GEN144 Jewish law and ethics would not consider the cloning of human beings to be forbidden.  As Elliot Dorff has put it, “human cloning should be regulated, not banned” (1997, 6; 1999, 322). Indeed, whereas most non-Jewish religious ethicists have consistently opposed the ethical propriety of cloning human beings, Jewish ethicists, particularly those from the more traditional camps, have consistently maintained that there is no a priori prohibition in Jewish law against cloning humans, and that with certain controls, cloning of human beings is permissible according to Jewish law [citations omitted].  While the cloning of human beings does not appear to be prohibited, by Jewish law, neither is it obligatory (hovah) in most cases. Even an individual who would have no other way of engendering a child but through cloning is not obliged to do so.  Like any other commandment, the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply” [this verse] (obligatory according to Jewish law only upon men), can only be expected to be fulfilled if one has the normal capacity to do so.  A person is not obliged to fulfill a commandment that exceeds his or her biological abilities.  As J. D. Bleich has written summarizing Jewish law’s attitude toward the use of reproductive biotechnological methods: “Although Halakhah may demand employment of extraordinary and heroic measures in prolonging life, with regard to the generation of life it requires only that which is ordinary, normal and natural.  However, so long as the methods employed in assisted procreation do not entail transgression of halakhic structures such methods are discretionary and permissible” (1998, 147). SHER20C 121