ת"ר מפקחין פקוח נפש בשבת והזריז ה"ז משובח ואין צריך ליטול רשות מב"ד הא כיצד ראה תינוק שנפל לים פורש מצודה ומעלהו והזריז ה"ז משובח ואין צריך ליטול רשות מב"ד ואע"ג דקא צייד כוורי ראה תינוק שנפל לבור עוקר חוליא ומעלהו והזריז ה"ז משובח ואין צריך ליטול רשות מב"ד אע"ג דמתקן דרגא
§ The Sages taught in a baraita: One engages in SAVING A LIFE on Shabbat, and one who is vigilant to do so is praiseworthy. And one need not take permission from a court but hurries to act on his own. How so? If one sees a child who fell into the sea, he spreads a fisherman’s net and raises him from the water. And one who is vigilant and acts quickly is praiseworthy, and one need not seek permission from a court, although in doing so he catches fish in the net as well. Similarly, if one sees a child fall into a pit and the child cannot get out, he digs part of the ground out around the edge of the pit to create a makeshift step and raises him out. And one who is vigilant and acts quickly is praiseworthy, and one need not seek permission from a court, although in doing so he fashions a step.
Excerpts from:
Working for the Sabbath: Sabbath in the Jewish Immigrant Neighborhoods of New York by Annie Polland (Labor and Religion Vol 6, Spring 2009)
After the turn of the century, finding jobs [on the Lower East Side] that allowed for Saturday rest became increasingly difficult because of the garment industry’s shift away from the neighborhood shop and to the factory... In the 1880s and 1890s, a Jewish immigrant worker was more likely to find a job in a tenement sweatshop run by a Jew in which one could work Sunday instead of Saturday. By the turn of the century, however, the factory system was increasingly replacing the smaller, neighborhood garment shops, and the factories, on the whole, operated on Saturday instead of Sunday. (Polland, 6)
When confronted with the six- or seven-day workweek that curtailed Saturday Sabbath observance, those in the workforce had to devise a way to balance their religious and material obligations. (4)
Working immigrants turned to the concept of pikuakh nefesh, the saving of a soul, the idea that one might break the Sabbath to save a life. This concept surfaces repeatedly in immigrant memoir literature, the Yiddish press, and rabbinical responsa... So strong were family ties and so stringent were the circumstances that one’s Sabbath work could be rationalized, justified, and excused. When Ephraim Wagner realized that taking a job that required Saturday work would allow him to better provide for his family, he also turned to Jewish tradition to justify his decision: “A life in jeopardy overrules the Sabbath." ... The prominence of this term in relation to Saturday work in America shows both the need that reluctant Sabbath workers evidenced to connect them back into Jewish tradition and also the way the broader immigrant community responded and understood these deviations due to material conditions. (5)
Rabbi Jacob Baumann, an Orthodox Rabbi using Pikuah Nefesh to excuse Sabbath Desacration for Jews who worked to support their families: (circa 1908)
“One hears here of men who were Sabbath observers and very careful in performing the Mitzvoth when they were in the land of Russia, but who in this country go to work on the Sabbath. And each one rationalized this by saying that it is not his intention to cast off the yoke of Judaism, heaven forbid. Rather it is only because his life and the life of his family are contingent upon this; for if he refuses to work on the Sabbath, he will be unable to find work even on the weekdays, as happens frequently in our country. Hence, he will not have bread with which to sustain his family and they will be in mortal danger. And there are some men who, even if they work on the Sabbath, conduct themselves as proper Israelites in all other matters.” “Responsa Literature,” American Jewish History (December 1979): 263.