THE PREGNANT PROSELYTE

Solomon B. Freehof

QUESTION: A young mother, pregnant, is a candidate for conversion to Judaism . The question asked whether the child which will be born after she had been converted will be a Jewish child by birth, or whether he, too, needs to be converted.(From Rabbi Sherman Stein.)*

ANSWER: The legal status of children of proselytes is discussed under the terms:"conceived in holiness" and"born in holiness." "Holiness" here means Judaism . The status of the child is, to a considerable extent, determined by both of these two tests: A child conceived before the mother is converted and born before the mother’s conversion(i.e., neither conceived nor born in"holiness") is a Gentile child and needs separate conversion if it is to be Jewish . A child conceived and born after the mother had converted is completely Jewish and needs no conversion. The child about whom the question is asked here would be described legally as not conceived in holiness, but born in holiness.

The distinction between children conceived before conversion and born after conversion and children conceived after conversion becomes greatly complicated in the case of levirate marriage. If one brother dies childless, does the other brother (both being children of a convert) have to practice levirate marriage or its alternate, halitzah? All this is discussed in the Mishnah(M. Yevamot, XI:2; the Talmud in B. Yevamot 97-98; Shulhan Arukh, Even Haezer 137:3; and Yoreh Deah, 269:3). The fact that the law does not require levirate marriage(or halitzah) in such cases is because the levirate marriage depends upon paternal relationship, yet even so the law admits that the children have a maternal relationship. In a recent volume of responsa, Har Tsvi,#223, by