[Avodah] rights of adopted parents

[Eli Turkel via Avodah]

see

http://dinonline.org/2015/12/07/adoption-in-halachah/

and especially

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12721

In a certain sense, the moral obligation of an adopted child is even
greater, since human nature is for parents to care for and raise their
children. But when a couple takes an orphaned or abandoned child and raises
him, their kindness is much greater, and therefore, the duty to be grateful
for this is also greater.

also
http://www.lookstein.org/articles/mourning_adoptive.htm

The relationship the adoptive or step-parents have with the children they
have actually raised has a functional expression among many halakhists:[9]
<http://www.lookstein.org/articles/mourning_adoptive.htm#_ftn9> The
children may be identified when called to the Torah and in formal documents
as the son or daughter of those who raised them, and the normal
restrictions of *yihud* (which generally allows unsupervised and close
contact with only biological parents, siblings and children) is not
applicable to adoptive families, whose members interact as a biological
family would. This is far more than transporting halakhic forms (like not
addressing one’s adoptive parents by their first names) to the adoptive
family.  It is an expression of a new halakhic reality, so to speak.

obviously laws of mourning are different between a biological parent and an
adoptive parent

Rabbi Soloveitchik insisted that there is a *kiyyum* of the mitzvah of
*avelut* even when there is no halakhic obligation to mourn the specific
individual.  He drew this conclusion from the ruling that “Where there is a
case of a deceased who has left no mourners to be com­forted, ten worthy
men should assemble at his placeall seven days of the mourning period and
the rest of the people should gather about them [to comfort them]. And if
the ten cannot stay on a regular basis, others from the community may
replace them.” It was for this reason that the Rav regularly advised
children to mourn the adopted parents who had raised them.  If there was no
* hiyyuv *[obligation]* ha-mitzvah*, there was none-the-less a *kiyyum
ha-mitzvah*.

BTW a friend of mine told me that there is a psak of R Schacter that if the
parent abused the child and it would be a great stress on the child to
mourn for the parent then he is exempt from sitting shiva



-- 
Eli Turkel
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