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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial>From: Eli Turkel via Avodah <A
href="mailto:avodah@lists.aishdas.org">avodah@lists.aishdas.org</A><BR></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial>>>The gemara says that Yoseph was certainly alive because
Yaakov mourned him<BR>the whole time while we know that the dead are forgotten
after 12 months<BR>(memory of the bet hamikdash is different)<BR><BR>I have a
personal problem with this statement. To my sorry I know of<BR>several people
who have lost children especially in the age of 18-25. One<BR>thing I have
learned from these people is that one never forgets a child
<<<BR></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial>--Eli Turkel</FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV>>>>>></DIV>
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<DIV>My grandmother had a baby daughter who died at the age of five months, and
fifty years or more after that, I once asked her about the baby she had
lost. She started to cry as if it had just happened, and described the
baby in detail -- what she looked like, what she could do at five months and so
on. So I learned the lesson that a parent never forgets a lost
child. However, she only cried for a little while and then returned to her
cheerful self. I'm sure that in the year after her baby died, she was not
cheerful.</DIV>
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<DIV>I don't think "gezeira al hameis" means the person is
literally forgotten, but that the degree of mourning becomes less
intense. Initially the bereaved person, especially a bereaved parent,
simply cannot believe the child is gone, and constantly thinks and even dreams
about the child. With the passage of months and years, the knowledge that
the child is truly gone is assimilated and the parent goes on with life, even if
a heaviness always remains somewhere in the background. </DIV>
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<DIV><B><BR><FONT color=#0000ff>--Toby Katz<BR>t613k@aol.com</FONT><FONT lang=0
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