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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