have seen. The Orthodox rabbinic authorities understood such service as a potential path to assimilation, voluntary in the western world and forced in Russia , yet they reluctantly concurred.
Reform rabbinic authorities accepted such service as an obligation of citizenship without discussion. It had to be integrated into Jewish life. That is the path which we have followed. Serving in foreign military units has thus become part of Jewish life in the Diaspora.
Serving military service in foreign armies has made the basic halakhic concepts of mandatory and permissive wars irrelevant. Whether a war is obligatory or discretionary has become a matter of private opinion. However, serious halakhic discussions are necessary to shape these individual views.
Now two centuries after Emancipation and military service in nation state, it would be helpful to provide a halalhic understanding
for what has occurred. We need to restate our views of warfare and place them into our understanding of contemporary Judaism in the diaspora and Israel . No Jewish military theory exists in contemporary Judaism .
NOTES
1. This took place in May, 1789. Ezekiel Landau , Meassef, quoted in Simon Dubnow , Die neuste Geschichte des juedischen Volkes, Berlin, vol. 8, pp. 28-29. Emperor Joseph II 's edict demanding military service(1788) imposed a heavy burden without extending civil rights. It was the first time that Jews had been inducted into a Christian army and was not welcomed by the military aristocracy either. Dubnow also noted that the Austrian army was the first to allow Jews to rise in the lower ranks.
2. Joseph Karo ’s Shulhan Arukh contians only scattered references and no entire section on this topic as he limited himself to matters which were relevant in the diaspora and did not treat anything else. This is also true of other codification. Only Maimonides Mishneh Torah contains a section on kings and warfare as he wished to cover all of Jewish law, even items which were theoretical or would only be possible in a future Jewish state. However, this section was far briefer than everything else discussed in his work.