[Avodah] loss of infants

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 02:36:46PM +0300, Akiva Blum wrote:
: Obviously this is relative and some people may weep over the loss of
: an infant for many years...

I raised this possibility based on my personal experience having lost
a daughter who was almost 3 months old (she lived from ch"m Sukkos to
a couple of days after Chanukah, 21 yrs ago). For me, the overwhelming
feelings were loss of the dreams, the potential as RAB put it, and "why
me?" So much of what I felt was because I was overwhelmed and unprepared,
that projecting backward to a day when people lost babies, toddlers, even
young children with regularity, I thought they would be able to manage
better than we today would picture.

The question isn't how "some people" feel, but what is the normal
or common result, the result for which chazal would write dinim of
aveilus over. And of course I could well be atypical.

FWIW, speaking personally for another moment.... I no longer feel like
the same person as the guy who lost a child in 1991. I often feel sad
for that guy, empathy. With the sole (wakeful) exception of some moments
during Birkhas Gevurah on Yamim Nora'im.

In any case, I was just trying to diffuse the question that hilkhos
aveilus for children should be more extreme because the emotions
chazal were trying to channel would be more extreme. LAD, I think the
assymetry of aveilus for parents and for children has more to do with
kibud av va'eim than emotions. Otherwise, one could ask about children
vs siblings, etc... It seems clear to me, therefore, that aveilus is 30
days nearly across the board, with parents being a special case because
of a separate chiyuv.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
micha at aishdas.org        G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
http://www.aishdas.org   corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
Fax: (270) 514-1507      to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter