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on Shabbos, where the son may not obey her even though there is
a slight chance that the mother may commit suicide, as written in
Teshuvos Melemed Leho’il (1, 61), for over there, there is no danger to
life that justifies Shabbos desecration, for who is forcing the mother
to commit suicide?4 In our case however, where we would be taking
the initiative in removing the girl from her mother’s custody though
there is no actual danger to the girl’s life compelling us to take action,
9 why should we attach greater importance to the daughter‘s life than
to the mother’s? Maybe we should be more concerned about the
mother’ life and refrain from taking steps to remove the girl from her
mother’s custody? This is how it appears to me to explain the ruling
of this gaon shlit”a, against making any move to take the girl away
from her mother.

I presented the question to my father-in-law Rav Y.S. Elyashiv zt”l,
and he said:

The girl should not be removed from the custody of her widowed
mother who is threatening suicide, on the basis of bruises and indi-
cations that she has been beaten and our estimation that the mother
injured her. So long as witnesses have not come forward and testified
before us that they saw the mother cruelly beating her daughter we
cannot take the girl away from her mother because the case involves
danger to the mother’s life as well, particularly since the girl is not
asking to leave her mother’s home. This is similar to the halachah
that it is impossible to extract payment from a person based on our
estimation of what took place. This is stated by the gemara in Bava
Basra (93a) regarding the case of a camel behaving wildly in a group
of camels and an ox that has been killed is found next to it, where we
cannot say that the wild camel killed it even though our judgment
tells us that it is almost certain that the camel killed it. We are never-
theless unable to extract payment [from the camel’s owner] solely on
the basis of our evaluation5. Here too, we cannot take the girl out of

4. This case is discussed at length further, siman 280 ‘Response to Question Two’
(s.v. I shall further explain) and in siman 281,‘The First Case.’

5. This principle is discussed at length, earlier, siman 64.

Removing a Child from the Parents’ Custody 2 241