Ketuvot 23b ~ The Cohen Gene

HEllo, I'm Your New Cohen

משנה כתובות דף כג עמוד ב 

וכן שני אנשים, זה אומר כהן אני וזה אומר כהן אני - אינן נאמנין, ובזמן שהן מעידין זה את זה - הרי אלו נאמנין; רבי יהודה אומר: אין מעלין לכהונה על פי עד אחד

Likewise in the case of two men; one says, "I am a Cohen", and the other says "I am a Cohen", they are not believed. If however they testify about one another they are believed. R. Yehuda said: we do not elevate [a person] to the status of Cohen based on the testimony of only one witness....

Being a Cohen comes with rights and duties. They get called to the Torah first, and are given preference to lead Birkat Hamazon.  During Temple times, they got lots and lots of food.  But how do you prove you are a Cohen, and entitled to these privileges?  According to the Mishnah in today's Daf Yomi, (and discussed in detail in the talmudic discussion that follows,) you need witnesses to attest to your status. But what if the Cohen was mistaken about his ancestors? What if the witnesses were being paid to dupe the locals into believing the Cohen was legitimate? Is there an alternative to the methods mentioned in this Mishnah? Perhaps.

The Saturday Night Live Cohen 

My friend Misha Galperin, (formerly the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and  of International Development at The Jewish Agency) is a Cohen. Only he didn't know it when he arrived in America from the Soviet Union.  Here's what happened, as told to me in an email that he kindly allowed me to share:

Five months after arriving in the US, I am sitting in the lounge of Yeshiva University's dorm watching SNL with my tutor who was teaching me Alef Bet is so I can start classes on Monday.
A skit starts with guest host Leonard Nimoy dressed as Mr. Spock - with ears - and at the end he raises his right palm in the symbolic gesture and says: "Live long and prosper!"
I turn to the tutor and ask him what this gesture means. Why?--he asks. "Because my father taught me this, and his father taught it to him before being murdered by Nazis in 1941. My father did not know what it meant, but he taught me..."

And so Misha learned that he was a Cohen from Saturday Night Live. But not all Cohanim are so lucky. (Fun fact: Leonard Nimoy ז’ל wrote about his decision to give Mr. Spock this priestly hand salute in his 1997 autobiography I Am Not Spock.)  With neither witnesses nor TV to help, is there another way to establish one's genealogy as a member of the priestly class? That's where the Cohen Gene comes in.  

The Cohen Gene

If all Cohanim are descended from Aaron, and the privilege is only transmitted from father to son, then perhaps being a Cohen can be genetically linked to a chromosome that is only passed from father to son. And there is such a chromosome. It's the Y chromosome, and all (fertile) men carry a copy that comes only from their biological father. (Quick recap: girls are XX and boys are XY. So all girls carry one X chromosome from mum and one X chromosome from dad. Boys, on the other hand, only get their X chromosome from mum, and their Y chromosome from dad. This can lead to other problems like hemophilia, which we've talked about elsewhere.) That's exactly what prompted  Karl Skorecki from the Technion, and colleagues from University College London, to analyze the Y chromosome in Cohanim and compare it to the rest of the Jewish population.  In 1997 they published a paper in Nature that looked at a special bit of the Y chromosome called YAP. Actually, they looked at 6 kinds of the YAP haplotype, (a haplotype being what geneticists call bunches of DNA sequences), and compared their frequency in Cohanim and non-Cohanim.    

Skorecki K, et al. Y Chromosomes of Jewish Priests. Nature 1997. 385:32.

As you can see highlighted, the YAP+ haplotype was found in only 1.5% of those who self-identified as Cohanim, but in over 18% of non-Cohanim.  The different frequency was found in both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Cohanim,  a result that the authors claimed was "consistent with an origin for the Jewish priesthood antedating the division of world Jewry into Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities."

“These Y-chromosome haplotype differences confirm a distinct paternal geneology for Jewish priests.”

— Skorecki et al. Nature 1997. 385: 32.

