Rules: Extra material

Weddability

JERUSALEM (Jan 6, AP - 1997 07:42 a.m. EST) -
Ultra-Orthodox rabbis have begun sending women
whose husbands are sterile to non-Jewish sperm banks
because children born of artificial insemination by
anonymous Jewish donors may be barred from marrying
under religious law, Israeli press reports said Monday.

The daily Yediot Aharonot reported that growing
numbers of ultra-Orthodox couples are being sent by
their rabbis to fertility clinics abroad in order to avoid
Jewish legal tangles resulting from artificial
impregnation with anonymous Jewish sperm.

Under Jewish religious law, a child born of such an
anonymous donor would be "unweddable" because
there is no way of knowing if their prospective spouse is
a relative.

Use of non-Jewish sperm also avoids the possibility that
the sperm donor could be related to the mother.

"This is a very serious matter," Yigal Shpern, a
prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi and doctor, told Yediot
Aharonot. "It is better to use sperm that has no pedigree
than Jewish sperm," he said.

The fact that the father of the child may be Muslim or
Christian has no impact on the religious of the child
since under religious law anyone born of a Jewish
mother is considered Jewish.