[Avodah] how to 'fix' a mamzer

[Zev Sero via Avodah]

On 05/18/2016 10:27 AM, M Cohen wrote:
> L'maaseh, today a cohen basically cannot marry almost all BT girls, and must
> look towards FFB shidduchim
>
> This 'fact of life' is common knowledge among BT kallah teachers.
>
> At this pt, we do assume that FFB girls are mutar to a cohen (unless they
> bring it up otherwise)

But what about chalalos?   An FFB girl may very well be a chalalah because
her great-grandfather was a cohen, and her great-grandmother was someone
he shouldn't have married.  Who keeps track of that, let alone after several
generations?


> As the time line moves forward, it's hard to understand why BT cohens
> are considered cohenim and allowed to do birkas cohanim etc

Not just BTs, as I pointed out above.  And indeed many poskim do say that
this is why our cohanim only duchen on yomtov; since they have no yichus,
and can't know whether they're really entitled to duchen, they should avoid
doing so except when it would be blatantly obvious, and would thus cause a
pegam on their family.   (This is a based on a gemara that a safek cohen
would collect terumah only once a year, to keep up his name.)


-- 
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