[Avodah] how to fix a mamzer

[Saul Mashbaum via Avodah]

RET:
> Not necessarily. yichus refers to marriage. It might have nothing to
> do with mitzvot like honoring one's parents and other connections
> between parents and child

RZS:
> What are you talking about?  What does yichus have to do with marriage?
> Yichus means genealogy, i.e. who is whose child.  Nothing more or less.

Yichus may of course have different meanings in different contexts.

The first mishna in the fourth perek of Kiddushin, Asara Yuchasin, very
strongly connects yichus to marriage. The mishna lists ten halachic
categories of personal status (my translation of "yichus") , and then
immediately details the connection of these statuses to the permissibility
of marriage Indeed it is clear that according to this mishna, a *very
fundamental implication* of yichus is whom can one marry halachically,
Putting this more strongly it seems that the mishna is defining ten
halachic "marriageability" categories (yuchasin), making marriageability
a *defining characteristic* of yichus. This is most likely what RET had
in mind.
In the framework of this mishna, RZS' statement "What does yichus have
to do with marriage?Yichus means genealogy, i.e. who is whose child.
Nothing more or less." is untenable.Yichus defines whom you can marry.

When the gemara states "bno min min hashifcha umin hanachrit u eino
mityaches acharav" it is saying, as we know, that halachically the child
of a male Jew and a female slave or a non-Jewish woman is not his child;
there is no genealogical connection ("yichus") between them. This is
the sense of yichus that RZS apparently favors, but is a meaning of
yichus very different from that in the above cited mishna.

Saul Mashbaum