[Avodah] Should we be davening for R' Elyashiv to live?

[Zev Sero]

On 15/02/2012 9:28 PM, T613K at aol.com wrote:
> I don't think it's a Jewish thing to daven for the death of someone who is suffering. In fact, this suggestion is shocking to me.

And yet, what of Rebbi's slave?

Come to think of it, how is it that all the great chachamim below
who were praying for Rebbi to live were wrong, and davka his slave
hit on the correct idea?  Were none of them wise enough to come up
with the same idea?!

It seems to me that the difference lies in the fact that a slave is
completely batel to her master, and has no metzius of her own.  Thus
all that mattered to her was her master's interest.  So long as she
thought it was in his interest to live, she prayed for that; as soon
as it seemed to her that he would be better off dying, she gave no
thought for herself, or for the whole generation that was benefiting
from his zechus, and changed her prayers.  In some ways an eved is
even closer to a person than a son, and certainly than a talmid;
"eved melech melech".  A son may not see his father naked, but a slave
may see his master naked.  A slave doesn't knock when he enters a room,
because he has no metzius.  A person expects his son or his talmid to
surpass him, and has nachas when that happens, whereas an eved never
surpasses his master.  So she was able to make this decision with no
peniyos, and she had the right to do so, while all the chachamim did not.

-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon