By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein

The next step, a leap of faith like so much of the rest of religion, is to suggest that actions of sin and mitsvah also express themselves somehow in the body’s cells, including reproductive ones¹⁷. Violations of Shabbat, for example, would not only create a liability in some Heavenly accounting of one’s deeds, but would affect the expression and replication of one’s genes in some way¹⁸. Those changes, we are suggesting, would be passed on to one’s offspring as well.

The relationships between parents and children indicated by the mix of science and theology we have put into our discussion of genetics offers another possibility for how Ramban could have seen it as explaining theodicy. Children, we have noted, represent a genetic mix of their parents; it was the right to produce such a genetically mixed offspring that the Torah wanted to safeguard for a man who died childless. Neither parent produces a clone, but each produces a child who bears some of his and her genetic imprint.

Seeing children as the continuity of the parents, the piece of themselves they are able to leave behind, also explains an oddity in the laws of inheritance. As far as the Torah was concerned- although Jewish law has now developed wills along the lines of other legal systems- the moment a person died, his possessions immediately became the property of his heirs. Note that I did not refer to the heirs acquiring the property, just that it automatically passed to them. That, too, fits best with the idea that the children are the continuity of the parent; when the parent leaves the world, the children become the parent to some halachic extent.

Our picture of genetic continuity means that to some degree the child bears the mark of the parents’ sins and virtues. Since each person’s deeds impact on the genetic network, some of the mark of those deeds will be passed on to that person’s children¹⁹. That perhaps explains why the Torah speaks of God as פקד עון אבות על בנים, visiting the sins of the father upon the sons²⁰, and also feels the need to specifically prohibit a human court from acting the same way, killing sons for the sins of the father²¹. Without this explanation, the whole concept of familial responsibility seems problematic at best, with children the innocent victims or undeserving beneficiaries of their parents’ actions. Seeing children as bearing the imprint of their parents’ genetic legacy reminds us that they are, as per סוד העיבור, the remarkable continuation of their parents, and thus are inherently related to any of their parents’ actions²².

A rejected Talmudic explanation of theodicy raises the same issue. R. Yose b. Yohanan claimed that when Moses asked God about undeserved suffering and prosperity, God answered that righteous people descended from evildoers suffer, while evildoers descended from the righteous will prosper. The Talmud rejects that claim, because God only punishes descendants (or rewards them) when they continue their progenitors’ actions. R. Yose b. Yohanan, however, clearly assumed some kind of connection between the parents’ actions and the descendants’ lot in life.

Perhaps most interesting in this context is Ramban’s explanation of why the Torah only refers to four generations when it comes to punishing descendants for a forefather’s sin²³. Ramban suggests that a fifth generation would not be punished for the sin of the forefather even if that fifth generation continued the father’s sin.

Thinking genetically, the argument runs as follows. Parents imprint all sorts of tendencies on their children, the framework of the children’s lives. There are always two parents’ imprints, so it is never just one person’s proclivities that the child receives. Every human being then chooses whether to continue the good ways in which the parents actualized their genes and repress the bad, vice verse, or any combination thereof.

When a child continues the parent’s good actions, he or she is fortifying that particular expression of the gene’s potential; quite possibly, the gene that child passes on to his or her children will have been strengthened by those positive actions, and will have an easier time taking root in his children²⁴. The reward, then, is not only for the act itself, but also for the strengthening impact on that gene’s function in the person’s makeup.

The same would apply to the punishment the child deserves for evil. Just as the good deed strengthened a parent’s tendency, sinning either weakens that parent’s tendency or fortifies a wrong the parent had committed. Either way, the sin is not only the act itself, but the effect of that act on the genetic makeup that person will bequeath to the next generation.

As the generations go by, the original parent’s legacy is repeatedly diluted, both by the actions of the descendant now producing offspring and by the intermixing of the spouse’s genes and genetic potential. By the fifth generation, Ramban seems to be saying, the impact of the original sin is no longer sufficient for God to see current sins as a result of the forefather’s contribution [25].

Which brings us back to theodicy. Sod ha’ibbur, might have told Ramban that people do not enter adulthood with a blank slate, despite their not being held accountable for their childhood acts; they bear their parents’ genetic legacy. A righteous person who suffers may be receiving punishment for evils committed, but may also be being challenged at a point of weakness inherited from that person’s parents.

The daughter of a drug addict who falls sick, for example, may be being challenged to use drugs only as medicine and not as an addiction. Should she succeed, she would not only have grown herself, but she would have in some sense erased the negative genetic legacy left by her parents. Alternatively, the sufferings of a righteous person (assuming they are not punishment) might be helping that person avoid a challenge that the genetic legacy left them unready to face. A person with a tendency to misusing money might live a life of poverty as protection against a tendency that would be too difficult to face head on²⁶.

In reverse for an evildoer, aside from receiving reward for whatever good deeds one has committed, prosperity might be a Divine attempt to help that evildoer return to the good ways of a parent. The mark of the parent’s good is very strong, and the expectation or hope that the current evildoer will repent might be strong enough to smooth his path through life.

Our claims thus far, which we believe are the easiest reading of each of the issues we have raised, affect numerous other areas of Jewish law and thought, but we will limit ourselves to one more at the present time. Staying within the bounds of topics already raised by this discussion, quirks in the laws of inheritance and levirate marriage suggest one further claim for our theological genetics.

The Torah established an absolute right of a first-born son to receive an extra portion of the inheritance²⁷. Slightly different, but related, is the halachic preference for the oldest available brother to be the one to perform levirate marriage²⁸. This latter one seems to have at least some genetic component, as halachah prefers the marriage of a younger brother to the halitsah, the unshoeing ceremony that announces the brother’s refusal to produce offspring for his deceased brother, of an older one.

