nevertheless great care
should be shown not to overstretch this claim, because, fundamentally, the convert is not a newborn
child for most matters of Jewish Law.

10
Urim Publications 2017 p22
11
on p. 59 of his ‘The Concise Code of Jewish Law for Converts’

23
Rabbi Jay Kelman writes:12

Life is not always fair. So much that befalls us--both positive and negative--is beyond our control.
And there is little that is less fair than being born a mamzer, an illegitimate child. Through no fault
of one's own, one is stigmatized for life, unable to marry most Jews. Such status is the result not
of an unfortunate accident, but of a deliberate sin of the most heinous kind: adultery or incest by
the mamzer's parents[1]. What kind of a relationship or feelings can one expect a child to have
towards his sinning parents, whose sin affects him much more than themselves?
"Whoever has a brother from any place imposes upon his brother's widow the obligation
of yibum, and is his brother in every respect, with the exception of one who has a brother born
from a slave or a non-Jew" (Yevamot 22a).
The Gemara explains that the phrase "from any place" comes to include a mamzer so that if the
deceased has a brother who is a mamzer, the widowed sister-in-law will require chalitzah from
this mamzer[2]. Interestingly, the Gemara found this so obvious that it questions the need to
specifically include a mamzer; after all, he is still his brother. To this, the Gemara explains that
since the obligation of yibum applies only to a paternal brother, something derived from the sons
of Yaakov, who had four different mothers but one father (Yevamot 17b and see here), one might
have (incorrectly) argued that just as Yaakov's children were all "kosher", so the obligation
of yibum--or in this case, chalitzah--is only operative if the brother is "kosher"[3]. Thus, the need
to disabuse us of such a notion, teaching that a mamzer is to be treated like any other brother. He
receives an equal share in inheritance, and his kohen brother may become tameh, impure, by
attending his funeral. This, in distinction to the case where a kohen who, against Jewish law,
marries a divorcee and would not be allowed to attend her funeral. In that case, we want to separate
the couple as much as we can--if not in life, then at least in death--whereas in the case of the
brother, the aim is to bring them closer together.
It is most reasonable and honorable to treat the sibling relationship between a mamzer and his
brother no differently than any other sibling relationship. Much more difficult to understand is the

12
https://torahinmotion.org/discussions-and-blogs/yevamot-22-brotherly-love

24
relationship of a father (or mother) to a mamzer son. "Whoever has a son from any place exempts
his brother's widow from the obligation of yibum. [The son is] liable for hitting or cursing [his
father], and he is his son in every respect, with the exception of one who has a son born from a
slave or a non-Jew."
But why? the Gemara asks. Why should the son be liable for cursing one's father who is "not
practicing the deeds of his people"? Why not curse a parent who, through deliberate sin--one that
requires one to give up one's life rather than transgress--would bring such hurt and shame to a
child? "When he did teshuva" is the remarkable answer of the Gemara. If the parent does not repent
for the sin, if no regret is shown a child, one would not be liable for cursing--and presumably
hitting, too--the sinful parents.
Yet this answer is somewhat problematic. As we discussed in our last post (see here) it is
impossible to do teshuva when the sin of adultery begets a mamzer. One can fast from today until
next year, express the greatest remorse, and fund a thousand programs for disadvantaged children,
but that child will still be a mamzer. Once a mamzer, always a mamzer. The Gemara explains that
true, full teshuva is not possible, but "at least now he is practicing the deeds of his people".
Apparently, there are two aspects to teshuva. First and foremost, one must return to the position
held before the sin, i.e., one must both express remorse and return money to someone you cheated.
But all too often, life can't be wound backwards, and it really is too late to correct one's mistakes.
However, that must not deter us. Moving forward, one can still "practice the deeds of the people".
Even the vilest sinners can make lives for themselves, can always move away from the past as they
build a healthy future. And such deserve our utmost respect.
[1] Why the innocent child must suffer the consequences of the parent's actions is a serious question beyond the scope of this article.
For now, we will say that tragically, children often suffer for the terrible mistakes of their parents. Parents also often stop their bad
practices lest it hurt their children, clearly the case here.
[2] Yibum would not be allowed, as such a marriage is forbidden in Jewish law.

[3] In the context of Yaakov's children, kosher means that they, unlike children of Avraham and Yitzchak, all remained Jewish.
However, as a mamzer is 100% Jewish, kosher here means that he is able to marry other Jews, something a mamzer may not do.

25
 What Is a "Mamzer"?

Mamzer is Hebrew (and Yiddish) for “bastard.” In common parlance, mamzer is a very
derogatory reference to a difficult or unpleasant individual. But in Torah, mamzer refers to a
Jewish person who was born into a certain situation and is therefore disallowed to marry most
fellow Jews.

Who Is a Mamzer?13
Unlike the English word, “bastard,” the Hebrew term mamzer does not refer to the child of two
unmarried individuals who could theoretically marry (i.e. born out of wedlock). Rather, it refers
only to the offspring of people whose relationship would be punishable with karet (excision). This
includes many close-blood relatives or a woman who was concurrently married to someone other
than the child’s father.

A Jewish marriage is more easily facilitated than a bona fide Jewish divorce. (After all, the couples
were presumably wed under better circumstances than during a divorce.) As a result, nowadays
the most common reason a person would be a mamzer is if a Jewish woman remarries without first
obtaining a get, a divorce by Jewish law (halachah), from a reputable rabbinic organization. This
means she is technically still married to her first husband, so her life with a new consort is a sin
and future offspring may be mamzerim (the plural of mamzer).

It is therefore crucial to receive a legitimate get before remarriage.

If you suspect that this may have happened to you or your family, please contact an expert
Orthodox rabbi because there may be other factors to consider whether a person is truly a mamzer.

13
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4007896/jewish/What-Is-a-Mamzer.htm

26
Life of a Mamzer
A mamzer is barred from entry into the “assembly of the L-rd”; his/her descendants may only
marry converts to Judaism and fellow mamzerim, and their descendants are also mamzerim.

Despite the social challenges that a mamzer faces, he is recognized as a full member of the Jewish
nation and able to achieve spiritual greatness. “A mamzer who is a Torah scholar,” say the sages,
“precedes an ignorant High Priest.”

Above all, in Judaism a person is judged not by the circumstances into which she or he is born but
by what that person accomplishes in life.

The mamzer did nothing wrong. Although confined and even isolated, there must be a concentrated
kernel of positivity, goodness so strong that it is couched in suffering. (We’ll get to that later.)

What Does Mamzer Mean?

The Hebrew word mamzer (‫ )ממזר‬appears once in the Torah: “A mamzer shall not enter the
assembly of the L-rd; even the tenth generation shall not enter the assembly of the L-rd.”1

The final two letters of this word, ‫זר‬, mean “stranger” or “outsider.” The same word appears again
in the Book of Zechariah: “And the mamzer shall dwell in Ashdod, and I will cut off the pride of
the Philistines.”2

In this case, the commentator Rashi explains that the mamzer refers to the Jewish people who were
strangers (and archenemies) of the Philistines, who had traditionally called Ashdod home.

The Holy Mamzer

But there may be a deeper connection.

Scripture tells us how the Philistines had captured the Holy Ark, taken it to Ashdod and placed it
in the temple of their idol. Soon enough the idol lay broken on the floor and the Philistines began
to suffer terrible ailments.3

27
What does this have to do with the mamzer?

In heaven, says the (Kabbalah) Book of Zohar,4 there stands a great scale full of souls. When things
are good in the world, the scale tips to the side of goodness. But what happens when things are
less than optimal, and evil dominates? Then the souls in the scale are cast to the side of evil.

But these are holy souls, and their powerful radiance is harmful to the evil side, just like the Holy
Ark was harmful to the Philistines and their idols.

So what happens to these special, captured souls? They become righteous gentiles and Jewish
Torah scholars who are mamzerim, and these individuals rise even above the High Priest.

The Tzemach Tzedek of Lubavitch5 points out that the word mamzer has the numerical value of
288,6 the number of mystical sparks of holiness that have been scattered in our world. When all
these sparks will be elevated to their holy source, the world will be perfect and G-d’s original
purpose for creation will have been achieved. Every human being has some sparks (or sub-sparks)
to lift up. Apparently, the hardiest souls are expected to do the heavy lifting, affecting those sparks
beyond the reach of all others.

Thus, the mamzer who rises above his circumstances and studies Torah is chosen from the holiest
of souls and placed in the most difficult of circumstances—in order to accomplish the greatest
mission of all—to rise above (and uplift) some of the most daunting spiritual and circumstantial
limitations imaginable.

28
 Mamzerim: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Michal Schechter writes:14

In 1912, Shai Agnon, the famous Israeli Nobel laureate in literature, wrote his first short novel
“And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight”. In this novella, Agnon writes of a man known as
Menashe, who becomes reduced to poverty after his livelihood is taken away from him. Facing no
other choice, he leaves his beloved wife for some time so that he may travel to other towns and
beg for money. In his absence, he is mistakenly proclaimed dead, and his wife, believing that she
is a widow, remarries another man. Soon after, Menashe returns unrecognized to his hometown,
dejected from his failed attempt at trying to make money through begging. To his great shock, he
finds out that not only has his wife remarried, but that she has also had a child with her new
husband. Filled with grief, Menashe realizes that if he reveals his true identity, not only will his
wife be accused of adultery (unintentional as it was on her part), but that her child will have the
status of a mamzer, as his wife was still married to Menashe when the child was conceived through
another man. Rather than ruin his wife’s happiness and make this child’s mamzer status known,
Menashe goes to the town’s graveyard and eventually dies there as an unknown beggar.[i]

Although in popular parlance the word mamzer is thought of derogatively as an “illegitimate

child”, its halakhic meaning refers to the circumstances surrounding the mamzer child when he is
born. A child may become a mamzer if he is born from a union between a married woman and a

14
https://www.kolhamevaser.com/2014/07/mamzerim-dont-ask-dont-tell/

29
man who is not her husband, or if he is born of a forbidden union which may be punishable
by karet. The Mishna relates the following:

In a case of a woman who cannot have kiddushin with a specific man, but she may
have kiddushin with other men, the offspring is a mamzer. And which case is this? When a
person cohabits with any of the forbidden relations in the Torah [ii].

If a man and a woman who cannot have a valid marriage under Jewish law have a sexual
relationship and the woman gives birth to a child due to their encounter, this child is classified as
a mamzer.[iii]

The Torah commands us that a mamzer “shall not enter into the assembly of God; even to the tenth
generation shall none of his enter into the assembly of God”.[iv] Although the mamzer is forbidden
from marrying someone who is born a Jew, he is permitted to marry a convert[v] or a
fellow mamzer.[vi] For all intents and purposes, a mamzer is a full-fledged Jew. He may be given
an aliyah during the reading of the Torah,[vii] and he may even inherit his father’s estate upon his
father’s death.[viii] The famous Mishnah in Horayot writes that: “A mamzer who is a scholar
takes precedence over a Kohen gadol who is an ignoramus”.[ix] However, a mamzer is prohibited
from marrying into the “assembly of God”. Although a mamzer is expected to live a Torah
lifestyle, he is excluded from the Jewish community in a way that makes him into a second-class
citizen.

Our sages have attempted to explain the reasoning behind the mamzer law. They considered the
possibility that mamzerut was instituted in order to act as a deterrent for the adults who were
willing to violate severe prohibitions and engage in illicit sexual relationships. In Tractate
Yevamot, R. Akiva argues that the mamzer status should apply to any child born of a prohibited
union which would result in the participants receiving lashes (in rare scenarios) or kritut as a
punishment. However, the sages, represented by R. Yehoshua, declared that a child could only be
labeled as a mamzer if the parents’ forbidden relationship would result in their liability for the
more severe punishment of kritut. Since the punishment of the mamzer status is linked to the
severity of the sexual prohibition, it is possible that the rabbis believed that the mamzer law was
instituted to uphold the sanctity of the family in Judaism and the value of fidelity in general.[x]

The Sefer Hachinuch further states that the mamzer law was not only an act of protection, but also
an act of magnanimity from God to His people:

30
At the root of the precept [of mamzerut] lies the reason that the engendering of a mamzer is very
evil, occurring in uncleanliness, abominable thought, and sinful counsel. And there is no doubt
that the nature of the father is hidden (latent) in the son. Therefore, in His kindness, the Eternal
Lord removed the progeny of holiness from him, even as He separated us from every evil
thing”.[xi]

The Sefer Hachinuch claims that by making mamzerim unable to marry into the “assembly of
God”, God is compassionately saving the Jewish nation from these dangerous mamzerim and
preventing his people from becoming exposed to such impurity and evil.

In the Talmud, Rav Huna is also recorded as stating that a mamzer “does not live [long enough to
have children].” Rabbi Zeira clarifies this statement and says that while a publically
known mamzer lives, an unknown mamzer does not live. Rashi comments on this exchange and
writes that God does not allow an unknown mamzer to stay alive, in the event that the mamzer will
marry a regular Jew. However, in the case of a publicly known mamzer, there is no concern of a
regular Jew accidentally intermarrying with the mamzer. In exchange for making his status known
to the congregation, the life of a mamzer is spared. The Gemara continues the discussion
on mamzerim and relates that there was once an unknown mamzer who lived in the neighborhood
of Rabbi Ami. Rabbi Ami publicly announced that this person was a mamzer, and
the mamzer wept. But Rabbi Ami said to him, “I have given your life!”.[xii] Rabbi Ami believed
that he had done a great kindness to this mamzer. Aside from protecting the Jewish community
from a great danger, R. Ami assumed that he had also enabled the mamzer to live.

Although these rabbis believed that for the benefit of not only the mamzer but also for the Jewish
community a mamzer’s status should be made public, the majority of our Sages were actually
willing to bend over backwards in order to refrain from declaring a child to be a mamzer. In a
revolutionary move, R. Yose once declared that in the messianic era, all mamzerim will be made
pure and will be allowed to marry into the “congregation of God”.[xiii] In a reference to R. Yose’s
statement, Rabbi Yitzhak said: “The Holy One, blessed be He, acted charitably with Israel, for a
family that became assimilated has become assimilated”.[xiv]

Rav Chaim Navon, a community rabbi in Modi’in and teacher at Migdal Oz, explains the
tremendous halakhic significance and innovation contained with Rav Yitzchak’s statement and
writes the following:

31
It can be inferred that R. Yitzchak believed that one should not take it upon himself to clarify who
is pure and who is impure; rather, we should leave people alone, and in the messianic era everyone
who is impure will be made pure. On the basis of this ruling, R. Moshe Isserles writes in his notes
on the Shulkhan Arukh that if someone becomes aware of a person’s impurity which would
disqualify him from the ability to marry all Jews, he is not permitted to disclose it to
others.[xvi] Anyone not publicly known to be a mamzer is assumed not to be one.

In the case of a woman whose husband went overseas and gave birth 12 months after his date of
departure, the rabbis judged that the woman’s husband was the biological father, and that the child
was fit to marry a regular Jew. Our sages insisted that it was possible for a baby to linger in the
womb 3 months after it finished developing. Thus, they established that if a woman gave birth to
a child within 12 months of cohabitation with her husband, the child’s father was presumed to be
her husband.[xvii] The rabbis additionally ruled that since most of a married woman’s acts of
cohabitation are assumed to be with her husband, the children of a known adulterous woman are
not mamzerim.[xviii] In fact, our sages even went so far as to declare that the parents themselves
should not be believed regarding the mamzer status of their child. That is, if the parents explicitly
state that their child is a mamzer, in the great majority of cases their testimony is rendered invalid
under Jewish law.[xix]

This willingness to turn a blind eye to blatant truths is not only astounding but also unprecedented.
It is likely that our sages were greatly disturbed at the thought of punishing a child for the deeds
of his parents. The mamzer law seems to contradict a basic value in Judaism. The Torah states that,
“The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for
the fathers; every man shall be put to death for his own sin”.[xx] Despite this teaching, the law
of mamzerut punishes a child for a sin which he was not responsible for, for which he had no
control over, and for which his parents committed. Due to a fault of his parents, their innocent
child must pay a terrible price. Chazal was well aware of this disparity, and with much difficulty
tried to grapple with and come to terms with the Torah law. Behind the legal disputes present in
our Jewish texts is a great moral debate. When it came to understanding God’s will, our sages were
motivated by their own ethical considerations and limited the applicability of the mamzer law in
order preserve the marriageability of potential mamzerim. Although the rabbis did not nullify the

32
laws of mamzerut that are mentioned explicitly in the Torah, they did their best to limit their
interpretation and decrease the number of mamzerim.

The issue of mamzerut has become especially applicable in modern times when civil marriage and
divorce are easily accessible. It is possible for a married woman to become divorced under civil
law and then remarry under civil law without obtaining a get from her first husband. Any children
born to her from her second marriage would be considered mamzerim, as she conceived these
children with a different man while she was still halakhically married to her first husband. Cases
like these are becoming more commonplace and have caused much strife in the Jewish world in
regard to the most optimal way to deal with such serious and difficult situations. The Reform
community views the mamzerut law as archaic and does not condone it. The Conservative
movement prohibits its rabbis from accepting any evidence of mamzerut, thereby rendering
the mamzer law as irrelevant. The Orthodox community will not disregard what is so blatantly
stated in the Torah, yet many view the mamzer law as a moral quandary.

While Orthodoxy still upholds the concept of mamzerut, Orthodox rabbinic figures will generally
follow in the steps of our Sages and go to great lengths to avoid labeling someone a mamzer. In
cases where the woman only obtained a civil divorce and then gave birth to children with her new
partner, the rabbis will often try to prove that the first marriage was never valid under Jewish law,
even when the evidence overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.[xxi] Maimonides once wrote that,
“the judgments of the Torah are not meant to bring vengeance into the world, but are intended to
secure compassion, kindness, and peace in the world”.[xxii] For many rabbis, a deep sense of
morality has guided them through the halakhic development of the mamzer law. Their actions have
helped enable these children to marry regular Jews, and due to our rabbis’ efforts many have been
saved from living a life of social exclusion and untold human suffering.

[i] S. Y. Agnon, “And the Crooked Shall be made Straight”.

[ii] Kiddushin 3:12

[iii] I would like to clarify for the readers that if a man is intimate with his wife while she is in nidda, a child produced from such
a union would not have the status of a mamzer. Although this union is punishable by karet, kiddushin will still work between a
man and a woman who is in nidda. Our sages limited the law of mamzerut and only applied it to cases where the kiddushin
between the man and the woman could not take effect (Yevamot 49b).

[iv] Deuteronomy 23:3

33
[v] Maimonides, Issurei Bi’ah 15:7

[vi] Maimonides, Issurei Bi’ah 15:33

[vii] Horayot 3:8

[viii] Yevamot 22b

[ix] Horayot 3:8

[x] Yevamot 49a

[xi] Sefer hachinuch 560

[xii] Yevamot 78b

[xiii] Kiddushin 72b

[xiv] Kiddushin 71a

[xv] Chaim Navon, “Philosophy of Halakha: Halakha and Morality”, The Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit Midrash, available at:
www.vbm-torah.org.

[xvi] Shulhan Arukh, Even HaEzer 2:15

[xvii] Yevamot 80b

[xviii] Sota 27a

[xix] Kiddushin 78b

[xx] Deuteronomy 24:16

[xxi] Responsa Yabia Omer, Chelek 7, Even HaEzer (siman 6:1)

[xxii] Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Shabbat, 2:3

34
The Attitude toward Mamzerim in Jewish Society in Late Antiquity

Meir Bar-Ilan writes:15

15
Jewish History, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2000), pp. 125-170

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REFERENCES:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54694fa6e4b0eaec4530f99d/t/573cbd9b2eeb812e332517ac/1463598506794/The+Attitude+
toward+Mamzerim+in+Jewish+Society+in+Late+Antiquity+2000.pdf

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 The Mamzer
Jeremy Solomon writes:16

On our daf there is a discussion about whether a mamzer may perform the mitzvah of yibbum:

WHO IS A MAZER?

16
http://www.talmudology.com/

52
A mamzer is a child born of a certain union that is forbidden in the Torah. Examples would be a
child born from an adulterous relationship (where the woman is married to another person) or an
incestuous one. A mamzer is not a child born out of wedlock, and who was once known as a
bastard. The Torah prohibits a mamzer from entering into marriage with an ordinary Jew:

According to Rabbi Abahu in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Kiddushin 3:12) the word mamzer comes
from the Hebrew ‫ מום זר‬- mum zar - “a strange defect.” It is on the basis of this etymology that
many have tried to find defects in the anatomy or the personality of a mamzer. Today on
Talmudology we will examine rabbinic attitudes towards the mamzer.

THE MAMZER IS INFERTILE, AND MORE LIKELY TO DIE

EARLY

According to the famous medieval scholar Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (c. 1269 - c. 1343), who was
also known as the Ba’al Haturim, a mamzer is infertile:

In a variation on this theme, the medieval Sefer Hasidim wrote that a mamzer can indeed
reproduce, but his or her children will be infertile:

Both of these assertions are at odds with the Torah itself, in which the verse stated that no
descendants of the mamzer were to be admitted into the congregation, which surely implies that a
mamzer can indeed reproduce. And while I know of no clinical study looking at the fertility of the
children of prohibited unions, there is, prima facie, no reason whatsoever to believe that children
born, say, of an adulterous relationship, are infertile.

