[Avodah] how to 'fix' a mamzer

[Zev Sero via Avodah]

On 05/16/2016 03:14 PM, Marty Bluke wrote:
>     The gemara there doesn't say that your children by a shifcha are not yours.
>     The gemara isn't concerned with whose children they are, it's concerned with
>     their status.   It says that your children by a shifcha are avadim like her,
>     and its proof is from the explicit pasuk that they will be her owner's
>     property.  QED.  That doesn't preclude them being your children, e.g. to
>     exempt your wife from yibbum. (The Tosfos I cited above says they're not,
>     but it's explicitly discussing it from the rabbanan's POV, not from that
>     of R Tarfon, which is what we're discussing.)
>
> You are assuming that the Torah distinguishes between yichus and them being
> your children.

Neither the pasuk nor the gemara says anything about their yichus.  All it
discusses is their status.  The Pasuk says they belong to their mother's
owner, therefore the gemara says they are avadim.  There's no chain of logic
involved here; the gemara is merely restating the pasuk.

That is very unlike the gemara's next case, where the pasuk doesn't directly
address the children in question at all, and its indirect statement is that
they are not yours, from which the gemara infers that they must be nochrim.



> I don't think there is such a distinction. Yichus determines whether they
> are your children or not.

Well, yes, that's what yichus *is*.


> Since the child of a shifcha is an eved they can't be related to you as
> a Jew can't be related to a non Jew.

1) Who says a Jew can't be related to a non-Jew?  The gemara's order of
logic is *not* "they're nochrim, therefore they're not your children",
but rather "they're not your children, therefore they're nochrim".

2) Avadim *are* Jews, so who says they can't be related to Jews?


-- 
Zev Sero               Meaningless combinations of words do not acquire
zev at sero.name          meaning merely by appending them to the two other
                        words `God can'.  Nonsense remains nonsense, even
                        when we talk it about God.   -- C S Lewis