Ethical questions as only my friends could come up with...

bluepapercup and I were chatting, and the following dilemma ensued:

Given that bluepapercup needs help taking care of two hypothetical ponies and I live too far away to help her, she's generously offered to clone me. Would my clone be Jewish, and would she be obliged to raise him that way? I mean, somebody's got to muck the stalls on Saturdays.

Here's what we came up with:

According to Orthodox Judaism, a person's status as a Jew is determined by his or her mother. So, who's my clone's mom? Is it my mother, since all of clone-Ari's DNA comes from me? Is it any surrogate mother that might be needed to carry a clone baby to term? Is it the egg donor who gave up an oocyte for us to extract the DNA from to insert my own? What if clone-Ari was grown in a vat? Vats can't be Jewish, they're inanimate!

Your thoughts?

Ethical questions as only my friends could come up with...

bluepapercup and I were chatting, and the following dilemma ensued:

Given that bluepapercup needs help taking care of two hypothetical ponies and I live too far away to help her, she's generously offered to clone me. Would my clone be Jewish, and would she be obliged to raise him that way? I mean, somebody's got to muck the stalls on Saturdays.

Here's what we came up with:

According to Orthodox Judaism, a person's status as a Jew is determined by his or her mother. So, who's my clone's mom? Is it my mother, since all of clone-Ari's DNA comes from me? Is it any surrogate mother that might be needed to carry a clone baby to term? Is it the egg donor who gave up an oocyte for us to extract the DNA from to insert my own? What if clone-Ari was grown in a vat? Vats can't be Jewish, they're inanimate!

Your thoughts?