their time, almost entirely ignored military legislation as it had no practical purpose outside a sovereign Jewish state. Only Maimonides who wished to provide a system which could also serve a future Jewish state, not only organized the laws of warfare, but also developed them further. Maimonides ’ summary expanded the talmudic texts in a number of ways: First by virtue of placing everything together and into an organized context. Secondly he made decisions on matters over which the earlier authorities disagreed and finally by developing the entire matter into a system. The casual remarks of talmudic scholars, usually not debated were placed into a setting in which the power of the king was severely circumscribed. We should note a contrast to the expansion of royal emergency powers." Retaking the Land of Israel remained an obligation; wars of expansion were placed in a gray area, while other wars were subject to the vote of the“Great Assembly,” which could theoretically be recreated As the borders of the Land of Israel were subject to enormous variations of interpretation, those restrictions were limited. Furthermore few of the details of warfare were touched upon by these broad brush-strokes. If we look at the totality of the Mishneh Torah, this section did not loom large. In the subsequent halakhic and philosophical literature no efforts were made to provide a theoretical framework for war.
(1269-1343) was among the first to discuss or mention military service of Jewish soldiers in the Diaspora; with the statement that:“A Jew may participate in a permissive war if it began three days before shabbat..., but in a mandatory war, even on shabbat,”’'® He based himself on a brief talmudic comment(Shab. 19a). A mandatory struggle would include Jewish participation in the defense of a city along with the other inhabitants. The principle that “danger to life” over-rides all shabbat prohibitions was cited in defense of this decision.
The nature of such a struggle between gentiles in which Jews participated along with everyone else was never raised. Joseph Karo ’s(1488-1575) commentary on this passage stated that there was no need for Jews to participate in such a struggle between gentile forces. However, Joel Sirkes (1561-1640) countered that Jews had