The emphasis on older sons has little obvious rationale, but our explorations offer the possibility that the Torah assumed a greater genetic connection between older sons and their father. We could explain such an assumption by reminding ourselves that the resemblance of children to parents is actually a remarkable aspect of genetics²⁹.

Combining genes from two people at complete random should produce many wildly different children. The existence of dominant and recessive genes explains much of genetic stability within a particular trait, people are made up of thousands if not millions of traits. That children bear clear, sometimes uncanny, resemblances to their parents suggests that the passage of genes is not random at all.

At the same time, given two parents, the Torah clearly did not intend for parents to produce clones, or even that boys be clones of their fathers and girls of their mothers, or vice verse. God, it would seem, wanted to express a range of options within the parents’ genetic potential, with each child taking a different place in that range.

The laws of inheritance and levirate marriage suggest that the way that range was set up was by working from the oldest brother (and even more so if he was a first-born) as the closest genetically to the father, with that genetic closeness being diluted and altered in various ways in later sons.

When it comes time to lodge the father’s possessions with someone, the first-born then has a claim to a greater share. When it comes time to try to produce the child any particular brother would have had with his wife, the older the brother has more of the original genetic material they have from which to attempt to match the deceased’s genes.

Closing with what is obviously speculation perhaps leaves readers with the mistaken impression that this entire discussion has been speculative, so we must note the different types of claim we are making. We have pointed out absolute weaknesses in seeing Ramban as a believer in reincarnation based on his comments regarding levirate marriage and theodicy. Both in Ramban’s language, and the use to which the concept it being put, reincarnation does not explain the topics where it was raised.

Beyond that, we showed that genetics provides a clearer reading of Ramban’s words and explains the use of those words for levirate marriage and for incest prohibitions. To explain how it worked for theodicy, we had to move into a more speculative range, making a guess about genetics that is outside the realm of science.

By assuming that actions of sin and mitsvah affect a person’s genetic makeup- an assumption not without some precedent in Jewish sources, but rejected by biologists- we were able to suggest that Ramban’s explanation of theodicy was not that the sufferer is being punished for sins from a previous life, but is being made to work within the genetic legacy passed down from his or her forefathers. We offered one more example of where this view of genetics could take us, using it to explain the halachic preference for older sons, both in inheritance as well as in levirate marriage.

Scientific claims can be validated by experimentation and falsification, so we have clearly not offered a scientific reading of the Torah. Rather, we have tried to show how established scientific facts and the current research concerns of the genetics community deepen our understanding of matters Ramban only knew as esoteric hints. In that sense, we offer this piece as an example of science- the attempt to read the Book of Creation- serving as a handmaiden to Torah, helping Jews read and better understand the Divine word and ideas incorporated in the Book of the Torah.

fn17 R. Yosef Yavets, the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century interpreter of Avot, offered a similar interpretation for the phrase (2:1) “and all your deeds are written in the book, וכל מעשיך בספר נכתבים.” According to Yavets, the “book” to which the Mishnah refers was the book of one’s soul. Considering the link between body and soul assumed by most medieval authorities and that modern science is rediscovering, it does not seem so far a jump to suggest that Yavets’ book includes the cell and its epigenetic network, which records, and to some extent passes on to the next generation, the influence of each of a person’s actions.

¹⁸ We all know that our actions affect us more than just in our character -when we learn to drive, we are training our muscle memory, not our conscious thought. So, too, mitsvot can impact our bodies’ muscle memory, a memory included in future generations of cells.

¹⁹ My theory would suggest that people who undergo a huge personal change- radically changing their attitude towards food, temperament, or religion, for just some examples – might produce genetically different children from before and after that change, although relatively subtly. Following this line of logic offers a physical explanation for the Talmud’s, bYebamot 97b, view that twins who were הורתם שלא בקדושה ולדתם בקדושה, conceived before the mother’s conversion but born afterwards, are not related. Once we see incest and levirate marriage as genetic issues, we realize that the conversion of the parent has a significant impact on the genetic makeup, such that the brothers are in fact genetically distinct enough as to wipe away the ordinary relationships of brotherhood set up by the Torah.

²⁰ Exod, 34:7.

²¹ Deut 24:16.

²² Intuitively we all know this, which is why children are so much more likely to be disturbed and embarrassed by their parents’ actions- we know that what our parents are capable of, we are capable of, because we bear their genetic makeup.

²³ Exod 20;4.

²⁴ This also explains the Talmud’s claim, bBaba. Metsia 85a, that Torah will never abandon a family that has three consecutive generations of Torah scholars, because Torah returns to its אכסניא, its guest-house. Sociologically, the claim seems rather weak; genetically, it says that three consecutive generations of Torah scholars establish a strengthening of the genetic connection to Torah that cannot be broken.

²⁵ Taking this idea to its fullest extent, the verse’s assumption that sins are only visited on four generations whereas kindness are repaid to thousands suggests that good deeds have a more significant impact on one’ genes than evil ones, but that is a topic for another time.

²⁶ Recall Ramban’s claim, Gen 22:1, that God only “tests” the righteous, putting them in situations that challenge their ability to live up to them, to the extent that He knows that they can pass the test.

²⁷ See Deut 21:15-17, mBaba Bathra 8:5, Hoshen Mishpat 281:4.

²⁸ See bYevamot 24a, with Even haEzer161:4. Note especially that if the oldest is unable or unwilling, the preference is to go down the line in age order.

²⁹ The stability of inheritance of characteristics is one of the wonders of genetics noted by Capra as well.

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