Mamzerim have it tough, many people who consider themselves another statistic of the shidduch crisis don;t really have it bad, they are just too picky, but what’s a guy or girl to do if they don’t have the same choice that everyone else has? Frumster and other dating sites like Saw You At Sinai and Jwed have decided to add a category for mamzerim who are wishing to find their mates.
Traditionally mamzerim were limited to mamzer-only dating events and most of the people who showed up weren’t even sure if they were mamzerim. Many folks are of the opinion that mamzerim are running rampant around the frum community and we may in fact all be mamzerim, creating loads of issues when it comes to who is actually eligible to marry each other.
So how does one check to see that they can wear the mamzer badge of honor, it’s not a comfortable topic, similar to the way that kohanim can’t just go around asking every baal teshuva if she has slept with a non-Jew, it’s not too easy to find out who’s a bastard and who’s a legitimate child. I myself have wondered this and although I applaud the various shidduch dating websites for adding yet another way to categorize and pigeon hole everyone – I wonder how they will be able to check to make sure the person claiming that he or she is a mamzer is in fact a mamzer, do rabbis give certificates or something.
I heard recently that there was a psak (I think it was by Rav Ovadia Yosef) that said if a child of a mamzer is conceived through in-vitro, the mamzer status does not get passed on. I don’t know the exact details regarding it though.
R’ Moshe says this I believe.
There are actually sources that this is true going back to biblical times. Yirmiyahu to be exact.
It says a story that there was once semen in a bathhouse, and a woman bathed there and became impregnated, and the child was legitimate.
It is actually extremely relevant in our times, with infertility stuff.
Of course ti’s not at all simple.
Many Rabbis are against the practice even though they consider the child to be legitimate, because of the genetics the child will possess.
Yes, I know this will piss many of you off.
I feel so bad for Mamzers, I first read about the concept here at Frum Satire and it makes me sad every time I read about them. :^( I truly wish them all the best.
Yankel, about the genetics argument; what do you think of the argument (which some have articulated below) that statistically at this point EVERYONE is a Mamzer? I’d heard that argued before, but the specific math quoted in comments below has really and truly convinced me this is probably so.
Luckily I am not an Orthodox Jew and do not have to worry about it, LOL.
Seems like hygiene standards have changed a bit since then.
Ok, next time you go to the mik, take a sample out with you, and check it out under a microscope.
because of the genetics the child will possess
What genetics? There are all sorts of categories of mamzerim. Many of them carry no greater risk than random strangers. And with services like the new Australian one we can tell which if any of several hundred heritable conditions the pairing of two individuals may produce. The method of conception poses no extra genetic risk.
The rabbis in question are generally completely ignorant of science in general and biology in particular, so it can’t be a reasoned opposition based on risk analysis. The opposition to IVF I’ve seen from that quarter has generally been on the grounds that semen and zygotes are destroyed.
No Nuran, much more racist than that.
They are concerned about mixing in the genetics of a goy.
If it happens – so be it. But you don’t create the situation on your own.
Ah, I see. We’re talking about different objections to IVF. I’ve also seen supposedly reliable poseks forbid it in general because eggs and sperm are destroyed.
It’s problematic only if it’s destroyed unnaturally.
You crack me up, Heshy! Next time I see you listed for a stand up in the SF Bay Area, I’m gonna show up!
Call my cynical but I’d bet that most born Jews today are mamzerim. You can throw all the rotten tomato’s at me you want, but think about it, how many mamzerim say 2,000 years ago who were never found out to be for that to happen?
Leibel you have arrived at the best solution to the mamzer problem. If only the gedolim had a pair of gedolim and declared this, then the problem would go away.
The Gemara in Kiddushin discusses the issue of “Lost” mamzerim, and states that according to one view, in the messianic era Elijah will set apart those who are mamzerim. According to the other view, (it was sort of unclear to me what it meant exactly) if there is a Mamzer who no-one knows about, once enough generations pass, and his true ancestry is no longer descernable or traceable, his offspring are no longer Mamzerim according to biblical law.
Additionally, there is a way for a MALE mamzer to unmamzeize his offspring.