David Goldstein, who directs the  Center for Human Genome Variation at Duke University, also published a study on the Y-chromosome of Cohanim, using a sample that included the DNA swabbed "from the mouths of sunbathers on the beaches of Tel Aviv." Here is what Goldstein concluded:

Despite the high levels of variation, we could see a clear difference between Cohen and Israelite chromosomes. The most common chromosomes observed in the Israelites (that is, non-Cohen and non-Levite Jews) were found in only 12% of the Israelite individuals sampled. By contrast, more that half of the Cohen Y chromosomes were identical at the sites considered - that is, the majority of the self-identified Cohanim had the same type of Y chromosome. Even more remarkable, this same type of Y was found at high frequencies in both Ashkenazi (45%) and Sephardi (56%) Cohanim. (Goldstein, p.31)

Goldstein named this chromosome type the Cohen Modal Haplotype, and claimed that it showed "definitively" that Cohen status was not adopted (i.e. made up by some, eager for the benefits) but inherited.  And now things started to get really interesting. 

Dating the Original Aaron

So all, (OK, not all, but certainly most) of the approximately 500,000 Cohanim alive today seem to have originated from a common ancestor - a primordial Cohen. And just when did he live? Well, by analyzing small differences in the Cohen Modal Haplotype, and assuming that a generation time is 25 years, Goldstein et al. stated (with a confidence interval of 95%) that the origin of the priestly Y chromosome was "sometime during or shortly before the Temple period in Jewish history."

Not So Fast...

OK, a couple of things need to be noted here, before anyone claims that "genetics proves the Bible." First- as Goldstein himself notes in his book, his numbers may be off, by quite a bit:

Permit me here, after what was for me the first - and still one of the few - real thrills of discovery that punctuate the tedium and detail of science, the necessary reality check. Our results appeared to be a striking confirmation of the oral tradition. It even led to repeated claims in the press that my colleagues and I "found Aaron's Y chromosome." But although three thousand years is our best guess [as to when Primordial Cohen may have lived] the range of possible dates was and is very broad. Given our uncertainty about the ways mutations happen and how fast, we may be off by several hundred years or more in either direction. (Goldstein p.38).

Second, some later work done by Skorecki (he of the Technion 1997 Nature paper) suggests that the class of Cohanim may have had more than one common ancestor.  This work posits that there was not one primordial Cohen, but a few clans of Cohanim, from whom all later Cohanim are descended. (Or more technically stated:"...lineages characterized by the 6 Y-STRs used to define the original Cohen Modal Haplotype are associated with two divergent sub-clades...and thus cannot be assumed to represent a single recently expanding paternal lineage.")

And finally, work from Brigham Young University (and boy, those guys are really into ancestry) reminds anyone looking to do a quick Cohen DNA test to be careful.

The Cohen Modal Haplotype is observed in high frequency within the Cohanim, but also presents with significant incidence in other non-Jewish populations. The occurrence of the CMH in deeply divergent SNP haplogroups also indicates a lack of specificity of the CMH to the ancient Hebrew population. As such, inference of relation to Jewish populations for individuals or groups should be performed with caution when using the original CMH definition, as a false-positive result is likely.

 "A false positive is likely" - in other words, the test may show you are a Cohen, but really...you aren't. 

Genetic Testing - It's Not Just for Cohanim

And now that a Cohen "Gene" may have been identified, what about the rest of us non-Cohanim? Some have used genetic testing to discover a forgotten heritage or find long-lost cousins.  One rather keen family member of Polonsky rabbinic lineage (claiming in passing to be descended from King David, the Kalonymos family, and Rashi) used the presence of a "relatively rare R-M124 haplotype" on the Y chromosome to confirm a common ancestor and find a new marker that represents "Polonsky rabbinic lineage." (I confess I am jealous. My grandfather drove a black London taxi, and last time I checked, Rashi was not one of my known ancestors.) 

