fsks@unc.UUCP (Frank Silbermann) (03/29/85)
In article <aecom.1318> teitz@aecom.UUCP (Eliyahu Teitz) writes: >> - WHAT IS A MAMZER? > One of these cases is a woman who is married having relations > with another man. The child of this meeting is a mamzer. > The Torah only recognizes religious divorce and secular divorce > is not valid, and a child produced by a subsequent marriage would > be a mamzer. Suppose a woman has sex before marriage. I have heard opinions that the act of intercourse between two unmarried people constitutes a marriage. Is this true? If so, then this woman should obtain a GET before she marries anyone else. If she doesn't get one, then I presume that the children are mamzerim. Is this so? I bet many such women did not get a Get, and kept the former liasons secret. Or, suppose someone is descended from a convert. The "convert" may actually be a Jew before the conversion (descended from a Jewish woman generations in the past along a completely maternal line). Who would know? And that original Jewish woman may have been a Mamzer. This would mean that the "conversion ceremony" was invalid (the "convert" was already a Jew). Thus this covert could be a Mamzer! It seems to me that ANY of us may be mamzerim, and not even know it. Perhaps we should redefine the term to mean any Jew who is KNOWN to have such a background. Otherwise, the rules are rules unenforceable. By the way, in the discussions of the Ethiopians, I heard mention of a "token conversion" to remove "any suspicions" of Mamzurut. Is this not a contradiction to the statement that this condition cannot be "cured"? Frank Silbermann ******************************************************************* Apologies for my past signature lines, which offended at least one person.