DANIEL SCHIFF

to every way of life and in every nation, the seed of Israel is regarded as too noble to mix with bastards.*

According to Maimonides , then, deterrence from illicit unions, par­ticularly adultery, is the primary aim of the indelible status of mamzerut. This communal stigmatization of the child of adultery— along with its progeny—must surely have acted as a powerful impediment to adultery in much the same way as the death penalty previously had.

The thirteenth-century Sefer HaChinukh further develops Maimonides ’ secondary concern about the“seed of Israel ” being mixed with that of bastards:

At the root of the precept lies the reason that the engendering of a bastard is very evil, occurring in uncleanness, abominable thought, and sinful counsel. And there is no doubt that the nature of the father is hidden(latent) in the son....*

In other words, the taint of the sin—in this case, adultery—com­mitted by the parents is somehow transferred to the child and, as a result, the child must be kept away from general Jewish society to protect the community from the spread of evil. Although the stated Intent here is the need to quarantine immorality, the core purpose of the idea remains the same: to place the illicit union so far beyond the pale of decency that it becomes impossible even to contemplate.

Mamzerut, combined with the enforced separation of the dulteress from her husband and paramour, has remained, for two Millennia , the very serious consequence of adultery within tradi­tion] halakhah. In the State of Israel , where the traditional alakhah has legal authority for Jews over matters of status, the

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