[Avodah] matzot baked by a goy

[Daniel Israel]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:34:15 -0600 Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:
>Another point: since the issue is kavanah, it's not clear why the
>person's technical yichus matters so much.  Does anyone really 
>imagine that this woman's kavanah depends on whether her mother's 
>mother was Jewish?  She has the same level of kavanah or lack 
thereof, 
>whether she's technically Jewish or not.

Do you have a source for this?  I would have assumed that kevanah 
l'halacha requires the person to be Jewish.  That is, kevanah is 
not just a mental process.  Further, isn't lishma usually connected 
to the person being chayiv in that mitzvah?  So she could have the 
same mental focus as the Jewish workers, but would that constitute 
lishma?

--
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu