Question

Suppose I discover one day that I’m a kohen, and that my wife had been divorced before we got married. We live happily together and have children. If I came to you and asked your advice about what to do, would you tell me to break up the family and get divorced immediately?
The background to the question is, of course, that in day-to-day life religion is not all that burdensome for a person; sometimes it even helps him, gives meaning to his life, and then it’s easy to say that we believe everything came from God and that we are obligated by His commandments. I’m asking, of course, what would be proper to do, not what you personally would do. In addition, if someone were consulting me about a similar question in which, by divorcing his wife, he would save 1,000 people from death, say, it would be easier for me to advise him to do so (even though it’s not certain he would be required to, but that’s already a moral question). But here what’s on the scales is a minor transgression that harms no one…