[Avodah] Le'ilui Nishmas an Infant

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 08:48:08PM -0500, Zvi Lampel wrote:
>> I really don't know what le'ilui nishmas means when speaking of a nifteres
>> who only lived 11 weeks, and therefore didn't become old enough for the
>> concept of cheit to have meaning.

> Must one's neshamah have a cheit to have an aliyah? Adam Harishon kodeim
> haCheit also had opportunity to rise to greater heights.

When someone never had a chance to really exercise bechirah, what would
block their hana'as ziv haShechinah when they get to the olam ha'emes?

That was the way I was thinking of the issue when I posed the question.

After asking around, I was made to realize another option:

It is possible that there is no maximum hana'ah a human is capable of,
and therefore whereever they are beshe'as petirah, there is still room
upward.

Second issue, if someone didn't inspire others to do the mitzvah in
question, how can that mitzvah be added to their cheshbon. And I don't
mean that they in effect inspired, I mean chose to inspire. After all,
what's the sekhar in just happening to be a cause, no different than a
falling rock could be a cause?

And this issues grows when you think about it. Re'uvein is meqareiv
Shimon as a teenager. Shimon grows up, marries a shomeres Shabbos, and
raises a family. Generations of people performing mitzvos, all because
of Re'uvein. Now, in a parallel universe, years after Shimon gets married
he still doesn't have children r"l, goes for testing and finds out he is
infertile. Re'uvein couldn't know. Re'uvein did everything exactly the
same as in the first universe. But his actions don't produce generations
of shomerei Torah uMitzvos. Perhaps some, people Shimon influenced, but
not of the same scale. Should the Re'uvein in this version of the story
get less sekhar for the same choices and the same actions?

What if r"l 2 weeks after a man's petirah, his only child is niftar. Say
a totally unexpected brain aneurism. The child who would have made a
siyum mishnayos, who would have made siyumim every year on his yahrzeit,
who would have given matan beseiser le'ilui nishmaso,would would have
said Qaddish. All those mitzvos don't get done, but through nothing the
father did or could even have known about. Does he get a lower place in
gan eden because of it?

How do we satisfy straightforward notions of Dayan haEmes with these things?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   greater vanity in others; it makes us vain,
Author: Widen Your Tent      in fact, of our modesty.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF            -Louis Kronenberger, writer (1904-1980)