Yankel,
According to Rambam, Mashiach will only testify as to a person’s status of Kohen, Levi or Yisrael, not to their being “kosher” on “non kosher”. It seems that anyone generally believed to be a “frum/kosher” Jew at that time will be accepted as such.
I think the only way one is able to “unmamzerize” is buy marrying a shifcha (slave woman), and having children with her. Those children then grow up as slaves, at which time he frees them and they become full fledged Jews. Obviously no longer applicable today.
Don’t be so sure. Slavery is still common in some parts of Africa. So maybe it could be done!
And South Asia.
And East Asia.
And there are way too many (i.e. more than zero) brothels even in Israel where women are held as slaves and raped around the clock by their owners and by other Jewish men.
That was my point, but I didn’t want to spell it out. There is a way to do the slave shtickle today. It’s actually pretty much agreed upon by most Poskim.
It gets a bit technical, but here’s how it goes:
You have to find a non-Jewish woman who wants to convert, go with another Jew to a country in which the labor laws there are similar enough to halachic slavery, have the Jew buy her as a shifcha kina’anis, and you as an eved ivri, then he as your ‘adon’ can ‘instruct’ you to procreate with the shifcha, (who is now technically half-Jewish already), then you two can move wherever you want, and after menopause – he frees both of you, and alls fine.
She’s a regular Gioress, your children are regular Jews, you are still a mamzer, you and your wife can stay together, and you kept the Torah in the face of all odds.
Yankel,
I thought the laws of shifcha only applied in E.Y…
I never heard of that…
Besides, it has been done in recent times. Not in EY.
And the gemara that Eliahu will reveal who is kosher and who not, is in Kiddushin 71a.
A blatt before, it says another opinion, that after a lineage of mamzerus has enough kosher blood marrying into it, it becomes kosher.
I guess that would imply “Ad dor asiri lo yavo” means, in the event that we are certain that they are mamzerim.
Gawd, you people crack me up with your looking for ways to sell yourselves into slavery to avoid making a “mamzer”.
Unfortunately for you, your parents also thought such an option was rediculous.
Leibel, I read the same thing from a geneticist. Everyone has two parents, they have two as well. So for each generation back multiply by 2.
If you go back 25 generations (~400 yrs) you have 67,108,864. The Ashkenazic Jewish community was only a tenth of that size (sephardic, much less). If you have a single mamzer kept secret who married in year 1600, it’s a 10:1 chance we’re all mamzerim.
Well let’s keep in mind that the mamzer situation only goes one way: if a married Jewish woman has a child that is not her husband’s. A Jewish man can still have a non-mamzer child through an unmarried woman who is not her wife. Of course, if she isn’t Jewish then it’s a moot point anyway.
I meant to say “is not HIS wife”…sorry!
Consider that a good 10% of children born to married couples could not have been sired by the mother’s husband. This is worldwide with multiple studies going back more than half a century. That’s only one sort of mamzer. We’re none of us kosher, but we do so love to keep up pretenses.
That implies complete outbreeding which is never the case. Probably a much smaller number than this.
Just for kicks, 2 to the 40th power is 1 trillion. So one mamzer marrying in yr 1200 makes it 142,857:1 we’re all mamzerim.
In case you’re still arguing, 2 to the 50th is 1 quadrillion, 2 to the 60th is 1 quintillion.
Wow, with those odds it’s a miracle anybody ever gets married at all! Maybe the “shidduch crisis” should be re-framed as the “ubiquitous mamzer intervention.”
OTD,
Your numbers are off. The ratio you listed doesn’t account for all the people that died, intermarried or went OTD.
It does, those people wouldn’t be your ancestor if that happened.
However, it doesn’t account for the fact that many of those ancestors are the same person. It was common back then for people to marry their 3rd cousins or other similar situations.
Of course we’re all mamzerim. I’ve been saying this for years. But I think the “frum” aswer is that mamzerut is kind of like “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, meaning if we don’t know about it, there’s no problem.
I don’t get it, how can we all be mamzerim?! This is shocking news! I don’t think we’re giving the Jews enough credit. I bet there are mamzerim out there, yes, but they must to say that mamzerim are the majority?! . And how does G-d look at a mamzer? Like will the mamzers be around by mashiach times or are they gone by milchemet gog umagog? This is crazy stuff…not sure whether to believe it though…
I think what he’s saying is that we Jews are all insufferable bastards.
