[Avodah] Yichud and fostering

[Chana Luntz]

> 
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 11:00:02AM +0000, Dov Kay wrote:
> : My wife and I know a young unmarried lady in town who fosters
children.
> :                                ....  She eventually 
> :contacted a dayan in London who permitted the boy to live with our
friend for a 
> :month until a permanent foster family could be found.
> 
>

And RMB writes:

>R' Dovid Cohen (Flatbush) who is Ohel's poseiq, is quite meiqil, since
foster care is inherently a she'as hadechaq. 
>In this he follows Rav Moshe -- the basic din holds, minus every
possible qulah.

...

> This wasn't lema'aseh for nidon didan, but a number of 
> poseqim (I recall the Tzitz Eliezer VI, but not whom else) 
> permit treating a child who entered your home in infancy as 
> one's own child for all of these dinim. 

Rav Moshe himself holds in Even HaEzer vol 4 siman 64 (2) that where a
husband marries a woman with a daughter and so adopts the daughter, that
yichud is permitted for short periods with the daughter because "because
it is possible to say that he will be afraid from his wife that she will
be suspicious of  him and when she returns she will question and
investigate her daughter" and all will be revealed.

I wonder whether this could be considered the basis of the psak referred
to above.  After all, if a child is being placed in foster care, the
authorities, especially in the first month, are likely to be crawling
all over the placement and asking loads of questions and it could be
expected that the foster carer would have a fear of discovery not
disimilar to that of the husband referred to above (and while the
husband's marriage might be at stake, so is the profession and income of
the foster carer - which unquestionably would be ruined by any
intimation of anything untoward). 

If anything it might seem to be a kal v'chomer, as the daughter of a
man's wife is an actual torah erva and hence yichud is prohibited
d'orisa, while yichud with an unmarried lady (as is the case here) is
prohibited only d'rabbanan (well gezera of Dovid haMelech).  And surely,
despite the Rambam, the fact that he is a minor ought to be another snif
l'kakel.

And presumably if the child was placed with a non Jewish family there
are all the issurim of allowing a chinuch aged child to eat treifus and
violate shabbas - and in addition there is presumably also the risk that
if placed with such a family, there is no guarantee that later when the
frum foster family is available they will necessarily be able to extract
him from the current arrangement, meaning that the violations of shabbas
and kashrus might well continue once he is bar mitzva and hence on a
d'orisa level.  If the legitimacy of violating shabbas for pikuach
nefesh reasons can be said to have a basis in the logic that it is
necessary to violate one shabbas to allow the keeping of many shabbosos,
then, again as a kal v'chomer, it would seem surprising that a
prevention of the violation of what must be at most a single d'rabbanan
should be allowed to potentially cause the violation of many shabbasos
and countless other d'orisas.  And if kavod habrios can push off a
d'rabbanan, then again by kal v'chomer one would have thought this
could.  And might there not also be some justification to say that this
is a kind of a case of pidyon shevuim?

Just some thoughts.

Regards

Chana