48 | MAY 16 • 2024 
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hen Shlomo Brody told a 
learned colleague that he, 
Brody, was working on 
writing a book on Jewish military ethics, 
the colleague responded, “That’s going to 
be a very short book.” 
The colleague had reasons for 
skepticism. Biblical sources instruct 
soldiers of the kingdoms of Judah and 
Israel in response to the norms of war in 
antiquity; it seems plausible that modern 
warfare has different norms. 
 For the past two millennia, Jews have 
generally existed as partially tolerated 
minorities in someone else’s country. 
The world’s political leaders and military 
commanders chose their actions without 
consulting Jewish sages. Jews more 
often participated in warfare as civilian 

casualties. Over those centuries, rabbinic 
literature has rarely had to confront the 
ethical challenges of modern warfare. 
When Jews were drafted, rabbis 
advised them on a narrower agenda: 
how to hold on to Jewish identity or 
ritual practices while serving in national 
armies.
But as Jewish communities in pre-
state Israel faced violent opposition, 
they needed organized self-defense; and 
then as the nation of Israel achieved 
independence surrounded by ferocious 
enemies, it needed a national army. 
 Reality rather suddenly confronted 
modern Jews with all the ethical 
challenges of military force. Political 
leaders, military commanders, secular 
ethicists and rabbinic scholars argued 

about what principles should apply, and 
how to apply those principles, even as 
fighters engaged in unavoidable bloody 
conflicts. Jewish military ethics had to 
grow up fast; “Jewish Military Ethics” 
could not remain a short book. 
“Following many centuries of 
powerlessness,” Brody observes, “Jews 
needed to ask: What does it mean to 
fight as a Jew?” 

CASE STUDIES
In each case study in Ethics of Our 
Fighters, Shlomo Brody presents a 
dramatic life-and-death confrontation in 
real life and competing recommendations 
for what fighters should have done. 
Brody tells the stories in rough in 
increasing analytic subtlety. He begins 
with incidents in World War I that 
inspired Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares 
(1869-1931) to the absolute pacifist 
evaluation that taking part in war 
amounts to idolatry. Brody repeatedly 
manages, in the course of three or four 
pages, to involve readers in a compelling 
dramatic military account, and then 
to sympathetically present contrasting 
evaluations of the combatants’ actions. 
Brody moves seamlessly among the 

Ethical Warfare

Review of Ethics of Our Fighters: A Jewish 
View on War and Morality by Shlomo Brody.

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

BOOK REVIEW

Rabbi Shlomo Bordy 
was featured on 
Israel National News.

ARTS&LIFE