[Avodah] yovel

[Eli Turkel]

I was completely lost by the argument below. The original discussion
was the 10 lost tribes.
For definteless lets take the tribe of ephraim.
If someone intermarries we  have 2 possibilities. If an ephraim man
marries a nonJew then the child is not Jewish. If a non-Jewish man
marries an ephraim woman then the child is Jewish but not from Ephrain
since the tribe follows the father. Hence, in any case of
intermarriage the child is lost to the tribe.
Hence, in the case given with 100 Jews from Ephraim and 100 nonJews
and assuming equal men and women and complete randomness then after
one generation 25 of the Jewish men marry 25 Jewish women and have N
children for a total of 25N children belong to the tribe of Ephraim.
For simplicity assume N=2 and so the population stays stable. Thus we
now have 50 children in the tribe of Ephraim.
There will be another 50 children who are Jewish but not part of any
tribe and another 100 nonJews.
Of course in real life many of the 50 children with a Jewish mother
and NonJewish father who are technically Jewish will in fact be lost
to the Jewish people.

kol tuv

Eli


<<What does intermarriage prove? Half of all intermarriages result in
Jewish children.

Let's take a population of 100 Jews and 100 non-Jews, all of whom
intermarried. So we have 100 families, half of whose children are
Jewish, and half are not.

Let's use "N" as the average number of children per family. So in this
first generation of kids who have intermarried parents, there are a
total of 100*N children, of whom 50*N are Jewish, and 50*N are not.

Let's say they all randomly marry each other, either because they
consider themselves to be non-Jewish, or because they don't care. So
we now have 50*N couples, and they will have 50*N*N children. Of those
children, half will have a Jewish mother and half will not, so the
next generation has 25*N*N Jews, and 25*N*N non-Jews.>>

-- 
Eli Turkel