SEPARATING THE ADULT FROM ADULTERY

Under a law based on equality, she would thereby have suffered doubly, whereas—under the actual law—though a man whose wife committed adultery had to endure her loss, in all probability he stil possessed sufficient status and resources to rebuild his life. Hence, the aggrieved wife—unlike an aggrieved husband—could opt to continue her marriage, or she could petition the court to rule that her husband provide her with a get. Nevertheless, the corollary of this unequal application was that a husband guilty of adultery, asa result of the way the law developed, might suffer no more than stern societal disapproval. There is good reason to believe that the law was more concerned with deterrence than with punishment,” and, consequently, in the case of adultery, only one party needed 10 be deterred for the act to be prevented. Still, the lack of punishment for the guilty husband inevitably must be seen& diluting the standing of the crime as a moral sin against family and God .

The other serious consequence of adultery that remains 2 feature of traditional halakhah and has significant impact on bof adulterer and adulteress is that any offspring of an adulterous unio’ was considered a mamzer.*' The rabbis discerned that the child o a relationship forbidden by the Torah and punishable by karet Of death is restricted from marrying anybody except another mam and that this blemish was passed on till the tenth generation, which was understood to imply“for all time.”** Maimonides provides? lucid account of his understanding of the reason behind this 1aW:

In order to deter people from illicit unions, a bastard is forbidden to marry a daughter of Israel ; so that the adulterous man and adulterous woman should know that by committing their act they attach to their descendants a stigma that can never be effaced. The children born of adultery being, moreover, always despised

88