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after their parents’ separation, in Egypt too, when Pharaoh decreed
“Every boy that is born throw into the river” (Shemos 1:22), the Jews
nonetheless fulfilled the mitzvah of procreation. See maseches Sotah
(12a) where the gemara relates that although the Jews initially di-
vorced their wives when Pharaoh’s decree was promulgated, Miriam
reunited the families.1 All the more so here, where the children will
remain alive and will in all probability be successful in life, owing to
the lack of desire at their conception and their parents’ sacrifice in
fulfilling the mitzvah.

I have heard of a case of a woman who married a bad man though
she knew that after a time she would no longer be able to tolerate
being with him, yet she said she was prepared to marry him in order
to have a child and then to leave him, for she knew that she would
otherwise be unable to marry. And so it was: she married him and
later gave birth and separated from him because she couldn’t tolerate
staying with him. This smart woman was wise enough to grasp the
main purpose of marriage – giving birth to a child, despite the great
suffering involved.

ɳ Response to Question Two

In order to answer the second question – whether one must reveal
the man’s situation [i.e. that he is a homosexual] to a prospective
marriage partner – we must first consider the halachah in regard to a
woman who is already married to a deviant of this nature, who knew
nothing about her husband’s condition. Is their marriage null and
void? We must apparently first analyze the cause of this aberration
and its source: Is it owing to an overabundance of lust or is it a mental
illness – a type of madness – as the Rambam writes (Hilchos Dei’os
2,1): “Some people suffering from physical illness taste the bitter as
sweet and the sweet as bitter”? Perhaps this deviant too suffers from
a type of sickness whereby his senses are confused, resulting in his re-

1. This is discussed earlier, at the beginning of siman 230.

328 1 Medical-Halachic Responsa of Rav Zilberstein