It's Not About Your Ancestors, It's About You

רמב"ם הלכות שמיטה ויובל פרק יג הלכות יב –יג 

ולמה לא זכה לוי בנחלת ארץ ישראל ובביזתה עם אחיו? מפני שהובדל לעבוד את יי לשרתו ולהורות דרכיו הישרים ומשפטיו הצדיקים לרבים שנאמר יורו משפטיך ליעקב ותורתך לישראל, לפיכך הובדלו מדרכי העולם לא עורכין מלחמה כשאר ישראל ולא נוחלין ולא זוכין לעצמן בכח גופן, אלא הם חיל השם שנאמר ברך יי חילו, והוא ברוך הוא זוכה להם, שנאמר: אני חלקך ונחלתך

ולא שבט לוי בלבד אלא כל איש ואיש מכל באי העולם אשר נדבה רוחו אותו והבינו מדע להבדל לעמוד לפני יי לשרתו ולעובדו לדעה את יי והלך ישר כמו שעשהו האלהים ופרק מעל צוארו עול החשבונות הרבים אשר בקשו בני האדם הרי זה נתקדש קדש קדשים. ויהיה יי חלקו ונחלתו לעולם ולעולמי עולמים ויזכה לו בעה"ז דבר המספיק לו כמו שזכה לכהנים ללוים, הרי דוד עליו השלום אומר: יי מנת חלקי וכוסי אתה תומיך גורלי

Why did the Levi'im not receive a portion in the inheritance in Israel and in the spoils of war like their brethren? Because they were set aside to serve God, to minister to Him and to instruct the masses about His just paths and righteous judgments... Therefore they were set apart from the mundane matters of the world. They do not wage war like the remainder of the Jewish people, nor do they receive an inheritance, nor do they acquire for themselves through their physical power. Instead, they are God's legion...and He provides for them...

Not only the tribe of Levi, but any human whose spirit moves him and who understands with his wisdom to set himself aside and stand before God - to serve Him and minister to Him and to know Him, proceeding justly as God made him, removing from his neck the yoke of the many mundane things which people seek - that person is sanctified like the Holy of Holies [in the Temple]. God will be his portion and heritage forever and will provide what is sufficient for him in this world, just as He provides for the Cohanim and the Levi'im...

Maimonides, in his Mishnah Torah,  reminds us about what is really important. It's not bringing a witness into town and telling everyone who your ancestors are. And it's not getting a DNA test to prove your stock. It's about searching for religious meaning in a world of materialism.  And that search is open to anyone, woman or man, Jew or not, Cohen, Levi, or even a plain old Yisrael.  

Ketuvot 15a ~ Talmudic Probability Theory

תלמוד בבלי כתובות דף טו עמוד א 

  א"ר זירא: כל קבוע כמחצה על מחצה דמי ..מנא ליה לר' זירא הא? ...מתשע חנויות, כולן מוכרות בשר שחוטה ואחת בשר נבלה, ולקח מאחת מהן ואינו יודע מאיזה מהן לקח - ספיקו אסור, ובנמצא - הלך אחר הרוב, 

R. Zera said: Any doubt about something that is fixed in its place is considered be a fify-fifty chance... Where does he learn this from ? [From a Baraisa which teaches the following. Consider a town in which] there are nine shops, all of which sell kosher meat, and one store that sells sells meat that is not kosher. If a person bought meat from one of these [ten] stores but he cannot recall from which, his doubt means that the meat is forbidden. But if he found a piece of meat [in the street and he cannot tell from which store it came] he may follow the majority [and assume the meat is kosher]...

As Dov Gabbay and Moshe Koppel noted in their 2011 paper, there is something odd about talmudic probability. If we find some meat in an area where there are p kosher stores and q non-kosher stores, then all other things being equal, the meat is kosher if and only if p > q.This is clear from the parallel text in Hullin (11a) where the underlying principal is described as זיל בתר רובא – follow the majority. Or as Gabbay and Koppel explain it:

“Given a set of objects the majority of which have the property P and the rest of which have the property not-P, we may, under certain circumstances, regard the set itself and/or any object in the set as having property P.
”

— Gabbay and Koppel 2010

In other words, what happens is that if there are more kosher stores than there are trief, the meat is considered to have become kosher. It's not that the meat is most likely to be kosher and may therefore be eaten.  Rather it takes on the property of being kosher. 

