Question:
Ok here is a question for you: if you believe that Adam and Eve were the first humans, and they had two sons, Cain and Abel, who did Cain marry? Did Eve mother her own grandchildren? Doesn't sound like a very healthy family. Wouldn't that cause genetic problems?
 
Answer:
Cain and Abel were both born with twin sisters. The Torah doesn't mention them by name as they didn't do anything dramatic like kill each other. But they are who Cain and Abel married. Cain may not have been his brother's keeper, but his sister thought he was a keeper.
 
Now of course marrying your twin sister is not a healthy thing to do either, and was later forbidden by the Torah. But it was not a problem in the early generations, either morally or medically. The first humans were genetically pure, so their inbreeding caused no complications as it would today. When there's only one family in world, your sister is as close to a stranger as you'll get. Only when the gene pool widened did people start marrying out of their immediate family.
 
There is something in this. Even today your spouse should be your twin, if not literally, in a spiritual sense. Marry someone who matches your values, your beliefs and your priorities. Your wife doesn't need to agree with everything you say - even twins are never really identical. But if her core values reflect yours, if you share the same aspirations for your future family and the same ideals in life, she's a keeper.

 

~ Rabbi Aron Moss

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