Jewish Law Responds to American Law 145
poses of this study, there are important limitations on whom a Kohen may or may not marry. A Kohen is prohibited from marrying an unchaste woman, a proselyte or a divorcee."
There is also a clearly defined list of prohibited marriages for all Jews ." The first condition for marriage is that a Jew should marry only a Jew.'? Families considering adoption face the future difficulty of determining whether their adopted child is a Jew. 121 It follows, then, that if a child is adopted and the child's personal status is not known, he may inadvertently enter into a prohibited marriage upon reaching adulthood, he might even enter unknowingly into an incestuous marriage.' Such a marriage would have disastrous legal effect upon any offspring of the marriage.’
Recognizing that even the most traditional and conservative halakhists have found methods to modify some areas of Jewish law to respond to new technologies and to adjust to the statutory requirements of the state, is there not a possibility that some of the questions which arise with regard to the status of a“closed” adoptee could be disposed of by utilizing new medical tech
niques? There is a clear and unequivocal opinion by Maimonides that we can accept the new knowledge given by medical technology to determine halakhic questions.!* He asserts that later generations are not required to accept the level of scientific knowledge of earlier rabbinic authorities.’?> Moreover, halakhah
will accept the reliability of blood tests.'?
As a major stumbling block with regard to closed adoptions is the potential for young people who do not know that they are related by blood to wed, could not newly developed sophisticated blood testing deal with that difficulty? Could not the possible blood relationship between a couple planning to be married be determined and authoritatively deal with that question through DNA testing?'?
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The oldest and equally, the most modern areas to be addressed are also the most distressing. They fall under the general rubric of bioethical. Both secular American society and Jewish thinkers have struggled with the excruciating moral challenge in what is now termed bioethics. ® The questions to be addressed are, how