Somehow, I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. But thanks anyway? (sorry, not quite sure what to say to that…)
I think I heard somewhere that a child from rape of a married woman is not considered a mamzer, but I can’t find the source. My guess is that the vast majority of technical mamzerim in the middle ages were born of rape, especially during the crusades.
But even one consensual sexual liaison between a married woman and a man who wasn’t her husband some 1,000 years ago, and who passed off the child as her husband’s, would make us all mamzerim.
Wow, the odds quoted above were pretty convincing to me. Even taking into account the fact that only female adultery produces a Mamzer and factoring in that (at least in my opinion) female adultery has been less likely to occur vs. male adultery throughout most if not all of human history, those numbers are pretty convincing. I’m not good enough at math to try to factor those things in though, LOL!
Mahla,
Mamzerim (not mamzers) don’t only come from adultery. Any Jew born to a Jewish couple who would be prohibited to marry gets that status. Couple examples are children born from incestuous relations, and also if a women didn’t have a valid Jewish divorce (big problem for reform, etc.). So the numbers can actually be a lot higher. Still, most Jews are halachically assumed as being “pure”, even BT’s.
Still, OTD’s math ratio is off, as it doesn’t account for all the people that died among others things. We don’t have trillions of inhabitants on this planet, let alone Jews.
Additionally, there is some kind of tradition that a kosher lineage will remain that way through divine intervention. I also seem to remember something about unknown mamzerim automatically either dying or not having children.
Seems like it would be easier for Jewish women to not get married and have their kids by Gentile boyfriends. It would be good for the Jewish gene pool and ensure the kids weren’t mamzerim.
It wouldn’t help anything, as she still passes her lineage to her children regardless of who the male is.
As a side point, if a kid won’t get any shidduchim because his mother slept with a goy, why is he any different than a real mamzer?
haha nice post
The thing is in Halacha there’s a presumption that no one’s a mamzer unless it’s proven and most Rabbi’s/poskim, etc aren’t eager to prove that fact, they go out of their way to not prove people are mamzerim and rely on the halachic presumption of all born Jews being “pure” even though it’s highly unlikely that’s the case. After all if that were to be admitted people couldn’t brag about their yichus.
The whole concept of mamzer ridiculous. Why punish a child for what his parents did? Just because his parents did something they weren’t supposed to, it was no fault of his own and when he was brought into this world he shouldn’t have to walk around life a marked man.
The same argument works for fetal alchol syndrome, the whole concept is ridiculous,” why punish a child for something his parents did? Just because his parents did something they weren’t supposed to, it was no fault of his own and when he was brought into this world he shouldn’t have to walk around life” with physical and mental chalenges .
Exactly. Assuming belief in Judaism, actions have consequences. Physical and spiritual.
If there is physical damage that is done a person that is one thing becuase we don’t necessarily know how to fix it, but here the “damage” is because of “rules” that dictate how other poeple should treat him, rather than actual damage.
Using your argument, if someone found a cure for fetal alcohol syndrome, would you be against it? In the mamzer case, I have a very good cure – change the rules and he will then be “cured”. Would you be against that cure?
the same designer (god) who instituted the rules governing what gets transfered from mom to fetus, and what does the fetus harm, dictated the rules of mamzerus as well. As far as an orthodox Jew is concerned they are one and the same, and although they may seem unfair, too bad.
to answer your question of course I wouldnt be against a cure for FAS and neither would i be against a cure for mamzeirus. in fact the mishna at the end of kidushin offers one. Just saying let’s “change the rules” isnt a cure. If it works, here goes: I herby change the rules of fetal alcohlol syndrome, never again shall an infant be plagued with the dreadful consequences resulting from its mother’s foolhearty decision. so shall it be written and so shall it be done!! There i just changed the rules, do you think it helps?
John, your trying to talk logic to a brick.
