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Does the Jewish faith call for opposing Gov. Scott Walker’s attempts to limit collective bargaining by public employees? A group of Wisconsin rabbis says it does, but their letter to Republican leaders in the state senate drew a harsh response from one national conservative magazine.

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The letter came from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the activist arm of the Union for Reform Judaism, a denomination that advocates for a more modern approach to Judaism. Signed by 16 Wisconsin rabbis, the March 1 letter said that “in keeping with the values of Wisconsin’s Jewish community, and in the spirit of our state’s motto – ‘forward’ – we urge you to preserve the right of state employees to collectively bargain.”

To support their position, the rabbis cite a passage from the Book of Deuteronomy in the Torah (the first five books of the Christian Bible) – “You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer, whether a fellow Israelite or a stranger in one of the communities of your land. You must pay out the wages due on the same day, before the sun sets, for the worker is needy and urgently depends on it.”

Enter Commentary, a New York-based conservative magazine that publishes opinion pieces on public policy, politics and Jewish issues. On a blog on the magazine’s website, executive editor Jonathan Tobin called the letter an attempt “to stifle debate and brand those who disagree as irreligious or enemies of religious principles.”

Tobin says the rabbis can speak for themselves but not the Jewish faith, and he takes issue with their Torah reference.

“The problem here is that the state employees whose generous salaries, benefits and pensions are at stake in this debate are far from being either needy or destitute,” he writes. “The Torah’s mandate for treating the working poor fairly has nothing to do with Wisconsin’s greedy public-sector unions and their thuggish supporters, who have been besieging the state capitol in Madison in order to thwart the will of the democratically-elected majority of the legislature.”

Tobin also notes that the Torah passage refers to wages, not pensions or health insurance, the benefits that Walker’s bill (now being fought in the courts) removed from collective bargaining.

In a response to Tobin’s criticism published on the Commentary website, the Religious Action Center responded that he was ignoring the “central Jewish tenets commanding us to pursue justice and to serve as a moral goad to our communities. Jews are commanded to engage in tikkun olam – repair of the world. Government, with its immense resources, is indispensable in this task.”

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