[Avodah] loss of infants

[Eli Turkel]

A while back there was a discussion about attitudes towards the death of young
children with some claiming that in olden days it was taken for granted
while others claimed that it was still painful.

I just saw a halachic discussion of this on a recent daf yomi (Nidah 23) from
Rav Stav of Har Etzion. He brings a contradiction between two gemarot about
whether parents have pain (tzaar) on the death of a "nefel" (under 30
days). He gives two answers which might be relevant to the discussion
1) there is pain at the time of burial but it subsides over time in contrast
to the loss of an older son/daughter whose pain never diminishes.

Obviously this is relative and some people may weep over the loss of an
infant for many years. Nevertheless I unfortunately know of several
families that lost a son or daughter in their teens and twenties. They
never really get over the loss. The secretary of our department lost a son
in a flash flood and changed her family naes to include the name of her
son. A member of my shul lost a son in a battle in Jenin and has said
kaddish for him for years. I don't think the loss of a nefel is felt to the
same degree. I have a relative that lost an infant due to crib death.
Baruch Hashem he now has 11 children with several grandchildren. I assume
the parents think of the loss of their infant but it isn't to the same
degree I just presented for a 20 year old.

2) there is a difference between a father who is pained less by the loss of a
"nefel" and the pain of the mother who is more effected

BTW  Rabbi Stav quotes a recent book he recently  wrote "ka-chalom yauf"
dealing with the loss of a pregnancy. Does anyone know anything about this
sefer?

Slightly different I went to a shiur last night from Ezra Bick from Har
Etzion on surrogate motherhood. Bottom line he feels that this is one of
the few cases where there are no sources in Chazal for the basis of a psak
(he brought the few that are mentioned by poskim and rejected them) .
Hence, he felt that a psak should be done on general grounds rather than a
specific precedent. Similarly to (2) above he took it for granted that
there is a difference between the father and the mother based on their
connections to the fetus. So he would have fatherhood determined by
genetics but motherhood determined by the carrier during prebnancy, i.e.
the birth mother.

-- 
Eli Turkel
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