[Avodah] Who is the father redux - from R' Aviner

[Chana Luntz]

RJR writes quoting R' Aviner:

> A: It is forbidden to perform such an act from a deceased man.  First of
> all, a deceased man is not obligated in the mitzvah to be fruitful and
> multiply.  A deceased man is not obligated in the mitzvot at all.  He is
> free.  Secondly, it is forbidden to cause a child (or anyone for that
> matter) sorrow.  

I confess I find this position difficult. After all, as R' Aviner
acknowledges, not having the child will cause the mother significant sorrow,
so is it not a matter of weighing the sorrow of the child against that of
the mother?  I know that R Aviner characterises it as "loneliness" and not
"sorrow", but I do not see the basis on which he is differentiating.  And
the mother is here now, and the child is not yet, so why does the child's
not yet conceived future sorrow trump?


>The Torah says over and over: an orphan is unfortunate,
> an orphan is unfortunate. 

This is true.  But we also presumably posken like Beis Hillel that it would
have been better that man was not created than that he was created.  I am
yet to hear anybody argue that because it would have been better if man was
not created, we should not have any more children (well not in the frum
world anyway, I have heard this from non frum Holocaust survivors but even
that is something of a minority position).  If anything the Rabbinic
mitzvah, to the extent it exists, would seem to go against this viewpoint.
So it would seem to me from this that R' Aviner rejects any rabbinic mitzvah
applying to women.  But even so, from where does he derive that while the
normal problems of being "born to trouble" are not enough to require us to
prevent conception, but the additional trouble of being an orphan is?

And what about the position found in Yevamos 65b and accepted by the Amoraim
there that a woman makes a valid claim against her husband if he fails to
provide her with children (giving her the right to a divorce and her kesuba)
because she needs to have children to support her old age? If there was ever
a case of the need for this would this not be it?  Because in every breath
that the Torah says that an orphan is unfortunate, it also says that a widow
is unfortunate, and a widow without a child to support her in her old age is
clearly doubly unfortunate.

And regarding the substantive argument that the deceased man is not
obligated in the mitzvah of being fruitful and multiplying, that may be
true, but the Shulchan Aruch defines the mitzvah (see Even HaEzer siman 1
si'if 6) as only being fulfilled by the grandfather, if his son or daughter
were to die, if they leave behind them children themselves.  So at least if
the grandfather were alive, why would she not be facilitating the mitzvah of
pru u'rvu of the grandfather?

I do also wonder though, if R' Aviner would require a woman married to a man
with an imminent terminal illness to use contraception, on the grounds that
by the time the child is born, it will most likely be an orphan?  The same
arguments should seem to apply.


> Joel Rich

Regards

Chana