Q&A: The Commandment After Death
The Commandment After Death
Question
I saw in an Assia pamphlet (77) [pamphlets on medicine and Jewish law; if I remember correctly, the Rabbi himself wrote an article in one of the issues on matters of statistics in Jewish law]. It told of a young man who was diagnosed with cancer, and since the treatments were expected to harm his ability to father children, they took his sperm into a test tube and froze it. In practice, that young man passed away, and three years later twins, a boy and a girl, were born from that sperm.
My question is whether the above-mentioned person fulfilled the commandment of being fruitful and multiplying, or perhaps since this was only after his death, and the dead are exempt from commandments, he did not fulfill it. And is this similar to someone who leaves his wife pregnant and children are born to him after his death, or is this case different, since here the whole commandment only began after his death, because the sperm was inserted into the woman’s body two years after his death?
With all due respect,
Yisrael
Answer
First of all, I don’t think this has any practical significance. What practical difference would it make whether he fulfilled the commandment or not?
In a case where he left his wife pregnant, he performed an act, and therefore one can say that he fulfilled the commandment. It was only lacking time. Here there is only a result without any act on his part, and it is not reasonable to say that there is a commandment in that case (even if we define being fruitful and multiplying as a commandment of result). However, if he himself instructed that this be done after his death, there is room to discuss whether he would nevertheless have a commandment in this, since if they had done so during his lifetime, he presumably would indeed have fulfilled a commandment through it. In other words, such an instruction may well count as a sufficient act on his part.
Discussion on Answer
If the statement itself is considered a sufficient act on his part, then seemingly it has no connection to the actual fertilization. He already fulfilled the commandment through the statement itself, no?
That is obviously not so. Someone who had intercourse but did not have a son and a daughter did not fulfill the commandment of being fruitful and multiplying. That is the act of the commandment, but its fulfillment comes with the result. Alternatively, the commandment is conditional on the result.
A practical difference would be when he rises at the resurrection of the dead.