Selected Responsa 157

the biblical military heroes were changed into literary or poetic figures. For the next two thousand years Jews occasionally fought on the walls of medieval cities along with their neighbors, but only in extreme emergencies. The soldier was not glorified.

The question of regular military service never arose. Jews formed a separate community wherever we lived till the Emancipation at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Only Emancipation, the slow movement toward citizenship, and the modern state’s hunger for manpower to feed its national armies conscripted Jews into military service. At first we entered unwillingly, but then, caught up in the fervor of nationalism, volunteered in large numbers.

This eagerness to serve, first shown throughout nineteenth century western Europe, was the clearest demonstration that whatever impulse toward pacifism, beyond the personal and communal, may have existed, had never taken root. We abandoned warfare after endless Roman defeats. Had we fought, we would have been wiped out. We were pacifists for almost two millennia, but never claimed this as a willing heritage. A longing for peace always remained, but hoping for the goal of peace and even praying for it are very different from pacifism which demands a thorough going ideology..

It is bizarre that Jews , who were what we might well call unwilling pacifists— forced into that situation by the surrounding world— never developed an ideology of pacifism. Pacifism has not become central to any major Jewish thinker. We took the ideal and furthered it personally and within the community. However, we left tas a an ideal, possibly a Messianic dream.

Perhaps it is the realism of Judaism which recognized that Such a stance on a broader level would only lead to annihilation. The rest of the world might even admire it, but would not emulate it. We ong for world-wide peace, further it in every way possible, but feCognize that conditions in the world are still far from it.

Walter J acob

(unpublished responsum)