In this Mishnah, we’ll talk about how, on a de’rabbanan (rabbinic) level, a Kohen (priest) has an obligation to look into a woman’s lineage before he gets married to her. A Kohen is not allowed to marry a Chalalah. It is prohibited for him to marry a woman who comes from that type of lineage. Once the Hachamim (Sages) instituted that he has to look into the woman’s lineage in a very detailed way, as we’ll discuss, they also instituted that he has to make sure the woman he’s marrying is not a Mamzeret (female mamzer), even though every Jew is prohibited from marrying a Mamzeret. While this investigation is going on, the Hachamim said, “If you’re working on ensuring she’s not a Chalalah, let’s also add the obligation to double-check her lineage in terms of Mamzerut (mamzer status) as well.”
The Mishnah says: If a Kohen wants to marry a woman who is a Kohen—we’ll see why that matters momentarily. Right now, he wants to marry a Kohen girl. He has to look into her lineage by identifying four female ancestors, two from the mother’s side and two from her father’s side, to make sure there is no psul, no disqualification, when it comes to their yichus, their lineage. He has to look into these four people, and they have to be mothers. The Gemara gets into why we actually look into just the woman here, as opposed to this girl’s father as well. Why are we looking at four different Imahot (mothers)? The Gemara says that when men fight, when they have an argument with each other, they’ll go at each other and call each other out about lineage. Therefore, if someone has a problem with lineage, it would be out in the open; it would be known to us.
By contrast, when women fight, they talk about Arayot, they talk about the Imahot, and they talk about people doing things inappropriately in terms of marriage, in terms of doing things inappropriately, in terms of adultery. Those things would be out in the open, but lineage problems wouldn’t be. So they have to look into four female ancestors, two from the mother’s side and two from the father’s side, to make sure there is no disqualification. It ends up turning into eight, because if he has to look into these four people to determine if they’re kosher (fit) in their lineage, these four women, you have to go back one more generation to make sure their mothers are okay. So it ends up being eight female ancestors in total.
Then we’ll count them out. Imah ve’em imah. Number one is the girl in question’s mother, and the mother’s mother, so her maternal grandmother. Those are the first two. Numbers three and four: Ve’em avi imah, ve’imah. This girl’s mother’s father’s mother, and her mother. So, one more time: the woman’s mother, her father’s mother, and then her mother. That’s the third and fourth person you have to look into. Ve’em aviha, ve’imah. This girl’s father’s mother and her mother. That’s five and six. Ve’em avi avia, ve’imah. This girl in question’s father’s mother and her mother. That’s who you have to look into in order to determine whether this girl is appropriate, whether you can get married to her.
We only do all these checks, by the way, where there is a suspicion, a little bit of a rumor, or a question out there about this family. But if there’s nothing, then the Hachamim did not obligate us to do all these checks. Leviyah ve’Yisraelit, if he is marrying a woman who is a daughter of a Levi (Levite) or a Yisrael (Israelite), then we add one more generation of female ancestors, for a total of 12 ancestors, because non-Kohanim—which means a Levi or a Yisrael—are much more prone to have issues in their family. So we want to be even more scrupulous to make sure that we’re not marrying into a problematic family. So we go back one more generation.