Q&A: Half and Half
Half and Half
Question
We have before us a couple and a surrogate mother. I heard the position that if one of the two mothers (the egg provider or the surrogate) is not Jewish, then the fetus is not Jewish. Assuming that position is correct, could it be that theoretically, even if both mothers are Jewish, the fetus is still not Jewish, because neither one transmitted Judaism to it?
Answer
It seems like a strange position to me. At its root there is apparently the assumption that Jewish status is determined only by the combination of both requirements together: the egg and the womb of a Jewish woman. But if so, then your claim makes no sense. You are assuming that the egg and the womb have to belong to the same woman in order to transmit Jewishness. Why should that be so?
It somewhat reminds me of the theses about someone who sets his own dog on his fellow’s animal and is exempt (just as one who sets his fellow’s dog on his fellow’s animal, where both are exempt), and likewise one who throws a vessel from the roof and runs downstairs and breaks it before it hits the ground is exempt (according to the view that if one person threw it from the roof and another came and broke it, both are exempt).
Discussion on Answer
Why is that such a strange reasoning? It simply takes the stringent view on both sides and requires conversion out of stringency.
He didn’t mean it as a stringency, but as a definite status.
From what I know of this topic, that is the position of Rabbi Asher Weiss, and he is stringent in both directions. It may be that the questioner didn’t mean it as a stringency, but that is how Rabbi Asher Weiss understands it, as far as I know.
Thank you. The logic I had in mind for the position that he is not Jewish was that Jewishness is concrete, or dependent on the relationship to the mother: the mother passes on to her son the quality of being her own son, and therefore he is Jewish; but here he is the son of neither of them, and therefore he is not Jewish. The case of one who throws it and then runs and breaks it would apply if the egg provider would also do us the honor of serving as the surrogate. Here it may be more similar to a case where my ox threw the vessel off the roof (the above-mentioned ox is prone to throwing vessels), and then my rooster came along (it too is prone) and broke it. Even in that case, is it also obvious to you that he is liable?
Ah, you already wrote that, and even waved your hand a bit to sharpen the assumptions. All that remains for me is to inquire about the law of a gang of an ox and a rooster that joined forces to break the vessel. Is half-liability considered as though it does not exist, so that two half-measures do not combine, or in the end is the one who becomes liable a single person, and therefore they do combine? I vaguely recall that you have an article with Rabbi Grintz on the idea (something like what I heard from several others as well) that liability spreads from the property to its owner, and that’s why I asked about the ox and the rooster.
I don’t see why he would be exempt.
George, it’s the opposite of what you understood (at least as I understood you). The child is the son of both mothers, not of neither one.
Yishai, a priori or from sources? I wasn’t dealing with sources, only with theoretical possibilities. Why couldn’t it be that from the standpoint of Jewish law there are two conditions/causes for the status “mother” to take effect, such that neither of them is a full mother (and Jewishness is derivative of motherhood)? No need for examples, but for instance in Yevamot 104: two permitting factors do not take effect one without the other, as it was taught: the two lambs of Shavuot do not sanctify the bread except through slaughtering. How so, etc.? Rabbi Elazar son of Rabbi Shimon says: it is never sanctified until he slaughters them with proper intent and sprinkles their blood with proper intent.
By the way, another possibility is that every Jewish woman possesses her own unique “Jewishness card,” and by means of that card she produces new and unique Jewishness cards in her descendants (which are a function of her card and the global state). But a child of two mothers is not Jewish of mother 1’s type nor of mother 2’s type. It seems to me that the assumption throughout this whole discussion was that Jewishness is one single thing shared by all Jews, whereas seemingly one could say instead (what I called above concrete Jewishness) that the number of Jewishnesses equals the number of Jews, and just as their faces differ, so too their Jewishnesses differ.
Maybe one could say that if there is no one woman with both an egg and a womb who developed the fetus, then neither is its mother. Consequently, he is a child without a mother, and therefore he cannot be Jewish. The further assumption here is that a child of a Jewish mother is Jewish, and not that a child of a non-Jewish mother is a gentile.