FIGHTING IN NATIONAL ARMIES
In May of 1789, the first Jewish military recruits for the Hapsburg army, under Emperor Joseph II , assembled in Prague were greeted by the following words:“Earn the thanks and honor of the nation; let it be seen that our(Jewish ) people, thus far oppressed, love their Lord and are ready, if necessary to sacrifice their lives....| hope that the loyal service, which you will surely give, will result in the elimination of those half oppressive measures which still restrict us. How much honor and fame will you then receive from all men who seek righteousness and all your fellow citizens. In this spirit I want to give you my heartfelt blessings.” These enthusiastic words were spoken by no less than Ezekiel Landau (1713-1793, the chief rabbi of Prague. ! Why did this careful, middle aged, Orthodox halakhic scholar greet these young recruits with such approval while outside the crowd of relatives was in tears? Did he have any reservations about young Jews serving in a foreign military force, perhaps expressed in a responsum? How did this scholar justify Jewish military service in a war which was neither“obligatory” nor a “permissive” as defined in the rabbinic literature? Was there any precedent of military service for other nations?
Actually, such warm greetings toward military service accompanied young Jews about to enter military service in all the western European wars in the last two centuries. Patriotic fervor sent young men to fight in the Napoleonic wars, the Prussian War Liberation, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and at an even higher pitch on both sides in World War I. Of course this was not so for those impressed for decades into the armies of the Russian Czars.
Subsequently Jews have taken military service for our respective nations for granted. My grandfather , Benno Jacob , served for a year in the Prussian army in 1881 along with tens of thousands of other German Jews . Later during World War I as a rabbi my grandfather visited German troops in France , only a short journey from his Dortmund congregation. I served voluntarily as a military chaplain in the United States Air Force stationed in the Philippines in the next century and traveled thousands of miles each month to far flung bases on the Asian rim of the Pacific Ocean. Neither one of us