Daf Yomi

“But in fact, the Gemara goes on to counter, there is a way for a gentile woman to become marriageable: All she has to do is convert to Judaism. Doesn’t this mean that she is legally akin to other forbidden women, who are not forbidden forever and always, but only under certain conditions? But the rabbis deny the parallel. ‘When she converts, she is a different body,’ they say: Conversion creates a new legal person, who did not exist before. It is only this new person who is marriageable, not the old, gentile version of her who has ceased to exist.”

"Converting for Love?" - Tablet Magazine, - http://www.tabletmag.com/?p=186707. Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world.