SELECTED REFORM RESPONSA
the Talmud in b. Yevamot 47a, and then the Tur and the Shulhan Arukh in Yoreh Deah 268:10 and 11. The various subdivisions of the problem are these:(a) a man claims to have been converted fore a certain Jewish court;(b) a man claims to have been converted privately, not before a court;(c) a man was assumed to be a Jew but now he himself has raised a question and says he has been a Gentile but has been converted;(d) a man was assumed to be a Gentile but claims that he has been converted.
These various situations arouse different reactions in the minds of the legal authorities. In general, their answer is that the man claiming to have been converted, let us say privately(without the technical requirements which the court would demand), has a right to cast doubt upon his own Jewishness by raising this question, but he has no right to cast doubt upon the Jewish status of his children. That-is to say, before he may now marry another Jewess he would need to take a ritual bath(assuming that he is
already circumcised), but, since at the time that he makes the statement he is not surely Jewish , he is not eligible to testify in a Jewish court against his children. The children are of unquestioned
There is some difference in the answers for each of the various categories mentioned above. But in general the tendency of the law is increasingly to accept a man’s statement if he says he has been converted. Thus Asher ben Yehiel in the"Pisqe Harosh 4:34, 35, sums up the law to his time when he says: if a man as that he was converted before a certain court, he must bring proo (since a court’s actions are susceptible of proof), but all the poet that is needed is merely for people to say,"We have heard that: e was converted." Further, if a man says he was converted privately, he has to take the ritual bath before marrying a Jewess, but his sons are held to be Jewish . To Tur , Yoreh Deah 368, Joel Sirkes
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