53
Of course, this is not true of children born of incestuous unions. In these cases, there is indeed a
higher likelihood of all manner of genetic problems, of which infertility may be one expression. A
paper published in 1979 titled A Study of Children of Incestuous Mating noted that in a group of
161 children from incestuous mating, prenatal, neonatal and infant mortality was higher than
among half-siblings who were offspring of unrelated parents, and this group also had a higher rate
of congenital malformations. Thus, the observation of Rav Huna in the Talmud Yerushalmi
(‫ א‬,‫ )קידושין ד‬that “a mamzer does not live for more than thirty days” (‫)ֵאין ַמְמֵזר ַחיי יוֵֹתר ִמְשּׁ•ִשׁים יוֹם‬
might actually have some factual basis, at least for a subset of mamzerim.

Congenital malformations and other abnormalities.

From E. Seemanova. A study of children of incestuous mating. Human Heredity 1971: 21:
108-128.

O N T H E C H A R A C T E R I ST I C S O F A M A M Z E R

Some rabbis believed that the mamzer was endowed with certain talents, while others wrote that
he (or she) was physically different to other people. According Abba Shaul in the Talmud
Yerushalmi (Kiddushin 4:11), “most mamzerim are intelligent - ‫רוֹב ַמְמֵזי ִרין ִפְּקִחין‬. (Abba Shaul may
also have been behind the famous aphorism that “the best physicians should go to hell”, but we

54
have dealt with that elsewhere.) Still, Abba Shaul’s sweeping statement was not seen as a
compliment. Here is the standard commentary on the Yerushalmi, called Korban Ha’edah. It was
written by the German rabbi David ben Naphtali Frankel (~1704-1762):

The other standard commentary on the Yerushalmi, Moshe Margolies’ Pnei Moshe,
makes exactly the same point:

So a better translation of the original Yerushalmi, according to these two commentaries, would be:
“Most mamzerim are crafty, and therefore they should not be trusted.” It was this belief that led
the authors of the early medieval Hebrew work Toldot Yeshu - “A History of Jesus,” to claim that
Jesus was himself a mamzer, because he had acted in a brazen manner in front of the Sanhedrin.

A similar observation is made in the minor tractate Kallah:

Given the long tradition of ascribing personality characteristics to the mamzer, it is not surprising
that some went one step further and claimed that the mamzer has certain specific physical
characteristics. Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Abraham Hacohen, of Smyrna (~1650-1729) was a
mystic who produced over thirty books.

Like many of his time, Rabbi Elijah was a strong believer in palm reading, the belief that lines on
the palm reflect the personality and future fate of a person. He also believed in a version of
phrenology, in which bumps on the skull indicate a person’s intelligence and other qualities. In his
work Midrash Talpiot, which was a collection of rabbinic sayings mixed with his own
observations, Rabbi Elijah wrote that “the shape of the ear will reflect if there is any degree of
mamzerut” - “‫באזן ניכר מי שיש בו צד ממזרות‬.” Alas, the rabbi did not give any more details, fearing
that they might be misused.

55
T H E M A M Z E R C A N N O T E N T E R J E R U SA L E M

Avot de’Rabbi Natan is companion text to the Mishnaic Pirkei Avot and is usually printed along
with the minor tractates of the Talmud. It was composed sometime in the era of the Gaonim,
between 650-900 CE. In its eighth chapter we read the following:

56
MI SHEBERACH FOR A MAMZER

In one of his volumes of responsa, Rabbi Chezkiah Fivel Plaut (1818-1894) was asked whether it
was permissible to call a mamzer up to the Torah. Rabbi Plaut, who was a student of the Chatam
Sofer, concluded that it is indeed permitted, but was not certain that it was permitted to say the
general prayer for the well-being of the person called to the Torah, known as the Mi Sheberach
(‫)מי שברך‬. “I am uncertain whether to say the Mi Sheberach, because the focus of this blessing is
on his children, and God forbid that there would be more mamzerim among the Jewish people.”

TATTOOING THE FOREHEAD OF A MAMZER WITH A

WARNING

Rabbi Yishmael Hacohen (1723-1811) came from a distinguished rabbinic family and took over
the mantle of leadership in the Italian city of Modena from his older brother who died in 1781. In
1881 he was asked by Rabbi Avraham Yona of Venice whether it was permitted to tattoo the
forehead of a mamzer with the word “mamzer,” which would serve as a warning sign not to allow
this person to marry into the Jewish community. The halakhic concerns revolve around the
question of tattooing, and not, as we might think today, as to whether this was a reasonable thing
to do.

57
Rabbi Yona was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea, but Rabbi Yishmael was, at least initially,
not sure. But at the end of his lengthy responsa he concluded that it was indeed permitted, since
although tattooing was forbidden, if it was performed by a Gentile it was allowed in this case, for
it prevented “a greater transgression.” This opinion is cited in ‫ סק’א‬,‫דרכי תשובה יורה דעה קפ‬.

MODERN EFFORTS TO IGNORE MAMZERUT

There are certain categorical rulings in the Torah that the rabbis did their best to ignore. The Torah
demand “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Exodus 21:23–27), but the rabbis ignored this and
interpreted the verse as requiring monetary compensation (Bava Kamma 83b–84a). The Torah
demanded that loans be forgiven every seven years during the shmitta year (Deuteronomy 15:1–
6), but the rabbis found this law to be unworkable. So Hillel Hazaken created the prozbul which
protected the investment of the lenders. Despite the severity of the prohibition of mamzer, and not
withstanding some of the later rabbinic statements that we have seen, talmudic and contemporary
rabbis were often very sympathetic to the plight of the mamzer and went to extreme legal lengths
to remove the label. So, for example, later in this tractate (Yevamot 80b) Rava ruled that a child
born twelve months after a married woman’s husband left her and travelled abroad was not a
mamzer. Perhaps, he argued, the pregnancy had just been unusually long.

58
Perhaps the best example recent example of this effort comes from the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
(1920-2013) who was the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973-1983. He was asked about the
case of a young woman who believed that she was a mamzeret. Her mother had been married by a
haredi rabbi to a man who subsequently left her, converted to Christianity, married another
woman, and refused to give his first a Jewish divorce. This wife later obtained a civil (but not a
Jewish) divorce, remarried civilly and had the daughter. This daughter was indisputably the result
the union of a woman who is married (under Jewish law) and a man who was not her husband, that
making her children mamzerim.

But Rabbi Yosef found a way to demonstrate that the daughter was not technically a mamzeret,
although he never explicitly stated any discomfort with the notion of mamzer. In his work Yabiah
Omer (volume 7, Even Ha’ezer 6) he refused to allow any testimony from the mother, since she
was an interested party. He also refused to allow any testimony from the haredi rabbi who
performed the marriage, since he was but a single witness, and two witnesses are required to
establish proof in Jewish law. He continued along this vein until he concluded that there was
enough uncertainty in the case to remove the label of mamzerut from the daughter and allow her
to marry into the Jewish people.

The rabbinic attitude towards mamzerut demonstrates that there really has never been a single
rabbinic attitude towards the problem. Some made the life of the mamzer extraordinarily difficult,
and even suggested that the mamzer had physical or character flaws. One even suggested that the
mamzer be tattooed as a warning to others. But others went to great efforts to remove the need to
categorize any person as a mamzer. Let’s end with a reminder that in classic Jewish teaching, the
mamzer can rise to great religious heights, regardless of the actions of his or her parents.

59
 Contempt for God’s Word?

GORDON TUCKER writes:17

Numbers chapter 15, having set forth instructions for how to atone for unintentional sins, next
turns its attention to deliberate transgressions (30–31):

17
https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/shelah-lekha-haftarah/

60
In the biblical context, “has shown contempt for the word of the Lord” clearly means intentionally
and brazenly violating one of God’s commands. But rather typically, the rabbinic tradition
attributes several different meanings to the phrase (BT Sanhedrin 99a). Here are among the
alternatives offered for what constitutes “contempt for God’s word”:

• Saying “There is no torah [i.e. instruction] from Heaven”

• Epicureanism [for the Rabbis, one who denies divine providence]

• One who exposes [presumably, to public derision] certain facets of the Torah

• [Rabbi Meir’s view]: One who studies Torah but does not teach it to others

• [Rabbi Nehorai’s view]: One who has the time and ability to delve into Torah study but does
not do so

• [Rabbi Ishmael’s view]: One who engages in idolatry

But the definition of “contempt for God’s word” that is most far-reaching, and thus most raises the
eyebrows, is this:

This expresses a stunningly maximalist and far-reaching point of view that, although it is brought
here as “another teaching,” became all too mainstream in Jewish thought through the ages, to our
own day. The idea is this: What makes inferences and deductions valid is not that they are the
products of sound human reasoning, but rather because they have been transmitted to us by
authoritative texts or teachers. This is a form of what is called fideism, the doctrine that faith is far
more the guarantor of ultimate truth than is human reason.

61
A particularly crisp example of this is found in a “confession” by the late Rabbi Aharon
Lichtenstein, who was the head of the Har Etzion Yeshivah in Gush Etzion. In it, he recalls how
in his teenage years certain biblical passages troubled him greatly because they seemed so clearly
unethical. He specifically mentions the command to annihilate every last Amalekite
indiscriminately. But then he remembered something about the venerated Rabbi Chaim of Brisk.
It was said that women who gave birth to unwanted children knew that they could leave those
children at night on the doorstep of Reb Chaim’s house, and that they would be taken in and cared
for. Lichtenstein wrote:

Build faith, and trust in it, rather than in the sensitivity born of one’s reasoning.

But in sharp contrast to this, consider a remarkable contemporary midrash that takes issue with the
rabbinic interpretation of a biblical law that in its own way sacrifices children on the altar of
religious piety and fealty.

It is the law of mamzerut, a biblical injunction that, according to rabbinic understanding,

stigmatizes for life as ineligible for marriage a child whose conception was the result of a severe
sexual infraction by its parents.

What makes this midrash especially remarkable is that it was written by an Orthodox woman,
Rivkah Lubitch, who has standing in rabbinic courts in Israel to advocate for women’s rights.[2]

62
Noteworthy here is that by saying that the biblical verse, or even just the rabbinic interpretation of
it “never entered God’s mind,” the condemnation of the “alternative teaching” must inexorably
follow it is contempt for God’s word!

Perhaps the strongest contrast, however, to the “alternative teaching” and to Lichtenstein’s fideism
appears in a brief story that Martin Buber talked about a conversation he had with a deeply
observant Jew. They were discussing the story of the prophet Samuel telling King Saul that he has
lost God’s favor for not having completely annihilated Amalek. Buber said that he was unable to
accept this as a message from God. His interlocutor challenged him with a fiery glance and said,
“What do you believe then?” And Buber said, “I believe that Samuel has misunderstood God.”
And then the story continues in this perhaps unexpected way:

“Autobiographical Fragments,” The Philosophy of Martin Buber

Portrayed here is a man who was tortured by two beliefs: (i) that it was his religious duty to believe
that everything in scripture was the word of God, and (ii) that Saul received an unfair punishment
for having shown mercy and not cruelty. But then came Buber’s suggestion that one did not have
to believe that God commanded cruelty; instead, consider that we humans can misunderstand God.

63
That explains why the strain in the face of Buber’s acquaintance became relaxed and at ease. God
was “off the hook” and did not have to be thought of as making unethical demands.

One can follow the “alternative teaching” and ascribe every passage—even those that offend our
moral intuitions—to the divine will, or we can recognize that fallible humans writing of God may
mistake the intentions of the God of goodness and mercy. And so, the stark question poses
itself: Which of these is truly to invite contempt for God’s word?

[1] An inference that starts with different occurrences of the same word, and then transfers contextual details from one occurrence
to another. The standard rabbinic view reflected here is that these all go back to Sinai and cannot be initiated on one’s own authority.

[2] Lubitch is the daughter of Professor Charles Liebman z”l, a Visiting Professor at JTS. The midrash was published in Dirshuni,
Vol 2 (Yediot, 2018)

[3] Tanot is the imagined spirit of Jephthah’s daughter, who lost her life because of her father’s blind insistence on fulfilling a rash
and ill-conceived vow.

[4] In Jeremiah 19:5, God uses these exact words to denounce religious piety that entails the sacrificing of children.

Great Controversy in Israeli Batei Din - The Langer Case

Benzion Rotblat writes:18

18
https://www.koltorah.org/halachah/great-controversy-in-israeli-batei-din-the-langer-case-by-benzion-rotblat-21?rq=mamzer

64
Introduction

One of the most influential and controversial laws in Israel’s history is the “Status Quo”
agreement at the foundation of the state. In order to convince the Orthodox parties to agree to
join the newly formed state, religious Jews were given four promises. They were promised that
Shabbat would be the day of rest of the newly formed state. They were promised Kosher food in
government kitchens. They were given autonomy over their own schools. And perhaps most
controversially, the government ceded that marriage and divorce would be run according to
Halachah. This part of the agreement was put to the test during one of the most controversial
cases in the history of the State of Israel and the case’s far-reaching aftermath.

The Case

Chava Ginsburg was born in a small town in Poland in the early 1920s. At around 14 years old,
she met and eloped with a Polish Christian man, who, after converting, took the name Avraham
Borokovsky. After living for a few months in Poland, the Borokovskys made Aliyah along with
Chava’s parents sometime in the 1930’s.

Soon after they arrived in Israel, Chava and Avrohom’s marriage fell apart and they separated
without obtaining a Get. This became problematic when Chava did not disclose this fact to the
Beit Din that issued a license for her to marry her second husband, Otto Langer, in 1944. Otto
and Chava went on to have two children, Chanoch and Miriam. In 1951, Avraham Borokovsky
and Chava Langer went to the Tel Aviv Beit Din in order to execute a Get before Borokovsky’s
second wedding. The Beit Din, while investigating the facts of the case, discovered Chava’s
second marriage, and subsequently banned Otto and Chava from living together. When Chava
seeked to remarry, the status of her children became known, and they were declared Mamzerim
by the Beit Din. This status was upheld until 1966, when Chanoch Langer, then a soldier in the
IDF, approached Beit Din to get married. When the Beit Din ruled he was a Mamzer, he brought
the case to the Supreme Rabbinical Court of Appeals. He argued that Avraham Borokovsky did
not undergo a valid conversion and that he was still a practicing Christian. Borokovky’s rabbi,
however, testified he was a regular attendee in Shul on Shabbat, and Borokovsky was able to
answer some basic questions about Yahadut while unable to answer some others. After multiple
hearings, the high Beit Din, composed of leading Torah authorities Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv,
Rav Sha'ul Israeli and Rav Ovadiah Yosef concurred that the Langer children were,
unfortunately, Mamzerim, based on the fact that Avraham Borokovsky was assumed to have had
a Kosher Geirut since he had been witnessed performing Mitzvot. [1]

Rav Shlomo Goren’s Controversial Ruling

This ruling created tremendous controversy in the Israeli public. Government figures such as
Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan were upset at the ruling that banned Chanoch Langer, an IDF
soldier who represented what they saw as the ideal young citizen of the state, from marrying
through the state. The Israeli government was hopeful that the 1972 election for the Chief
Rabbinate, between the incumbent Rav Isser Yehuda Unterman, and Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who

65
had previously ruled leniently on Geirut questions, [2] would bring change to the status of the
Langer children. [3]

Upon election, Rav Goren approached his Sephardic counterpart Rav Ovadiah Yosef to join a
Beit Din to review the Langer case. Rav Ovadiah, who had sat on the original hearing, refused
to hear the case again as he felt the matter had been resolved. As a result, Rav Goren took matters
into his own hand, and formed a Beit Din that reversed the ruling of the past Batei Din who had
ruled on the case. However, in order to maintain confidentiality, Rav Goren did not disclose the
fellow members of his Beit Din.

Rav J. David Bleich [4] summarized Rav Goren’s arguments in his article on the case. Some of
Rav Goren’s arguments that Rav Bleich quoted include:

1) There exists no admissible evidence attesting to Avraham Borokovsky's conversion to

Judaism.

2) If he did convert, the conversion was nullified since Borokovsky continued to live as a
practicing Christian. Rav Goren cites the Tzofnat Paneach, who interpreted Rambam as
maintaining that subsequent idolatry on the part of a convert is tantamount to proof that the
original conversion was insincere and hence invalid.

3) There is no evidence that they were married in accordance with the law of Israel.

4) The conversion of Avraham Borokovsky, if it indeed did take place, was the result of coercion
on the part of Chava Ginsburg's father and hence is null and void.

Reaction to Rav Goren’s Controversial Ruling

Many Poskim, including Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, [5] agreed that Rav Goren seemed to
make reasonable Halachic arguments that the Langers should not be Mamzerim, but disapproved
of the process by which he arrived at his decision. Indeed, Rav Goren experienced severe
backlash regarding the secrecy and perceived abuse of power he displayed. [6]

Rav Goren later faced severe criticism in light of his ruling. Rav Elyashiv, who had ruled in the
original case, left the Rabbinate Beit Din system after Rav Goren’s decision, as he felt that his
ruling violated Halachic norms. A group of top tier Rabbanim including Rav Shlomo Zalman
Auerbach, Rav Yechezkel Abramsky, Rav Yaakov Kanievsky, Rav Eliezer Menachem Man
Shach and Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz condemned the decision as consisting of “lies and deception”
and that the Psak “endangers the survival of the nation.” [7] The Lubavitcher Rebbe also called
for Rabbi Goren’s resignation. [8]

Conclusion

66
The Langer case left a lasting impact on the state of Israel. The case created friction between the
segments of the Torah world who admired Rav Goren (especially due to his excellent work as
the Chief Rabbi of Tzahal), and those who doubted his competency to make Halachic decisions.
The Rabbinate’s loss of Rav Elyashiv also diminished the prestige of the Rabbinate’s Beit Din
system. The largest impact, arguably, is the legacy of Rav Shlomo Goren, who is viewed as a
controversial figure in parts of the Torah world.

[1] Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Deah 268:10

[2] Helen Zeidman case- A POLITICAL CRISIS IN ISRAEL AVERTED - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[3] Next Chief Rabbi a Vital Issue for Israel - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[4] Contemporary Halakhic Problems Volume I.

[5] As reported by Rabbi Chaim Jachter.

[6] For example, Jerusalem’s Chief Rabbi Rav Bezalel Zolty composed a strong critique of Rabbi Goren’s approach.

[7] "‫ שנה‬40 • ‫ | המערכה הראשונה" • מאבק גדולי ישראל נגד הרה"ר לישראל שלמה גורן‬JDN - ‫חדשות‬

[8] https://agudathisrael.org/wp-content/uploads/1972/12/JO1972-V8-N09.compressed.pdf

67
 Mamzerut

Elie Kaplan Spitz writes:19

19
https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/19912000/conservjud._mamzerut-
_spitz_2018.pdf

68
69
70
71
72
73
74
Silberg’s Civil Marriage Solution

75
76
77
What Is A Mamzer?

78
 Jewish children born from forbidden sexual
relations pose ethical and communal challenges20

A mamzer (plural: mamzerim) is a child born of a forbidden sexual union. Although commonly
translated as “bastard,” the term is defined in rabbinic literature as a child born of incest or adultery.
Traditional Jewish law prohibits a mamzer from marrying into the Jewish community, a restriction
that poses a significant ethical quandary, since the mamzer is effectively punished for a crime they
didn’t commit. Both the Reform and Conservative movements have dispensed with the problem,
but it remains an issue in the Orthodox world.

The source of the mamzer prohibition is biblical. Deuteronomy 23:3 states the following: “No
one misbegotten shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord; none of his descendants, even
in the tenth generation, shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord.”

The biblical reference is vague and leaves the particulars undefined. The rabbis brought more
precision to the matter. According to the Mishnah, a mamzer is the offspring of any prohibited
sexual union that is punished by death or karet, a biblical penalty known as “excision,” or being
cut off from the Jewish people. A mamzer is thus anyone born to an incestuous union or to a
woman legally married to a man other than the father. The second part of the biblical prohibition
is understood by the rabbis to bar only marriage between a mamzer and a Jew, though marriages
are permitted between a mamzer and a convert or another mamzer. Some authorities have
historically prescribed more extensive shunning of the mamzer than what rabbinical law required.

The ethical challenges posed by these laws are considerable — most significantly that it punishes
children for the sins of their parents. Moreover, in the modern era, the consequences of enforcing
the ban on mamzerim have grown considerably as the ranks of individuals who might technically
qualify as a mamzer under traditional understandings of Jewish law have swelled. Anyone who
divorced and remarried without following the traditional requirements of Jewish law would
technically give birth to a mamzer. The offspring of such a person would also be considered
mamzerim. The large-scale immigration to Israel of groups of Jews whose practice of Judaism had
been severely curtailed for generations further exacerbated the challenge.

In 2000, the Conservative movement’s Jewish law authorities addressed the problem by declining
to accept evidence that would establish someone as a mamzer, thus effectively rendering the laws
of mamzer inoperable while declining to formally abrogate them. Reform Judaism has abandoned
the concept entirely.

In Orthodox Judaism, mamzer remains an operative category, and is closely related to the problem
of the agunah — a so-called chained wife whose husband refuses to grant her a religious writ of
divorce. Were such a woman to have a child with another man while still religiously married to
her former husband, the child would be considered a mamzer. Some Orthodox rabbis will go to
great lengths to avoid establishing someone as a mamzer — say by finding grounds to religiously
invalidate the earlier marriage so that the subsequent child-producing union is no longer considered

20
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-mamzer-problem/

79
adulterous. But no universally accepted solution has yet been offered. The issue tends to be
particularly problematic in Israel, where the Orthodox rabbinate controls marriage and will not
authorize a union between a Jew and someone deemed a mamzer.

