I discovered that I had a great-great-grandfather who was married to his first wife for a short time and then divorced her in Russia in 1873 when she was already two-months pregnant with a child. It is possible that he divorced her because of a chashash of adultery. What I am interested in is how do we establish without firm testimony that such a woman would have been pregnant with his child or someone else under such circumstances? I can't imagine why else he would have divorced her after a year or so if she was already 2 months pregnant back in those days. I was told that without firm testimony and evidence we assume a chazaka the child is the husband's and therefore not a mamzer. On the Russian and Jewish record the child is listed as the son of my great-great-grandfather. As it turned out I am a descendant of his through his second wife. Thanks.
David Goldman, USA
I would cite the Gemara in Sotah 27a that "Rov Be'ilos Achar ha'Ba'al" -- we assume that most of the time the wife is with her husband. This is why the rule is that we are not concerned about a child being a Mamzer unless we have very strong reason to believe he is.
Kol Tuv,
Dovid Bloom
Interesting, and yet there is always the likelihood that such a child is indeed a mamzer in fact....so if halacha doesn't worry about it, we'd assume that in shamayim he'd be OK....?!
Yes, in Shamayim the Halachah is determined according to what the Sages say in this world. We learn this from the Gemara (Gitin 6b) where Hash-m said, "My son Evyatar says like this, My son Yonasan says like this."
Kol Tuv,
Dovid Bloom
Conceptually this seems incredible because in this kind of situation the child could factually be a mamzer and yet it is as if this actual empirical reality disappears based on the principle of "rov beilos..." This means that "reality" in this world can never actually be established by empirical facts independent of the halachic view of these facts.
There is a verse in Tehilim 57:3, "I will call to the upper Elokim, the G-d who decides for me." The Talmud Yerushalmi (Nedarim 6:8) derives from this that the Beis Din possesses the power to influence nature through adding an extra month and making a leap year. If a girl had just become three years old but then the Beis Din decided to make it a leap year, her Besulim are considered to have returned and she would be conisdered a Besulah even if she had Bi'ah after her third birthday, before the leap year was proclaimed.
I should add to the above that in fact if we know for sure that the baby is not from the husband, then we do not rely on "Rov Be'ilos...."
The Yerushalmi I cited contains an important principle: that the Halachah can sometimes determine phsyical reality (for example, by deciding the age and therefore the maturity of a child). However, the concept of Rov is different because every majority also has a minority together with it, and if we know for sure that someone belongs to the minority, we do not follow the majority.
However, we need a very strong proof to make us go against the principle of Rov Be'ilos from the husband.
Kol Tuv,
Dovid Bloom