Jewish law draws a careful line around the rituals of mourning — the seven days of shiva, the tearing of garments, the torn clothes and covered mirrors — and reserves them for the immediate family. The sages taught that one does not observe these formal rituals when a slave of the household dies, even a beloved one.
When a servant of Rabbi Eliezer died, his students came to the house to console him. He turned them away, politely but firmly. He accepted no formal words of nichum aveilim, no condolences. His grief was real; he did not pretend otherwise. But he refused to dress that grief in the ceremonial garments reserved for a parent, child, spouse, or sibling.
Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (1924, No. 128) preserves this as halakhic guidance with a quiet edge. A Jewish household mourns its workers as people — fully, humanly — but does not confuse the love of employer for employee with the covenantal bonds of blood and marriage. Eliezer's refusal is not coldness. It is the discipline of distinguishing a sorrow from a status.