What do mamzerim have to face in Israel?

The mamzer status not only prevents people from marrying in Israel but puts
children at serious risk of abuse. Meet the organization working to change this

EVE YOUNG writes:21

In honor of this week's Torah portion of Ki Tetze, which talks about mamzerim (people born as
the result of certain forbidden relationships or incest), congregants gathered in 10 Orthodox
synagogues on Saturday and held lessons on the topic.

21
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/what-do-mamzerim-have-to-face-in-israel-677333

80
Mamzer is a status given to children born from relationships forbidden by Judaism such as incest
or a man’s relationship with the sister of his wife or ex-wife if she is alive.

Also labeled mamzerim are children born to women who are considered to be the wife of another
man – meaning this status often affects women who are refused a get (Jewish divorce document)
by their husband, as any children from another union would be labeled mamzerim. The child of
a mamzer is also considered a mamzer.

Currently, those labeled mamzerim by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate or those who are at risk of being
so labeled face numerous challenges in Israel. The most well-known limitation mamzerim face is
that they can only marry other mamzerim or converts. Lesser-known problems created by the status
have to do with who is listed as the father of a child in cases where the state believes there is
potential to label a child a mamzer.

Israeli law requires that a woman’s legal husband be listed as the father of her child even in cases
where it is clear he is not; children born within 300 days of a woman’s divorce are also registered
as the children of her ex-husband, according to the Tears of the Oppressed Forum, a think tank
that is working to find a solution to this issue and to bring this taboo topic to the forefront of
conversation to further promote a resolution.

If the woman refuses to list her ex-husband or husband as the father, the child will be listed as
fatherless.

The issue has been central to discussions on civil marriage, as Israeli law requires that its citizens
marry through their respective religious institutions. There is no civil marriage in the country.
This makes it particularly difficult for some couples to get married in a manner recognized by the
state, whether it be due to issues of documentation, missing information or simply lack of
identification with the religious system with which they are identified.

These regulations are ostensibly in place to protect children from the damaging mamzer status, but
in reality, not only do they create an oftentimes dangerous situation for children, but the laws
generally do not provide any protection, because the rabbinate will still investigate those
registering to be married, according to the forum.

These laws lead to situations in which a child’s life is controlled by someone unrelated to them,
often a person who is estranged from or has a strained relationship with their mother. This puts
them at serious risk of numerous types of abuse. A man listed as the child’s father can influence a
number of important factors, such as medical treatment and obtaining a passport for the child.
The laws also prevent a child from receiving child support or inheritance from their biological
father if he is not legally listed as the child’s father.

Mamzerut (illegitimacy) is “the most difficult moral issue of Judaism in our day,” said Tears of
the Oppressed Forum head and Rabbinical Court advocate Rivkah Lubitch.

81
Lubitch told The Jerusalem Post that because of the damage that can be caused to them by people
who know their status, mamzerim have no lobby of their own and cannot fight for their own rights.
The forum works to be a mouthpiece for them and to find a solution to the challenges they face.
The forum works in cooperation with the Center for Women's Justice. 22

Jewish Chosenness in the Contemporary World

Chosenness and the Value of a Life

22
For more information, you can contact the center at their website (http://www.cwj.org.il/en) or at cwj@cwj.org.il.

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Doni Bloomfield writes:23

At a normal Shabbat lunch this summer, with the conversation (and wine) flowing freely, the topic
turned to the question of how Jews should relate to other Jews.

For example, if one were in the ridiculous situation of having to choose to save the life of one of
two people based only on religion, should a Jew save his fellow Jew over a gentile?

The staunch conservative at the table responded immediately, “Of course you do. The Jewish
people are like a family. Family always comes first.” The table erupted into disgusted harrumphs
and hasty apologetics, dispersed with uncomfortable glances at the non-Jews at the table. However,
we should think very closely about this question.

What does the halakha (Jewish law) have to say, and what does that teach us about Judaism’s
conception of chosenness? The traditional halakha seems very clear that, all else equal, a Jew’s
life should be saved over a non-Jew’s. In fact, a mishnah in Horayot clearly lays out in what order
different strata of society should be saved: “A Priest takes precedence over a Levite, a Levite over
an Israelite, an Israelite over a [mamzer, i.e. a child of an illegitimate marriage], a [mamzer] over
a Nathin [i.e. a descendant of an ancient group of converts], a Nathin over a proselyte, and a
proselyte over an emancipated slave.”1

Non-Jews don’t even make the list. At first glance, the hierarchy involved (and the non-Jew’s
placement at the unmentioned foot of it) can be explained using a simple rule: the more
commandments one can perform, the more worthy one is to live (all else equal).2 Priests can do
more mitzvot than Levites, Levites more than Israelites, and so on. In this understanding, then,
non-Jews have less capability to perform mitzvot and so have less worthiness than those who can.
Mitzvah-doing is good in and of itself, and those who can perform them are superior to those who
cannot. There are several problems with this position, however.

The Gemara states, “Even a heathen who studies Torah is as a High Priest”—which it learns from
the verse, “Keep my statutes … which, if man do, he shall live in them”3 —for, “Priests, Levites
and Israelites are not mentioned, but men.”4 Indeed, Maimonides posits that not only do non-Jews
merit reward for the mitzvot they perform, but that they—and all people—have the ability to attain
the greatness of Moses.5

Non-Jews seem to have the same capacity as Jews to do goodness if they walk in the way of God.
How, then, do we explain the hierarchy of life saving in the aforementioned mishnah? The
Gemara’s interpretation of the Mishnah may offer an answer. The Gemara comments, “‘A Nathin
takes precedence over a proselyte’ for the [Nathin] was brought up with us in holiness and the
[proselyte] was not brought up with us in holiness.”6

Here it is not the ability to do mitzvot that matters, but the mere fact that one has done them; the
Nathin has always been a Jew performing the mitzvot, whereas the proselyte just began to do so.
Why is this important? Because mitzvot are not an end unto themselves, but work towards a
23
https://ccjs.uchicago.edu/sites/ccjs.uchicago.edu/files/Makom-1.pdf

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purpose: shaping those who follow them to become better people. Whether in actively forcing the
pursuit of justice or in building reserves of self-restraint, the commandments foster a lifestyle of
moral rectitude.

As Maimonides says, “Every one of the six hundred and thirteen precepts serves to inculcate some
truth, to remove some erroneous opinion, to establish proper relations in society, to diminish evil,
to train good manners or to warn against bad habits.”7 Thus, the Mishnah tells us to first save those
who do more mitzvot not because they can do more mitzvot but because they have done more
mitzvot.

This conception points to one way of viewing the chosenness of the Jewish people: a chosenness
not of natural ability or inherent superiority but of an acceptance of God’s moral law. The Jewish
people are chosen not because they have a special dispensation to perform mitzvot but because
they in fact do them, because they accept God’s code as a wholesale guide to every aspect of their
lives.8 Chosenness is something earned, not given freely—a moral calling, not an excuse for
ethical laziness.

1 Horayot 13a, Soncino translation with my emendations and notes in brackets. The Mishna clearly states that this only applies
when all else is equal. However, if the mamzer “was a scholar and the High Priest an ignoramus, the learned [mamzer] takes
precedence over the ignorant High Priest.”

2 This is the same reason often given to explain the more disturbing of the morning blessings, those thanking God for not having
been made a non-Jew and not having been made a woman.

3 Lev. 13:5

4 Sanhedrin 59a, Soncino translation, cited in Aharon Lichtenstein, “Jewish Philanthropy – Whiter?”Tradition, p. 197.

5 Teshuvot Harambam, ed. Y. Blau, 148 cited in Lichtenstein, “Jewish Philanthropy – Whiter?” p. 197; Hilchot Teshuva 5:3.

6 Horayot 13a, Soncino translation.

7 Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, III:31, M. Friedlander translation, cited in Yehuda Amital, Jewish Values in a
Changing World (published electronically at http://www. vbm-torah.org/values.html).

8 Or at least, the Torah conceives of them as doing this.

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 An exhibit at "Mamzerim, Labeled and Erased” at the 2017 Jerusalem
Biennale. (Courtesy of Nurit Jacobs-Yinon)

Doomed At Birth

Michele Chabin writes:24

Jerusalem – He was an acquaintance, someone Sarah* had known for years, so she didn’t worry
when she found herself alone with him one wintery day.

She discovered she was pregnant soon after he raped her. In her thirties, childless and aching to be
a mother, she decided to raise this unexpected baby on her own.

Back then Sarah, who had divorced a few years earlier in a U.S. civil court, had no idea that her
child could be considered a “mamzer” – the closest thing Judaism has to a bastard or an
untouchable – not because her child was conceived during a rape, but because, according to Jewish
law, Sarah had been married when she was raped.

A mamzer is a Jew born from an incestuous relationship or a relationship between a married Jewish
woman and a Jewish man who isn’t her husband.use of JTA.org

24
https://www.jta.org/2018/02/12/ny/doomed-at-birth

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According to Jewish law, a mamzer can only marry another mamzer or a convert. “Mamzerut” –
mamzer status – is inherited, so all descendants of a mamzer will be a mamzer, till the end of time.

Like hundreds. perhaps thousands, of other Jewish women whose husbands are unable or unwilling
to grant them a “get,” a Jewish writ of divorce, Sarah was an “agunah,” a chained woman stuck in
marital limbo. Her vindictive husband had skipped town, his whereabouts unknown.

Jewish law forbids a wife from conceiving a child with another man, even if her husband is missing
in action, physically or mentally incapacitated, a convict, held hostage, has abandoned her or
simply refuses to divorce her.

Though Sarah had no formal Jewish education, she knew that without a get she would be unable
to marry again in a Jewish ceremony. But she didn’t know that that a child conceived through a
sexual relationship forbidden by the Torah could be marginalized and stigmatized.

She was shocked when a boyfriend broke the news to her.

“I began dating a Jewishly knowledgeable guy, and he freaked out when he heard I didn’t have a
get,” Sarah recalled in a hushed telephone interview from her home in a large American city.

“He said we couldn’t get married and also that any child we would have together would be a
mamzer, just like my daughter. I had no idea what he was talking about.”

“Mamzerut is at the very core of the agunah problem, of Jewish patriarchy and the control male
rabbis maintain over Jewish women’s bodies and behavior.”
When Sarah learned about the prohibitions imposed on mamzerim and their descendants “it
sounded like something out of the Dark Ages,” she said, her voice quivering.D O N A T E

Years later, Sarah, whose daughter is in elementary school, “still finds it unbelievable that in the
21st century, ancient religious laws that give men all the power can turn my child into an outcast.”

She isn’t alone.

For the first time in Jewish history, a small number of mostly Orthodox Jewish activists are
publicly demanding that the world’s rabbis use their authority to find a comprehensive, universally
accepted solution to mamzerut, a status that, according to Susan Weiss, a women’s rights lawyer,
would likely affect “an inconceivably large number” of Jews if their family histories became
public. The issue is receiving the most attention in Israel.

“Mamzerut is at the very core of the agunah problem, of Jewish patriarchy and the control male
rabbis maintain over Jewish women’s bodies and behavior. It’s a socially constructed apparatus to
deter women from sleeping with men who aren’t their husbands,” said Weiss, who heads the
Jerusalem-based Center for Women’s Justice, an Israeli NGO that has represented several
mamzerim and their families in Israel’s religious and civil courts.

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This is especially true in Israel, Weiss said, where there is no civil marriage. The Orthodox
religious establishment — not the secular civil court system — oversees Jewish marriage, divorce
and personal status issues.

Though mamzerut has been around for more than 2,000 years, wars and migration often enabled
families to hide their status under the Talmudic principle that a mamzer who has managed to blend
into the wider Jewish community is permitted to remain “assimilated” into the community.

“This is no longer the case,” says Batya Kahana-Dror, a women’s rights lawyer and director of
Mevoi Satum, a Jerusalem agunah rights organization. “Now, in modern times, our world is very
data-driven. Things don’t get lost as easily.”

The advent of the internet, digital recordkeeping and do-it-yourself DNA testing, along with the
ever-more-stringent standards adopted by Orthodox rabbis, especially in Israel, “is making it
nearly impossible for families to safeguard their secret,” Kahana-Dror said.

Mamzer (MAHM-zer;) Plural: mamzerim (MAHM-zer-im). Lit. bastard

Mamzerut is as old as the Torah but remains shrouded in stigma, secrecy and shame.

It is so taboo that people don’t utter the word mamzer in polite company outside of Torah study.
It’s used as a curse word, roughly equivalent to bastard.

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The Torah mentions the word only twice, in passages that fail to define who a mamzer is or the
prohibitions he or she faces.

Mamzerut is as old as the Torah but remains shrouded in stigma, secrecy and shame.
Deuteronomy 23:2 states that “a mamzer shall not enter the congregation of the Lord; even to his
tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord.” Zachariah 9:6 states that “a
mamzer shall dwell in [the port city of] Ashdod and will cut off the pride of the Philistines.”

For two millennia Judaism’s most esteemed scholars interpreted and defined mamzerut and
established its strictures in books of Jewish law and subsequent responsa. According to Orthodox
tradition these opinions have the status of law and can’t be repealed. Different religious streams
have taken different approaches toward mamzerut. The Reform movement has abolished the
category entirely while the Conservative movement has adopted a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

Orthodox rabbis, in contrast, continue to apply these rules to determine paternity and who can
marry whom.

Rivka Lubitch, a rabbinic pleader who represents clients in Israel’s religious court system and also
works with the Center for Women’s Justice, says this generation’s most influential Orthodox
rabbis aren’t doing nearly enough to eradicate, or even mitigate, the tragedy of mamzerut. Instead,
Lubitch said, “they continue to wield the threat of mamzerut to pressure wives into acceding to

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their husbands’ demands to relinquish property, child support payments and the custody of their
children.”

Eager to get on with their lives and to have children not stained by mamzerut, women seeking
divorce often give in to their husbands’ demands

Divorce, Lubitch maintained, “is driven by the fear and stigma surrounding mamzerut. Rabbis
know that mothers will do almost anything to protect their children, and once there is a solution to
mamzerut the rabbis will lose much of that power.”

The Curse That Keeps On Giving

On paper, the only thing mamzerim can’t do is marry a normative Jew. Other than this, mamzerim
can be active members of the Jewish community and inherit property. But in reality, the stigma of
mamzerut is so great, even in some non-Orthodox circles, that 53 percent of Israeli women who
sought legal abortions in 2014 cited “illicit relations, from incest or extramarital affairs” as their
reason for doing so, according to the Ministry of Health.

Weiss suspects that some of these women cited illicit relations not because their unborn child could
be a mamzer but because “this is the fastest way to get approved for an abortion.”

In traditional Jewish society, where getting married and having children is both a social norm and
an obligation laid out by the Torah, the strictures placed on mamzerim “are catastrophic,” Lubitch
said.

For this reason women who don’t terminate their pregnancies, often go to extraordinary lengths to
hide their child’s status. Some put their child up for adoption while others pretend that their
husband or ex-husband is the biological father.

Israel’s 1965 Population Registry Law and 2000 Genetic Information Law both encourage this
fiction by adopting the rabbinic presumption that a child born within 300 days of a divorce is the
biological child of the ex-husband. With rare exceptions Israeli courts prohibit DNA testing for
paternity purposes because it could prove a child’s mamzer status.

Rabbi Yona Reiss, an Orthodox Torah scholar, attorney and head of the Beit Din of the Chicago
Rabbinical Council, says rabbis understand the gravity of mamzerut and therefore “try to find
grounds for leniency, according to halacha,” or Jewish law.

In cases of marital infidelity, the rabbis attempt to invalidate the marriage. This approach is easier
in the U.S., where non-Orthodox and civil marriages are an option.

“We may look at the wedding invitation, and if the wedding was held on a Saturday afternoon,
there’s a good chance it wasn’t performed according to halacha,” Rabbi Reiss said. “Was the
marriage officiant a rabbi or a justice of the peace? And if it was a rabbi, it’s possible he or the
witnesses weren’t Shabbat observant,” he noted in seeking ways to solve the problem by
invalidating the marriage.

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According to Orthodox standards, witnesses to a marriage must be Shabbat observant.

Weiss from the Center for Women’s Justice says these rabbinic presumptions and loopholes,
though perhaps originally well-intentioned and helpful in some instances, aren’t applicable in all
cases. And even when they are applicable, they leave mamzer children in a literal no man’s land.

On the one hand, she said, “when a woman’s husband realizes the child isn’t his, he refuses to
support the child, and the rabbis, knowing the truth, won’t force him to do so. This man certainly
doesn’t want this child of another man to inherit his property.”

On the other hand, the child’s biological father has no legal status whatsoever in his child’s life.

Paternal presumption is so strong that civil courts in Israel have upheld it on several occasions to
spare a child from possibly being labeled a mamzer, even when doing so has robbed the mother of
child support payments from the biological father.

Hospitals and government institutions follow the same policy.

Yifat,* an American-Israeli woman represented by the Center for Women’s Justice, hit the paternal
presumption wall when she wanted to list her child’s biological father on his birth certificate.

Seated on a bench in an isolated part of a Jerusalem park, out of earshot of others, the young mother
quietly related how, after years of begging for a get, her ex-husband agreed to grant one, but only
if the divorce took place in a private ultra-Orthodox rabbinical court and not the Chief Rabbinate.

The government-funded rabbinate has sole authority over marriage and divorce in Israel.

“I was afraid of remaining an agunah, so I reluctantly agreed,” said Yifat, an Orthodox Jew who
covers her hair with a scarf for reasons of religious modesty. “My private divorce was completely
kosher, and I eventually remarried, also in a private rabbinical court, because I knew the rabbinate
wouldn’t recognize my private get.”

The problems began in the hospital where Yifat gave birth to a baby boy, the son of her second
husband.

“The clerk who registers births saw that my first husband’s name was on my Israeli I.D. card – in
the eyes of the state I was still married to him – and began to write his name under ‘Father.’ When
I objected and gave him my second husband’s name, the clerk refused to put it on the certificate.
He said, ‘Are you telling me your husband isn’t your baby’s father?’

Ultimately the clerk wrote “unknown” on the birth certificate, what Weiss calls “a red flag” for
mamzer status.

When the rabbinate refused to recognize Yifat’s ultra-Orthodox get, the Center for Women’s
Justice petitioned the civil family court to determine her child’s paternity.

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Apparently fearful that the civil court would preempt its authority, the rabbinical court finally
recognized Yifat’s get retroactively, ensuring that her son would not be labeled a mamzer.

The Most Marginalized Group

Rivka Lubitch, a rabbinic pleader who represents clients in Israel’s religious court system and is
the country’s most outspoken advocate for mamzerim, insists that the courts, the legislature or
both must help them because they can’t advocate for themselves. “This is the mamzer’s dilemma:
The issue needs to be out in the open, but who will do it? If you or your child are the ones affected,
you keep quiet. And if you’ve somehow solved the problem, you are the last person in the world
who wants to bring this out into the open.”

Not surprisingly, Lubitch said, mamzerim are hopelessly isolated and marginalized.

“People with physical disabilities can meet other people with disabilities. If you’re homosexual
you can find a like-minded community. There is no such community of mamzerim. The rabbis
tell each one of them that their problem must be dealt with quietly, behind closed doors. News of
the problem almost never gets out and nobody knows there’s a problem. If people don’t know
there’s a problem, no one is interested in solving it.”

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If you ask a Jew whether he or she has ever met a mamzer, the answer will almost certainly be no,
Lubitch said. “This despite the fact that plenty of cases aren’t solved and many people don’t know
if their case can be solved. If they try to find out it can lead to more problems.”

Lubitch recounted the case of an adopted young man who asked Social Services to unseal his
adoption records.

“The first thing the social worker did was tell him he’s a mamzer. He feels like his life is ruined.”

Compounding the problem is the uncertainty; he has no way of knowing whether the rabbinate is
aware of his status.

“That’s not something a person would know until applying for a marriage license. Meanwhile, he
or she is filled with anxiety, wondering ‘who will marry me?’ One’s mental health is
deteriorating,” Lubitch said.

Cases like this aren’t uncommon, according to Rabbi Seth Farber, an Israeli Orthodox rabbi and
founder of ITIM, an organization that helps mamzerim and others navigate the religious
establishment’s bureaucracy.

“Sometimes people are already aware their status is in question,” Farber said. “But often, these
people only discover they have a problem when they walk into the rabbinate’s marriage office,”
where everyone’s name is processed through a national registry of who can and can’t marry.

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“What makes mamzerut so devastating is that it affects innocent children who have had nothing to
do with the creation of their own status.”

Anyone with a questionable status is immediately sent to a rabbinical court for clarification. Farber
said experiences like this can turn off even religious Jews from Judaism, especially in cases where
the rabbinate is responsible for a mamzer’s status to begin with.

In one case, the rabbinate declared that four children were mamzerim because it stopped trusting
the rabbi who facilitated their mother’s Orthodox get.

In another case the rabbinate realized it had accidentally permitted a long-ago marriage between a
woman and her ex-husband’s brother. Under the incest law, such marriages result in mamzerut if
the ex-husband is still living.

Regardless of the circumstances, “what makes mamzerut so devastating is that it affects innocent
children who have had nothing to do with the creation of their own status,” Farber said.

Mamzerut In The Digital Age

Until a few years ago, anyone who used the services of the rabbinate found themselves in offices
where folders overflowing with paper records were stacked and toppling over. Today, most of
these records, including the lists of Jews who are ineligible to marry or whose Jewish status is
“questionable,” are computerized.

Farber, whose ITIM organization utilized Israel’s Freedom of Information law to learn the exact
number of people on each list, discovered something surprising: During the past five years, only
four people have been added to the list of mamzerim and another four to the list of questionable
mamzerim.

“This doesn’t make sense because our assistance center has received calls related to at least 20
mamzerut cases during this period,” Farber said. “My guess is there are tens, possibly hundreds of
cases of suspected mamzerut that have remained open for years and years without any progress
being made to close them. They aren’t reflected in these numbers.”

As of May 2017, there were 85 people listed on the rabbinate’s mamzer list and 146 on the list of
suspected mamzerim, according to the rabbinate.

Farber said the number of mamzerim and suspected mamzerim could rise dramatically in the future
because the rabbinate no longer automatically accepts the authority of many Orthodox diaspora
rabbis.

“This means that if an Orthodox rabbi outside of Israel effects a Jewish divorce, the former spouses
might remarry. But down the road, the rabbinate might not accept the divorce. This would make
their children mamzerim.”

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Farber worries, too, that a World Jewish Database proposed by Israel’s Ministry of Religious
Affairs with the cooperation of the rabbinate is intended to allow the rabbinate to extend its
authority and strict criteria over world Jewry. Such a database would make it impossible for
mamzerim and others to maintain their privacy.

Rabbinical lists aren’t the only threat to a mamzer’s privacy. The growing popularity of
genealogical research and personal DNA testing via home kits “raises the possibility of finding
out things people don’t want to know, and that includes mamzerut,” says Israel Pickholtz, a
professional genetic genealogist in Jerusalem. “There have been several such cases.”

Are There Solutions?

Farber, whose ITIM organization has represented mamzerim and suspected mamzerim in Israeli
courts, is convinced that Jewish law provides the tools to prevent and even eliminate mamzer
status. He asserted that prominent rabbis “are often afraid to use them. They’re afraid of being
perceived as too liberal or too flexible.”

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In an era of unprecedented sexual freedom, the ultra-Orthodox rabbis that control the rabbinate
and rabbinical courts see themselves as Judaism’s gatekeepers, said Farber. The problem with this
gatekeeper mentality, he said, is that it conflicts with the longstanding rabbinical principle to
assume someone is not a mamzer unless there’s incontrovertible evidence.

“Traditionally, community rabbis and local rabbinical courts resolved these issues before there
were actual consequences. When they couldn’t, the mamzer usually went to another community
where no one knew his status.”

Farber accused the Israeli rabbis who dictate national religious policy of “cutting themselves off”
from the public they’re serving.

The Rabbinate and the rabbinical court system declined to comment on this, or any matter related
to mamzerut.

Recognizing that secrecy has not solved the mamzer problem, activists recently began to reach out
to Israeli lawmakers and the public as well. For the very first time, last March a Knesset session
devoted to agunot featured a segment on mamzerut.

In another first, Israeli filmmaker and artist Nurit Jacobs-Yinon spearheaded a group art exhibition
entitled “Mamzerim, Labeled and Erased” at the 2017 Jerusalem Biennale that included a
book, Mamzerim, of scholarly essays.

Significantly, most of the activists – many of them Modern Orthodox women – neither expect nor
want leading rabbis to break religious law to free mamzerim of their status.

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“What we want is for the rabbis to utilize the resources provided by Jewish law,” Nitzan Caspi
Shiloni, a Center for Women’s Justice attorney who has has represented several mamzerim and
their families in Israel’s religious and civil courts.

“But most lack the courage to do so. Those that do face the wrath of their peers.”

If it were up to Lubitch, the world’s rabbis would rule that all Jews are mamzerim, a move that
would allow all Jews to marry one another within the strictures of Orthodox law. “This is the
biggest, most moral solution,” Lubitch said, “but what rabbi will want to do that? It’s like saying
‘I’m contaminated.’”

By far the most promising solution involves reproductive technology.

Rabbi Aryeh Katz, an expert in fertility and Jewish law, said artificial insemination may provide a
solution for some mamzerim who don’t want to pass the status on to their children.

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“The question is, does mamzerut result from the union of the sperm and the egg, or is it the result
of sexual relations between a man and a woman? Most rabbinic decisors say it results from an
illicit sexual union,” said Katz, a halachic researcher at the Puah Institute, an organization that
helps infertile Jews in accordance with strict Jewish law.

Asked whether a child born to a female mamzer via IVF with a donated egg implanted into her
body, or via a surrogate mother with the female mamzer’s egg would be considered a mamzer,
Katz was non-committal.

“It’s complex and depends on who is considered the mother of the child according to halacha —
the woman who donated the ovum or the pregnant woman. Since today there is no clear decision
on the subject, the answer is that the child is probably a mamzer. But there may be religious courts
that say mamzerut is not inherited through in vitro fertilization in order to make it easier, but this
is a difficult question.”

However, if a female mamzer utilizes a surrogate mother to have a baby with eggs that don’t
belong to the mamzer, “it is considered a case of adoption and the child would not be a mamzer,”
Katz said.

Whether mamzerim choose to go any of these routes will depend largely on which rabbis, if any,
they follow.

The late Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, considered by many to be the greatest Orthodox posek [decisor]
of the 20th century, ruled that artificial insemination with donor sperm does not result in mamzerut,
thus leaving the door open for fertility treatments.

But Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the late Grand Rabbi of the chasidic Satmar community, held that if
a married Jewish woman is impregnated with another man’s sperm even via fertility treatments, it
is adultery and will produce a mamzer.

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Batya Kahana-Dror, a women’s rights lawyer and director of Mevoi Satum, a Jerusalem agunah
rights organization, believes artificial insemination with donated sperm could allow agunot to have
children. But she noted that Orthodox rabbis in Israel and abroad continue to prohibit this.

In another attempt to prevent mamzerut, the Center for Women’s Justice has drawn up a power of
attorney that permits a rabbinic court to grant a get to a woman, if necessary, instead of her
husband.

Lost In Limbo

Were the rabbinical courts to accept innovate halachic documents like the Center for Women’s
Justice Pledge of Compassion, they could free women like Talya*, whose husband suffered a brain
aneurysm several years ago. (The Pledge document, signed by a husband, is a power of attorney
appointing an agent to deliver a get to the wife in the event that he becomes medically or mentally
unable to do so himself.)D O N A T E

The aneurysm left Talya’s husband paralyzed, blind and with the cognitive abilities of a
preschooler.

“We were very happily married,” Talya, an Israeli who lives in central Israel, said during an
emotional telephone interview.

For the first several months after her husband’s brain bleed, Talya stopped working to be by his
side in the hospital and, later, rehab.

“I’ve been very angry at times, angry because it’s in the hands of the rabbis to help and they don’t
help.”
“We had a young child, and I was terrified. I wondered what will be. At first I was afraid he
wouldn’t survive and then, after almost a year of rehabilitation he stopped making progress. I
couldn’t care for him on my own, so I found a long-term facility. Now he’s in a nursing home, half
the age of the other residents.”

After a couple of years, with no hope that her husband would recover, Talya decided to divorce
him. “I wanted a new life; I wanted more kids. I filed for divorce and the rabbinical court judges
said they understood and wanted to help, but that it will be very difficult. Because even though my
husband is like a child, he had to agree to divorce me.”

The rabbis visited the husband in his nursing home several times over a period of months and
asked whether he would agree to divorce Talya, who was then in her late 30s, and he said no.

She has since consulted many rabbis and enlisted the help of Mevoi Satum, the agunah advocacy
organization.

Now in her forties, Talya said she has found love again, with another man.

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“We decided we wouldn’t wait until my divorce was finalized. I got pregnant, had a baby, and
have built a new life. It’s a good life.”

Even so, Talya didn’t tell anyone but close family about her pregnancy until she was 27 weeks
along.

Unless she receives a retroactive get, the child she had with her partner will remain a mamzer.

Talya, who is secular, said she refuses to think about mamzerut.D O N A T E

“I just want her to have a life.”

“For me, a child is a child. Since I gave birth I have put the issue aside. We don’t talk about it at
all because we believe there will be a solution.”

She admits that her spirits sometimes falter.

“I’ve been very angry at times, angry because it’s in the hands of the rabbis to help and they don’t
help.”

It took Sarah, the American woman whose daughter was conceived during a rape, more than a
decade to procure a get with the help of an Israeli women’s rights organization. The process cost
her thousands of dollars in legal fees and plane tickets to Israel and left her traumatized and
depressed.

But Sarah, who has since found solace in her Jewish heritage, said it was worth the emotional and
financial toll.

“My daughter is Jewish. She is here, she is a miracle, and I want her to have the choice to become
more religious if she wants to be. Or not. I want her to be able to get married and have children
without the threat of mamzerut hanging over her like a shadow.

“I just want her to have a life.”

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 Collin Shay and Gundula Hintz in Mamzer Bastard
© ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

Mamzer Bastard
Royal Opera, Hackney Empire (6/14/18)

George Hall writes:25

In 2018 New York City suffered a major power outage that was followed by rioting and looting
across the five boroughs. This event provides the background to Mamzer Bastard, a new opera
whose focus is otherwise the city’s Hasidic community and the fragmented past of some of its
inhabitants.

The new opera, written by twenty-nine-year-old Israeli composer Na’ama Zisser, was presented
by the Royal Opera at London’s Hackney Empire, on Mare Street (seen June 14). The composer
is currently doctoral composer-in-residence at the Royal Opera and the Guildhall School of Music

25
https://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2018/9/Reviews/LONDON__Mamzer_Bastard.html

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& Drama in London, a position that has allowed her to research and write a major work with the
support of mentors in senior positions within both. (The previous holder of the post was Philip
Venables, whose 4.48 Psychosis, based on Sarah Kane’s final play and given its premiere at the
Lyric Hammersmith in 2016, has been acclaimed as a masterpiece.)

Zisser’s co-creators are screenwriters Rachel C. Zisser and Samantha Newton, respectively her
elder sister and sister-in-law. Paulina Jurzec created the important video element, which showed
us the Hasidic community as well as the historic riots, in addition to filming and projecting some
of the opera’s action in the manner of certain productions by Katie Mitchell. Madeleine Boyd was
responsible for the stark, monumental set and other designs, Jay Scheib for the show’s atmospheric
stage direction.

The opera’s title is not (quite) tautological: the word “mamzer” rather implies someone born of a
relationship forbidden by Jewish religious law, or a descendant thereof, and is thus not specifically
synonymous with illegitimacy.

