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Why does the Gemara (גמרא) use "yelechu bah" (walking) to describe bikkur cholim? The shiur develops a yesod that unlike other mitzvos where travel is mere preparation, in bikkur cholim the effort itself is the mitzvah (מצוה). When a sick person sees how much you invested to visit, that gives him the chashivus and emotional strength to fight his illness.
The shiur opens with the Gemara (גמרא)'s statement that "yelechu bah" (the path in which you're supposed to go) refers to the mitzvah (מצוה) of bikkur cholim (visiting the sick). The classic question arises: what does walking have to do with bikkur cholim? The Chassidim interpret this as teaching that one should go in and out quickly without belaboring the visit, but Rabbi Zweig offers a fundamentally different understanding. The essential nature of bikkur cholim, Rabbi Zweig explains, is to help remove part of the illness. This works through a medical-psychological mechanism: the body constantly contains hostile bacteria and disease elements, but normally fights them off successfully. However, when a person experiences emotional problems or tzoros, his resistance weakens, and the body's normal pathogens begin to overwhelm him. The purpose of bikkur cholim is to make the sick person feel good about himself, thereby strengthening his ability to fight the illness on his own. By giving a person a feeling of chashivus (importance), you restore his emotional strength, which in turn enhances his physical capacity to battle the disease.
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Parshas Yisro - Gemara's derivation of bikkur cholim from "v'hodatem es haderech yelechu bah"
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