We encountered another example of talmudic probability theory only a week ago, on Ketuvot 9a. There, a newly-wed husband claims that his wife was not a virgin on her wedding night. The Talmud argues that his claim needs to be set into a context of probabilities:

1. She was raped before her betrothal.

2. She was raped after her betrothal.

3. She had intercourse of her own free will before her betrothal.

4. She had intercourse of her own free will after her betrothal.

Since it is only the last of these that renders her forbidden to her husband (stay focussed and don't raise the question of a husband who is a Cohen), the husband's claim is not supported, based on the probabilities. Here is how Gubbay and Koppel explain the case - using formal logic:

Oh, and the reference to Bertrand's paradox? That is the paradox in which some questions about probability - even ones that seem to be entirely mathematical, have more than one correct solution; it all depends on how you think about the answer. One if its formulations goes like this: Given a circle, find the probability that a chord chosen at random will be longer than the side of an inscribed equilateral triangle. Turns out there are three correct solutions. Gubbay and Koppel claim that just like that paradox, the solution to many talmudic questions of probability will have more than one correct answer, depending on how you think about that answer.

Rabbi Nahum Eliezer Rabinovitch (b.1928) is the Rosh Yeshiva of the hesder Yeshivah Birkat Moshe in Ma'ale Adumim.  (He also has a PhD. in the Philosophy of Science from the University of Toronto, published in 1973 as Probability and Statistical Inference in Ancient and Medieval Jewish Literature.)  Rabbi Rabinovitch seems to have been the first to point out the relationship between Bertrand's paradox and talmudic probability theory in his 1970 Biometrika paper Combinations and Probability in Rabbinic Literature. There, the Rosh Yeshiva wrote that "the rabbis had some awareness of the different conceptions of probability as a measure of relative frequencies or a state of general ignorance."

James Franklin, in his book on the history of probability theory, notes that codes like the Talmud (and the Roman Digest that was developed under Justine c.533) "provide examples of how to evaluate evidence in cases of doubt and conflict.  By and large, they do so reasonably. But they are almost entirely devoid of discussion on the principles on which they are operating." But it is unfair to expect the Talmud to have developed a notion of probability theory as we have it today. That wasn't its interest or focus. Others have picked up this task, and have explained the statistics that is the foundation of  talmudic probability. For this, we have many to thank, including the Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Rabinovitch שליט׳א.

“(The [Roman] Digest and) the Talmud are huge storehouses of concepts, and to be required to have an even sketchy idea of them is a powerful stimulus to learning abstractions.”

— James Franklin. The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal, 349.

Ketuvot 11a ~ Conversion

תלמוד בבלי כתובות דף יא עמוד א

אמר רב הונא גר קטן מטבילין אותו על דעת בית דין. מאי קמ"ל? דזכות הוא לו

Rav Huna said: "A young child [whose father had died and] who is converting may be immersed in the mikveh by order of the Bet Din." Why did he teach this? Because [becoming Jewish] is a benefit...

Joining...and Leaving

How many Jews-by-choice do you know? (Perhaps you are one, or you are dating or married to one.) How many converts to Judaism do you know socially? How many do you pray with during the week and on Shabbat? I’ll bet the number is somewhere in the region of “quite a few, actually.” I know that’s the number I came up with - and that’s not counting all those Jews who I may know but of whose origins I am simply unaware. We are fortunate to live in an era when nearly all of us are blessed to have converts as part of our communities.

It wasn’t always like this. In fact a hundred years ago or so, the question would be different: How many Jewish converts to Christianity do you know? If you lived in Europe in the nineteenth century, or in America in the early twentieth, chances are you’d know – or be related – to several Jews who converted out. 