About to be married himself, twenty-one-year-old Yoel, the central character, wanders the streets
of Manhattan, where he meets and is rescued from a life-threatening situation by a stranger whose
connection to him turns out to be a close one. The resulting scenario is a kind of mystery whose
secrets are (perhaps too) slowly revealed over the course of its ninety-minute span.

Zisser’s score is eclectic in character but uneven in quality: some moments have a tangible sense
of drama, but for long stretches not very much seems to happen musically. Above all, Mamzer
Bastard lacks a sense of structure, either short- or long-term. Its most memorable musical sections
are those directly invoking cantorial music, whose modes infiltrate other parts of the score: the
potent sections that are purely cantorial were sung with sensitivity and command by Netanel
Hershtik, Cantor of the Hampton Synagogue in New York.

The inner torments of the insecure adult Yoel were revealed with harrowing conviction by French–
American countertenor Collin Shay, with treble Edward Hyde giving a flawless account of Yoel’s
younger self. German mezzo Gundula Hintz gave a vivid performance as Yoel’s troubled mother,
Esther; tenor Robert Burt demonstrated the inner divisions of Esther’s second husband, Menashe.
Both vocally and dramatically, Steven Page made a considerable impact as the mysterious down-
and-out Stranger.

In the pit, the Aurora Orchestra played confidently under conductor Jessica Cottis, who held
together a piece that musically was at best only intermittently interesting.

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 Rebekkah , A Poem

by gershon hepner

When Abraham was weak and old

he forced his slave to swear an oath,
while grasping of his member hold:
“Make sure that Isaac plights his troth
to someone from my ancient clan;
from Canaanites don’t choose a damsel;
in Canaan I believe each man

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to be a mamzer, girl a mamzelle.”
Everybody knows a mamzer
is repulsive to the Jews,
a cockroach rather than Greg Samsa,
but mamzelle is a word I choose
instead of mademoiselle, for rhyming;
a lot of members of my tribe
like them a lot when they’re good-timing,
though outlawed by the Bible scribe.

The slave asked God to make it clear,

by giving him a secret sign:
“The first young girl who will appear
and bring me water, not cool wine,
should be for Isaac lifelong mate.”
She came, of Bethuel the daughter,
and didn’t cause the slave to wait
until she brought him ice-cold water.
A prompt response, what he’d been urgin’,
occurred at once, and what is more
she was what he had asked for, virgin,
a miracle, I’d say, encore.
Some water for the camels, too,
she brought, precisely as he’d bid,
although she clearly never knew
it was God’s will, because He hid,
as later He would hide when Ruth
by Boaz was allowed to glean.
His hidden will reveals the truth
like daylight coming through a screen,
a scrim that only may be lifted
by those who’re spiritually gifted.

I ought to mention here a point.

Though Canaanite, the slaveman thought
that Abraham might yet appoint
him as his heir, and therefore sought
to lie with that young girl, he knew
he ought to bring back to his lord
for Isaac as a virgin. Clue
for this interpretation find
in language that describes him as
a man, a word that should remind
us that we’ve just learned no man has
yet had Rebekkah, front, behind.
We learn that she was quite intacta,

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from Midrash cited here by Rashi,
who states importantly the factor
that no one ever touched her tushy!
His eagerness in fact implies
that he intends to be the plow
within her furrow, and belies
his wish to honor now the vow,
for when the lady gives him water
he thinks that he will have her like
Rebekkah’s brother’s younger daughter,
whom Jacob took when sent by Ike.

Quite ready for the dating game,

Rebekkah told the man her name:
in all the land there was none cuter,
a major catch for any suitor.
She said: “Please let me introduce
my brother; he is running loose
around my father’s great estate.”
The slave declared: “That would be great! ”
The “White Man, ” Laban, whom he’d meet
turned out to be a dreadful cheat,
in Jacob’s tale a major player
as father of both Rachel, Leah.
He gave to Jacob first the latter,
confusing with patristic patter
the fugitive who had a hunger
for Rachel, though she was the younger,
and made quite Jacob then upmixed her
with Rachel—what a shameful trickster!
“It is not done in our great land
to give the younger first in hand, ”
he said, so Jacob had to slave
a week of years before he gave
him Rachel, his more lovely daughter,
the one for whom he drew some water,
as did the slave whom we have mentioned
above, perhaps more well-intentioned,
but maybe not, as I have said,
for when the slaveman bent his head
for water, just as camels stoop,
it seems his aim was soon to shtup
Rebekkah––intention that was so absurd
I’ve used a vulgar Yiddish word.

Laban said: “Mi casa es

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su casa, ” and he showed largesse
not only to the slave then but
his camels, giving them a hut
in which he generously provided
the fodder that they craved, while he abided
inside his house, I think a mansion,
undergoing great expansion,
a hovel being gentrified,
as none have commentarified
in medieval Bible versions,
foreshadowing my city’s Persians,
who, like the kinsfolk of Rebekkah
expand their houses, triple decker,
because they must impress their neighbors,
as Laban wished, imposing labors
on Jacob wishing to be swived,
to prove they truly have arrived.
Don’t think that only Persians do this—
big’s great for them, and huge is bliss;
all nouveaux riches look for a variance,
the Persians learned this from Hungarians.

Before the food, the slaveman said:

“I must, before I go to bed,
explain the mission that my master
has given me.” He thought disaster
would come as soon as he explained
how Abraham had been most pained
that girls who in his land were rooted
to Isaac weren’t exactly suited,
because, revealed with décolleté,
they caused the horny men to play,
and gaze with longing at midriffs,
and dream of mounting them like cliffs,
while greatly turned on by short dresses
revealing thighs and pubic tresses;
about such features men all raved,
especially when these girls have shaved—
though pubic hair makes some men blush,
they stare much more when there’s no bush.

Daughters of the sons of Ham,

anathema to Abraham,
were not what he for Isaac wished.
The ishah with whom he’d be ished,
I mean the woman who would turn

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him into man and make him burn
with reproductive fire, must
be someone who had earned his trust
by coming from between the rivers.
What he demanded God delivers.

The slave displayed the gifts he bore,

huge rubies Valor Women wore
to please the husbands they adore
in olden times and days of yore,
and pearls as large as egg of duck,
believed to bring their bearers luck,
especially when in a charm
with God’s name keeping them from harm,
and bracelets which Jews used to whore
with Moabites at Baal-peor,
and precious nose rings used to make
a Golden Calf, a Moses fake,
replacing him—his crown of thorns,
less splendid than his famous horns,
acquired when he came so late
Jews said to Aaron: “We won’t wait, ”
as they so often say today
whey they for a messiah pray.
The slaveman showed them all his treasures
without security-type measures,
and they replied, to his surprise,
“Please take Rebekkah, she’s your prize! ”

But first they asked her, “Will you go

away to marry? ” She did not say “No! ”
but answered simply with a “Yes! ”
The man with whom she went, I guess,
could see from this most cryptic word
that he was not the man preferred
by her, for he was just a slave.
To Isaac she was going, brave,
a woman destined just like Ruth
to leave her land and find the truth
in Israel, to which God had sworn
His chosen people would be borne
on eagles’ wings—if all the planes
were cancelled, and there were no trains.

Waiting with suspense and joy

close to Be’er Laha’i-roi,

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the place where Hagar once had met
an angel––God did not forget
her and the son then in her womb;
for both of them He found some room.
Descendants who from Isaac stem
would end up in Jerusalem,
while those of Hagar, not Rebekkah,
would face much farther east, to Mecca––
now in Be’er-laha’i-roi,
this thirty-seven-year old boy
called Isaac, lost in meditations,
stood quite resigned, without impatience,
just like a Buddha of Amida’s
familiar to enlightened readers,
and watched until he saw afar
a woman moving like a star
that shone most brightly in the heaven.
It was exactly half past seven,
the time for minhah, rabbis say,
when men must take off time to pray,
as Isaac did. Though he’d been saddened
by Sarah’s death, he now was gladdened
and took Rebekkah to his tent
where she repaired in clothes the rent
that he had torn when Sarah died,
for now Rebekkah was his bride,
reminding him, the garments’ wearer,
by all things that she did, of Sarah.

Dark and comely without pallor

was Isaac’s wife, a girl of valor,
mother both of Jacob, Esau,
brothers two upon a seesaw,
a pair of twins born to Rebekkah,
her womb prepared for double-decker,
a matriarch who loved and chose
son Jacob, most religiose,
not Esau, man who loved to hunt,
his father’s favorite, strange to say––
so blind he never saw him stray
among the Hittite women till
Rebekkah said: “They make me ill.”
Inside her womb she had a two-for
one, the older one a Jew-for-
Jesus, causing great distress,
the Vatican his main address––

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synonymous the name of Edom
with Rome the way we read him,
though Christians say with ancient fury
that Esau’s ancestor of Jewry,
while Jacob, not left in the lurch,
is ancestor of all their church.

Brothers both would exeunt,

one for tents and one to hunt,
and leave each other on a stage
where at their sibling they could rage,
without the limelight competition
that bothers stars with great ambition.
In all the Bible there’s no figure
who than this matriarch is bigger.

A postscript comes now to this poem,

foreshadowed clearly in the proem,
if, as I would now propose,
you read it once again most close.
When aged, Abraham would find
a time for tying knots, to bind
his son to someone who was suited
to God’s plan, which was clearly bruited
at the Covenant of Pieces,
and made quite sure he’d look for nieces
for Isaac, since he was no whorer
before his marriage to Keturah,
and stayed away from women younger,
till old age would restore his hunger,
when he foreshadowed Jesse’s son
who in old age, though weary, wan,
would lie with Abishag, the norm
for old kings when they are not warm,
and search for concubines or harlots,
some Bible heroines like starlets.
While David lay within her arms,
he put aside not only psalms
but also thoughts about his sons,
enchanted by her breasts and buns,
till Nathan and some leaders came,
with Bathsheba, his former flame,
to make sure Solomon would rule.
But Adonijah was uncool,
and though he tried to seize the crown
his sense of timing let him down,

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and he was killed like Absalom
and Amnon when his plot would bomb.
While Abraham had made quite clear
that Isaac was to him more dear
than Hagar’s son called Ishmael,
and was the designated male
to follow him, King David failed.
While seeking women’s warmth he ailed,
which really is a poor excuse
for old men trying to be loose,
as wine and women for their health
is bad, and harmful to their wealth.
How lucky David still had faith in
Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan,
for if he hadn’t, Abishag
might well have taken all his swag.

The contrast that’s comparative

explains to us each narrative.
I’m not sure which was written first,
though both by me are hereby versed.
For answers you must try to collar
not rabbi, priest, but bible scholar,
which I attempt, when I have time,
to be, while all the rest I rhyme,
unless, of course, I’m in my clinic—
the one place where I’m not a cynic.

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