[Avodah] Bath Ploni liFloni

[Jay F Shachter]

> 
> I know several Jewish men who became frum after marrying non-Jewish
> women, sometimes years later when there were children already, and
> whose wives later had Orthodox conversions and are now living
> regular frum lives with their BT husbands.  My question is, is it
> possible that when the bas kol said, "Bas Ploni l'Ploni" that the
> Bas Ploni in question was not even Jewish at the time of the
> Heavenly announcement?!
>

We do not have to answer this question, because the story of the "bath
qol" (heavenly voice -- or, more accurately, "echo of a voice", "trace
of a voice" -- the term does not translate precisely into English) is
an "agada", a fable, and our Sages have instructed us that we need not
answer matters involving fables.

Nevertheless, there is an answer.  Our traditional sources have also
told us that conversion to Judaism changes you on an essential level,
such that there is a sense in which the person who emerges from the
miqveh or ma`ayan is a "different" person from the person who stepped
into it.  Thus, X and Y met, married (under secular law), and even
produced children, but then a conversion to Judaism occurred, at which
point X was replaced by X', a different person.  The "bath qol" did
not assert that X and Y were predestined for each other; it asserted
that X' and Y were predestined for each other.  And so they were.


			Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
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