According to data compiled by Christian missionaries, about 200,000 Jews converted to Christianity during the nineteenth century (but beware, they probably had reason to inflate these numbers). Some 15,000 Polish Jews converted, the majority to Catholicism (here, p 245). Hayyim Zelig Slonimski (d.1904) is a personal hero of mine. He founded the Hebrew-language journal of science, Hazefirah (The Herald), in Warsaw in 1862. His life exemplified how a traditionally observant Jew could combine his interest in scientific matters with his faith. But his son Leonid wasn’t convinced, and converted. Slonimski was by no means the only prominent educator or rabbinic leader whose children left Judaism for Christianity.

“Especially well known in Jewish circles in the modern era are the tragedies that affected such prominent figures as Mendele Mokher Sforim (Yaakov Shalom Abramowitz) whose beloved son converted to Christianity; Shimon Dubnow, Ahad ha-Am and Mordeckai Ben-Hillel HaKohen, whose daughters married into Russian Orthodox families; and Rabbi Eliyahu Klatskin of Lublin, whose son Yaakov, a renowned philosopher and ardent Zionist, abandoned Judaism and married the daughter of a Protestant minister,” (ibid., 31–32.)

Oh, and don’t forget Moshe, son of the founder of the Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty, Rabbi Shneyur Zalman of Lyady. He converted to Christianity in 1820.

The Pew Study

In 2013 the Pew Research Center delivered its Portrait of Jewish Americans. It found that 2% of its 3,475 respondents had undergone some "formal conversion", (though be careful of drawing any big conclusions from this – the margin of error is +/- 3%). We are proud of that. But it also reported that 22% were Jews of no religion.  That’s a sizeable net loss. 

In today’s daf, we are reminded how to view our heritage – a heritage we may carry either by a deliberate choice or by an accident of birth. Rav Huna tells us that being Jewish is a זכות– a benefit, a privilege, and an honor. If only more of us felt that way.

Ketuvot 10a ~ Virginity

תלמוד בבלי כתובות דף י עמוד א

ההוא דאתא לקמיה דרבן גמליאל אמר ליה פתח פתוח מצאתי אמר ליה שמא הטיתה אמשול לך משל למה הדבר דומה לאדם שהיה מהלך באישון לילה ואפילה היטה מצאו פתוח לא היטה מצאו נעול

A man came before Rabban Gamaliel and said to him, I have found an ‘open opening’ [i.e. he claimed his wife was not a virgin]. He [Rabban Gamaliel] answered him: Perhaps you moved aside. I will give you an illustration: To what may this be compared? To a man who was walking in the deep darkness of the night [and came to his house and found the door locked]; if he moves the bolt aside he finds the door open, if he does  not move the bolt aside, he finds it locked. 

Many, many years ago I celebrated by Bar Mitzvah by laying my parsha, (כי תצא). My instruction focussed on getting the trop right; understanding the content - not so much.  Which perhaps was just as well, because here's part of what I read:

דברים פרק כב, יג-כא 

כי יקח איש אשה ובא אליה ושנאה: ושם לה עלילת דברים והוצא עליה שם רע ואמר את האשה הזאת לקחתי ואקרב אליה ולא מצאתי לה בתולים: ולקח אבי הנער ואמה והוציאו את בתולי הנער אל זקני העיר השערה:  ואמר אבי הנער אל הזקנים את בתי נתתי לאיש הזה לאשה וישנאה:  והנה הוא שם עלילת דברים לאמר לא מצאתי לבתך בתולים ואלה בתולי בתי ופרשו השמלה לפני זקני העיר:  ולקחו זקני העיר ההוא את האיש ויסרו אתו: וענשו אתו מאה כסף ונתנו לאבי הנערה כי הוציא שם רע על בתולת ישראל ולו תהיה לאשה לא יוכל לשלחה כל ימיו: ואם אמת היה הדבר הזה לא נמצאו בתולים לנער:  והוציאו את הנער אל פתח בית אביה וסקלוה .נשי עירה באבנים ומתה כי עשתה נבלה בישראל לזנות בית אביה ובערת הרע מקרבך

If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then hates her, and charges her with shameful deeds and publicly defames her, and says, "I took this woman, but when I came to her, I did not find her a virgin."  Then the girl’s father and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of the girl’s virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. And the girl’s father shall say to the elders, "I gave my daughter to this man for a wife, but he hated her. And look, he has accused her saying, I did not find your daughter a virgin.' But this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity." And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him. And they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the girl’s father, because he publicly defamed a virgin of Israel. And she shall remain his wife; he cannot ever divorce her.