Phil- You’re not understanding the math involved. I’m talking about statistics, probability. Let’s say there were 7 mil Ashkenazic Jews in the yr 1000 (50 generations back. Assuming 20 yrs is a gen, 50×20=1000 yrs back).
So 2 multiplied by 2 50 times is 1 quadrillion. This is the number of possible ancestors you have. However, as you pointed out, there weren’t that many people around. There are only 7 mil possible choices.
So if one person 1000 yrs ago was a mamzer, what are the chances you are his descendant, and therefore a mamzer? Divide 1 quadrillion (possible) by 7 mil (actual) and you get a 142,857,142:1 (142 mil to one) chance that everyone alive today is a mamzer.
OTD,
That math is still completely off. Assuming the average world Jewish population at any given time over the past 1000 years was 10 million, and the average life span was only 50 years (probably was more), that would give only 200 million Jews alive over the past 1000 years.
Make necessary adjustments to deduct those that lived longer than 50 years and those that never had kids, and your total will probably beat less than 150 million.
So while you’re hypothetical math statistics may be accurate (I’m still not convinced), in reality the numbers are completely off.
You seriously can’t expect anyone to believe that 99.99999% of us have a mamzer status…
Yup, I do. Learn about probability on wikipedia and you’ll be convinced as well that you, me, and every gadol and rebbe is almost definitely a mamzer.
Does anyone here actually KNOW a real life Mamzer?
Everyone. Ironically, the only ones who aren’t are converts! If you claim Jewish yichus, you’re a mamzer.
OTD,
That’s funny, I was going to mention the convert thing in my previous post.
Guys, I’ll tell you why I was asking. Just, the impression I’ve gotten since learning about this whole Mamzer thing is that no one actually admits to being a Mamzer — except for the people who would say “EVERYONE is a Mamzer.”
I am just wondering if there is anyone out there who actually knows someone who admits that they are a Mamzer? How secretive is this status in the Jewish community I wonder?
Is it something that is kept as a closely held secret, and no one will admit it, they just choose not to marry and they don’t tell anyone why?
So perhaps converts marrying other converts should be lechatchila?
If there was any legitimate Halachic (or any real) implications due to the chance of unknown mamzerus in the lineage, then that would indeed be the case.
Regarding a mamzer the posuk says:
?? ???? ???? ?
Which means, he should not come into the Congregation of G-d
The generally accepted rule is that if the mamzer did somehow get into the ‘congregation’ we don’t remove him. Because, the posuk says, he should come in, but if he came in, we don’t remove him.
That’s the reason the Rabbis don’t dig too much. And that’s also the reason that none of us are mamzerim unless we know so for a fact. Same Torah that makes people mamzerim, allows for this loophole.
too bad there were no condoms back in the day….. a million dollar business.
There were. They used intestines of cows. The appendex to be exact.
We’re all SOB’s
You know, with all the Frum love for this new innovation of retroactively deconverting people, I think it’s a shame to limit it to the Gers.
Mandatory genetic tests to prove parentage. After all, if the risks of a rogue convert are so high, imagine the risks of a hidden Mamzer!
:^O Yikes, a scary thought, and probably the reason the posuk says what non-Mamzer related above (“Which means, he should not come into the Congregation of G-d. The generally accepted rule is that if the mamzer did somehow get into the ‘congregation’ we don’t remove him. Because, the posuk says, he should come in, but if he came in, we don’t remove him”).
Because wise men probably understood that if you started digging around and retroactively Mamzerizing and de-Jewifying everyone in sight, soon there’d be no “real” Jews left!
And that is the reason that a Get is immediately destroyed , and that you weren’t able to retroactively de-convert someone.
But since one rule has been dropped…
Hmmm…interesting discussion. I came here curious to know if there are dating sites for *mamzerim*, certain there would be. But it seems it’s not outta the closet, nor is it likely to ever be. I like the “we’re all mamzerim” theory. Say it loud, I’m a mamzerit & I’m proud!
Mamzerim reach a certain age and wish to do mitzvot and have the company of another and I’m sure this is a good thing. It’s only in this generation when the stigma of it can be shelved somewhat in order to give Mamzerim a chance of personal happiness for something which is not their fault.
Bravo to those who initiated such a provision and shame on those who ridicule it.