[Avodah] Ben Ish Mitzri

[Micha Berger]

Bringing part of an Areivim discussion here...

The question of nature vs nurture has a clear answer of "both", with the
question being in the details of how the two combine. Clearly neither
determines the personality to the exclusion of the other.

(Tangent: Nature vs nurture plays down the role bechirah plays in shaping
our own development. In
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2005/01/free-will-and-environment.shtml> I
suggested that even within nature vs nurture, on the nurture side,
bechirah enters in what parts of my environment I choose to focus on.)

And so, the question of marrying a product of IVF-donor does involve
matters that do not enter that of marrying a BT. As does marrying someone
whose father was a nachri.

For that matter, even choosing to marry a ger.

But once reaching that point, I feel compelled to add that while it does
"involve matters" of the genetic component of personality, the question
is in practice moot.

After all, we aren't talking about making a shidduch with an unknown
entity (I hope). The genetics, whatever they were, produced the person
who chose to become a BT or geir, the person this child wants to marry.
Lekhat-chilah one may worry what will the offspring be like. But at
this point?

I therefore see the concern lekhat-chilah, WRT choosing to be a mother
by IVF-donor, but not post-facto, when it comes to shidduchim.

How this relates to the Ben Ish Mitzri and the medrash which identifies
him with the meqalel depends on how you see his etiology: Would he have
become the meqalel had his mother's sheivet not shunned him? Or was it
the shunning itself which made him rebellious enough to speak up?

And if you think the medrash about the mother being Mrs Dasan and a rape
victim is part of the same lesson, then how much of his problems stem
from that horrible home life?

(In that Medrash in Shemos Rabba, it's for that violation of the 7
mitzvos benei Noach that Moshe kills the Mitzri.)

Nature or Nurture?

But again, you meet a prospective chasan; regardless of the genetics,
you should know enough about the finished product not to need to introduce
fears based on what potentialities the genes might have contained.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The Maharal of Prague created a golem, and
micha at aishdas.org        this was a great wonder. But it is much more
http://www.aishdas.org   wonderful to transform a corporeal person into a
Fax: (270) 514-1507      "mensch"!     -Rav Yisrael Salanter