But if this charge is true, that the girl was not found a virgin, then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death because she has perpetrated wantonness in Israel by playing the harlot in her father’s house. And you will purge the evil from among you. (Deut 22: 13-21.)

The first several pages of Ketuvot discuss issues around this passage from the Torah; they are  difficult reading for anyone with modern sensitivities. The Talmud takes most seriously the requirement that a woman be a virgin when she marries for the first time. (There is no similar Torah requirement for a man- though sex before marriage was generally frowned upon). In this page of Daf Yomi a man claimed his new wife was not a virgin, because he found "an open entrance". In reply, Rabban Gamliel suggested that perhaps she was indeed a virgin, but that he had "angled the entry" and in so doing had not felt the expected resistance.  Elsewhere (6b) we have read of the claim that some men (Abaye referred to them as בבליים) were knowledgeable about intercourse with a virgin "at an angle" - and that these men are certainly allowed to consummate their marriage on a Friday night, since they will not cause the bride to bleed. So far, in the first ten pages of Ketuvot, we've read a lot about virginity and about bleeding on a bride's wedding night. So let's talk about that. (If this makes you uncomfortable, I suggest you stop reading this and return to Daf Yomi at Bava Kama.)  

The Hymen

Hymen was the Roman-Greek god of marriage.  Anatomically, the hymen is a fleshy membrane that is part of the female external genitalia. The evolutionary explanation for the hymen is not certain, and several theories have been proposed - none of them very satisfying.  In the Talmud the assumption is that this membrane is intact until torn during a woman's first intercourse.  This causes bleeding, and hence the reference in the Torah of a father "spreading the bedsheets" to show proof that his daughter had been a virgin when she wed.

“איבעיא להו: מהו לבעול בתחלה בשבת, דם מיפקד פקיד או חבורי מיחבר ”

— תלמוד בבלי כתובות דף ה עמוד ב

The Doctor Can't always Tell (and Neither Can the Husband)

In a 1978 paper, two gynecologists described a small study of women who were virgins, and concluded that the hymen is intact in only a proportion of cases. In a more recent study, 52% of women who had past intercourse were found on examination to have an intact hymen.  The doctor just can't tell. And neither can the husband. 

DON'T BLAME THE VICTIM

The Talmud elsewhere describes a family in Jerusalem whose women were allowed to carry chains around their legs on Shabbat. Why were they given this permission? Rabbi Yochanan picks up the story:

There was one family in Jerusalem who took large strides when they walked and consequently the hymenal membranes of the young girls in this family would fall out. (ArtScroll note: "This was unfortunate, since an intact hymenal membrane serves as proof of a bride's virginity".) The elders made garters for them and put a chain between the garters, so that their strides would not be large, and as a result their hymens did not fall out. (ArtScroll note: "According to one interpretation cited by Meiri, the chain makes a sound when the steps are too rapid and forceful; thus, the sound itself reminded the girls to take delicate steps.") 

This is, to say the least, a difficult story to understand. But modern medicine is fairly clear on the subject.  All girls born with a vagina have a hymen.  "If hymenal tissue cannot be identified" wrote three experts from the Department of Pediatrics and the Sexual Assault Center at the University of Washington, "traumatic disruption should be considered as a possible cause." And an Israeli study  from the Bellinson Medical Center in Tel Aviv of over 25,000 newborn girls came to the same conclusions.  I know other cultures have their own taboos around virginity, but their taboos are not my concern right now.  The taboos of my culture are.  And for every girl and woman who was a victim of them, I am sorry. So very sorry.

