against their status.” Judah Assad(1797-1866) felt that as we accept the statement of women, so we can accept the statement of such Jewish soldiers.
Hayyim Judah Leb of Brody distinguished between the previous generation and his own. In the earlier generation the members of the community sought to avoid military service and those who joined were not religious; however now that military service was obligatory, individuals were and their testimony was to be accepted.” Similarly Abraham Benjamin Sofer(1815-1871) accepted such individuals as witnesses on the reasoning that all had been done at the command of the king, so dina demalhuta dina prevailed. Furthermore he indicated that their violation of Jewish precepts had not occurred publicly in the Jewish community or among known fellow Jews , so it was impossible to judge them.” Interestingly enough Shlomo Dremer in his Bet Shelomo provided a very different reason. He claimed that most Jews in Austria were non-observant with only a small number religious, so we can never accept such testimony. Moshe Schick (1807-1879) stated that the testimony of Jewish soldiers might be invalid, but should not be rejected out of hand.” Hayyim Sofer looked at this matter from a theological perspective. He felt that we could accept such testimony when it presents an issue between man and God , but not between man and his fellow human being as that might increase mamzerim in Israel.*> In other words a negative response.
One way out of this dilemma was through a conditional divorce(get al tenai); it solved the problem of witnesses to the death, but raised other issues aside from the fact that many women were unwilling to accept such a divorce.
Halitzah, provided another set of problems especially in Russia . Sometimes a woman only belatedly discovered that her husband had a brother, who may have been dragooned into the army as a cantonist. Was she obligated to locate him and persuade him to go through this ritual. He may no longer have been Jewish and, of course, did not know her or the ritual. Furthermore how was this to be done in Siberia far from any Jewish community? In lieu of this, could the testimony of the commanding officer to the death of the