SEPARATING THE ADULT FROM ADULTERY

mamzerut sanction remains potent. In all communities governed by the traditional halakhah, these sanctions retain the potential to be applied and continue, therefore, to serve as a deterrent. Indeed, through the centuries, the clear traditional halakhic condemnation of adultery has never wavered. Sefer HaChinukh provides a vivid articulation of the attitude toward adultery that persevered through the generations. From concerns over paternity, the author moves to an explanation of why adultery is tantamount to the breaking of many of the Ten Commandments :

And so did He wish that about a human child it should always be known whose it is, and they should not become intermingled with one another.

Quite a few other harmful results will also be found to follow from adultery: for it will be the cause of transgression of several obligations which God imposed on us. Thus, He commanded us about honoring parents, and they will not be recognized by the children where there was adultery. There will be a further disaster about what we were equally commanded, not to be conjugally intimate with a sister and with many other women [relatives]: All will be uprooted, overturned, on account of adultery, for people will not recognize their female relatives. And this apart from the fact that there is in adultery with a married woman an aspect of theft, which is something that, clearly, the intelligence should spurn. Moreover, it is a cause of the loss of human life: for it is a known fact about human nature that people grow jealous over the adulterous relations of their wives with others, and they settle accounts with the adulterer even to the death. And there are so many other misfortunes in addition to these.*

The conclusion could hardly be clearer: the tradition saw adultery

as a tragedy of epic proportions that deserved stern condemnatio’

and serious sanctions in an attempt both to minimize its occurren®

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a HH HE eH

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