By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com

The outpouring of volunteerism that we have just observed is remarkably inspiring.  There is so much to do as the summer is almost over.  And thousands of people just dropped everything to look for a missing child.  There is a fascinating halachah in the laws of treating a sick person on Shabbos (O.C. 328:15). The ruling is that when doctors determine that a sick person on Shabbos requires a certain medicine, and ten people go to retrieve that medicine (in the Gemara’s case, it involved plucking a fig from a tree), all ten are patur.

The Shulchan Aruch, however, adds seven fascinating words that appear neither in the original Gemara nor in the Rambam’s reformulation of the ruling. The Shulchan Aruch adds, “V’kulam yesh la’hem s’char tov me’eis HaKadosh Boruch Hu”—“And all of them have a good reward from Hashem.”

One can perhaps ask a question:  Why does it say – vekulam?  Why doesn’t the Shulchan Aruch simply say, “Veyaish lahem s’char tov me’eis HaKadoh Boruch Hu?

Perhaps the answer is as follows:   It is not just the person who got the fig or found the child who gets schar.  They are all considered as if he or she had found the child in terms of reward! Hashem is mitztaref machashava k’maaseh.

Further still, we have a klal Kol Hamaitzil nefesh achas it is as if he has saved an entire world.

We have a number of heroes in our midst.  May the collective zchus of so many many volunteers be a zchus for everyone in this newly resurgent pandemic. May it stand as a zchus for us all here and in eretz Yisroel amain!

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