The following letter was written by Hagaon Rav Shelomo Zalman Auerbach, zt”l and Hagaon Rav Yitzchak Yaakov Weiss zt”l in response to a 1986 nursing strike in Shaarei Tzedek Hospital. That summer, nursing staffs in Israeli hospitals struck, leaving their departments, and, in some instances, even emergency rooms.

“Erev Shabbat, Parshat Shelach, 20 Sivan, 5746 (June 27, 1986),
To the complete nursing staff,
We hereby issue a warning, with the utmost severity, based on our holy Torah. It has come to our attention that, as the nursing strike intensified, the situation in the hospital has reached a degree where peoples’ lives are actually in danger (“pikuach nefesh”). As we have already ruled in our letter to the hospital’s administration, this is a situation where it is appropriate to apply the Code of Jewish Law’s statement (Yoreh Deah 336:1), “A doctor who witholds treatment is tantamount to a murderer.” This equally applies to the nursing staff.
It is therefore incumbent on all of the nursing staff to return to work, at least to all departments of the hospital where patients are cared for (“machlakot ishpuz”).”

The letter appears in Dr. Avraham S. Avraham’s comprehensive work on Jewish medical ethics and halakha, Nishmat Avraham: The Laws Pertaining to Doctors and Medicine (Jerusalem 1987), volume 3, pp. 207.

After quoting the above letter, he adds the following comment: In a state guided by Jewish las, such a scenario would be avoided at a much earlier stage. The nurses’ claims against unfair working conditions are just, and would be remedied. If, G-d forbid, they were taken advantage of, they would refer their case to a beit din, a rabbinical court. The court would take into account the welfare of both sides of a labor dispute and, in a natural halakhic system, have the power to enforce their decision.

prepared by R. Eliezer Kwass