Q&A: What Is the Difference Between a Gentile, a Slave, and an Animal?
What Is the Difference Between a Gentile, a Slave, and an Animal?
Question
Maimonides rules in accordance with the passage in tractate Yevamot (Laws of Marriage 15:6): “If a man had children while he was a gentile, and he converted, and they converted, he has fulfilled this commandment. If he had children while he was a slave and then he was freed, then he has not fulfilled the commandment of being fruitful and multiplying until he fathers children after being freed, because a slave has no lineage.”
In other words, the children of a gentile are traced after him even after he converts, whereas the children of a slave are not traced after him (without getting into the discussion of whether his children also need to convert).
And in the passage in Kiddushin 62b: “Rabbi Abba bar Mamal challenged this: If so, then one who gives a perutah to his slave-woman and says, ‘Behold, you are betrothed to me after I free you,’ should the betrothal also take effect? Is that comparable? There, originally she was like an animal; here, there is a different mind.”
And the medieval authorities dispute there whether this answer, “originally she was like an animal,” applies specifically to a Canaanite maidservant—because slaves are like animals, as is learned from “Stay here with the donkey,” and because a slave has no lineage (Rashba and others)—or whether this answer is also correct regarding a gentile who converts (Tosafot HaRosh and others).
I would be glad to clarify two points, mainly according to the Rashba’s view:
1. What is the difference between lineage, which it seems a gentile has, and mental agency? If a gentile woman who was sold as a Canaanite maidservant had mental agency while she was a gentile, did she become like an animal without mental agency during slavery, and when she is freed does that mental agency return to her (or will she now possess a different mind)?
2. In terms of lineage (and being fruitful and multiplying), if a gentile had children and was then sold as a Canaanite slave and later freed, are the children he had while a gentile (before his period of slavery) still traced to him? Or since at some point he became like an animal/donkey, did he lose that lineage status (and is therefore obligated in being fruitful and multiplying)? In other words, even if an ordinary convert is not considered like a newborn child, would conversion through the process of slavery and emancipation be considered by everyone like a newborn child?
Thank you.
Answer
1. It seems you did not understand the issue of mental agency being discussed here. It does not mean that she lacks mental agency, but that this is the mind of another person.
2. As for a slave’s lineage, simply speaking this follows from the fact that he has a master, and everything is attributed to his master. If so, his earlier children are not attributed to the master.
Discussion on Answer
1. I am not in the passage right now, but I find it hard to believe that there is an opinion that one can give a perutah to a gentile woman so that she will be betrothed to me after she converts. There is no betrothal with a gentile. And by the time that later moment arrives, the act has already expired and the gentile woman is something not yet in existence.
2. Indeed.
That is an explicit Mishnah: such betrothals do not take effect because it is something not yet in existence. The Talmud discusses whether converting is “in his power” (like produce attached to the ground with regard to terumah), and if so, then if a gentile says, “Be betrothed to me after I convert,” the betrothal would take effect. And it answers that it is not in his power, because he requires three. The Talmud then continues and asks: if so, in the case of one who betroths his maidservant for after she is freed—since it is in his power to free her—should she become betrothed? At this point comes the answer “originally she was like an animal,” and the discussion among the medieval authorities whether this answer could also have been said to the first question regarding a gentile. That is what I was referring to.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for the quick and sharp answer.
1. So it turns out that the dispute among the medieval authorities as to whether the answer “originally she was like an animal” can also refer to a convert who converted, or only to a maidservant, depends on the dispute in Yevamot regarding one who had children while a gentile: the Rashba rules in accordance with Rabbi Yohanan, while Tosafot HaRosh follows Reish Lakish.
2. That is what logic suggests. I looked and did not find anything about this case, and that is why I asked. So there emerges an interesting anecdote according to the second view in Tosafot on Chagigah (2b, s.v. “she should not be”), that a slave is obligated in being fruitful and multiplying: even if he had children while a gentile before becoming a slave, he would still be obligated in being fruitful and multiplying during his period of slavery, but when he is freed, his children from his gentile period exempt him from being fruitful and multiplying.