Rav MOSHE Feinstein on what's really important

In 1973 Rav Moshe Feinstein (d. 1986), was asked by a newly observant woman if she needed to reveal her sexual history to a man she was dating.  Rav Moshe's remarkable sensitivity to this question can be felt through the words of his legal response. Yes, here and there are some remarkably sexist words, but put them aside and look at the big picture. Look where Rav Moshe went with this.  

שו"ת אגרות משה אורח חיים חלק ד סימן קיח 

ובדבר אם צריכה את להגיד להבחור שירצה לישא אותך לאשה, ודאי את צריכה לגלות לו, אבל אינך צריכה להגיד לו בראיה והכרה דפעם ראשונה שעדיין לא ידוע אם ירצה בכלל השידוך וממילא אסור אז להגיד לו, ורק אחרי שתדעי שרוצה לישא אותך בברור שכבר אמר לך ודבר בדבר הנישואין, צריכה את לומר רק בזה שנזדמן איזה פעם בשעה שלא היה לך כובד ראש כל כך לעמוד נגד המפתה בדברי רצוי ופתוי הרבה ותיכף נתחרטת ומצטערת על זה שאירע דבר כזה עד שיכיר מדבריך שאין לו לחוש שיארע גם כשתהא נשואה לו, ואז מאחר שהוא רוצה בך מפני שהכיר המעלות שלך לא יחזור בו בשביל זה שאירע איזה פעם מאחר שיכיר אותך לנערה שומרת תורה ומצותיה שיש להאמין שלא חשודה את שוב בזה ותהי' אשה מסורה לבעלה כדין התורה. 

Regarding whether you must tell the man who may want to marry you [about your sexual past, and not being a virgin] you must indeed tell him, but you don't have to do so the first time that you meet- because at that  stage it is not clear that he wants you. In fact at that stage it would be forbidden to tell him. Only after you are certain that he wants to marry you - when he has already told you and spoken about the marriage arrangements - then you must tell him. [Explain it to him this way:] It once happened when you were not thinking clearly and you were not able to withstand the man seducing you, and you immediately regretted your actions and were sorry that you had done this. [When he sees your sincerity] he will understand from your words that he does not have to worry that this would happen again if you were married to him.  For he will see your qualities and and will not regret his decision [to marry] because of what happened in your past. He will recognize that you are a woman who observes the Torah and its mitzvot, and he will believe that you will not countenance repeating this behavior, and you will be a  woman who is in the service of her husband as the Torah mandates. 

But what about the Ketuvah - the marriage contract that is read aloud at (orthodox) Jewish weddings? The text is clear "that so-and-so is marrying this virgin"! How, asked this woman of Rav Moshe, how can we put this in the document when it is not true? 

בדבר כתיבת הכתובה אין צורך להגיד למסדר הקידושין, כי מאחר שהחתן יחתום על הכתובה הרי הסכים לכתובת בתולה ושוב ליכא קפידא ומחוייב בכתובת בתולה אף אם באמת אינה בתולה אם לא הטעתה אותו...והנני בברכה שהשי"ת יקבל תשובתך ולא תכשלי עוד בשום חטא ותתנהגי בדרך התורה ומנהגי ישראל קדושים ותבנה בית כשר ונכון בישראל, משה פיינשטיין

Regarding the writing of the Ketuvah, you need not tell the rabbi who is officiating.  Since the groom is signing the Ketuvah he is agreeing to the use of the term "virgin" - and there is nothing else to be worried about. He will  be bound to the legal terms as if you were a virgin, even if in truth you are not, so long as you did not mislead him....And I bless you that God will accept your repentance and that you will  not stumble again with any transgression; that you will follow the path of the Torah and build a fit and proper house in Israel. [signed] Moshe Feintsein

This letter from Rav Moshe reminds us what it is that is of real importance in a marriage: Honesty, fidelity, compassion and forgiveness.  It's a wonderful lesson to carry with us as we study the rest of Ketuvot.