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Mamzer



A Mamzer (Hebrew word) in Halakha (Jewish religious law) is a person born of certain forbidden relationships between two Jews. That is, one who is born from a married woman as a product of adultery or someone born as a product of incest between certain close relatives.

The mamzer status is inherited by children; a child of a mamzer (whether mother or father) is also a mamzer. While the word mamzer is often translated as "bastard", unlike the colloquial usage of bastard, a child born between people of two different faiths is not a mamzer.

"They answered him (the man who had been blind): Why, you mamzer (you were born entirely in sins)! Are you trying to teach us? And they drove him our" (John 9:34).

Here, Pharisees used the Hebrew and Yiddish word mamzer, often rendered "illegitimate son", although technically it refers specifically to the offspring of a marriage prohibited in Leviticus 18; according to halakhah, a mamzer may not marry a legitimate daughter of Israel, only a mamzeret.