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cern, for since everyone believes that his mother’s husband
is his father that is truly his name, just as the poskim write
in regard to an adoptive father, who raises an orphan as his
own, whose name can be written in the get as the divorcing
party’s father.

3. A child born by artificial insemination [from a non-Jew-
ish donor] believes himself to be the son of his mother’s
husband and therefore his heir who inherits him – as well
as any other paternal relatives – when he dies, thereby
stealing the property of the true heirs.

4. We have already written elsewhere6 that if the woman’s
husband dies without children [which is very likely for
his inability to sire a child was the reason she sought the
artificial insemination] she has to do chalitzah. We must be
concerned that she may be embarrassed to ask for chalitzah
for by doing so she will reveal that her son is not the son of
her late husband and she may therefore marry a stranger
without having done chalitzah.

5. If the sperm is donated by a non-Jew, there is an additional
danger which the Bobover Rebbe zt”l warned about in
regard to an actual case. When a woman of distinguished
lineage, from a rabbinical family, asked the Rebbe to permit
her to be inseminated with the sperm of a non-Jew since
some poskim allow artificial insemination with sperm of
a non-Jew, the Rebbe explained to this woman and her
husband: If this insemination results in a pregnancy and
you have a son, when he grows up you will obviously mar-
ry him off to a girl from a distinguished background as is
customary, while certainly concealing from the other side
that the groom’s true father is a gentile. You will thereby be
violating the prohibition of deception, because the son of
a non-Jew clearly inherits the characteristics of non-Jews,

6. Earlier, in siman 254.

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