Consulting HaRambam
Can Medieval Wisdom Guide Israel through a Contemporary Challenge?
Israel’s debate over military service is often presented as a choice between two absolutes: the democratic principle of an equal civic burden and the religious imperative of preserving the world of Torah scholarship. As positions become increasingly entrenched, perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Rather than choosing sides, it may be worth consulting one of Judaism’s greatest thinkers—Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, known to Jewish tradition as HaRambam and to the wider world as Maimonides.
Although HaRambam lived in the medieval world, his thought remains strikingly relevant. He was not an isolated scholar removed from public life. He earned his livelihood as a physician, led his community, and composed one of Judaism’s greatest legal and philosophical works. His life reflected an integration of learning, professional responsibility, and public service. That integrated vision offers a valuable perspective on one of modern Israel’s most difficult challenges.
The legal starting point is HaRambam’s distinction in the Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 5:1–2 between Milchemet Reshut, an optional war, and Milchemet Mitzvah, a mandatory war. Optional wars permit exemptions. A war fought in defence of Israel does not. HaRambam famously rules in Laws of Kings and Wars 7:4 that “all must go out to fight—even a bridegroom from his chamber and a bride from her canopy.” The legal principle is clear: when the community’s survival is at stake, collective defence becomes a shared obligation rather than an individual choice. Within this legal framework, broad categorical exemptions are difficult to reconcile with the very purpose of a Milchemet Mitzvah.
Yet the discussion does not end there. At the conclusion of Laws of Shemita and Yovel 13:12–13, HaRambam praises those who dedicate themselves entirely to God’s service, comparing them to the Tribe of Levi. This passage is frequently cited to support exempting Torah scholars from national service.
Read in isolation, however, it obscures the broader coherence of HaRambam’s thought. Throughout his writings—and throughout his own life—he consistently rejected the notion that Torah study relieved an individual of civic or economic responsibility. In Laws of Torah Study 3:10 he sharply criticizes those who rely on public support while devoting themselves exclusively to study. Whatever one’s view of that position today, the underlying principle is clear: spiritual excellence and civic responsibility were never intended to exist in separate worlds.
That broader philosophy is at least as significant as HaRambam’s legal distinction between different kinds of war. He understood that a flourishing society depends upon learning, productive work, moral responsibility, and institutions capable of protecting the common good. Nowhere did HaRambam suggest that devotion to Torah, by itself, exempted individuals from obligations toward the community upon which that very world of learning depended.
What, then, can we learn by consulting HaRambam?
Certainly not a ready-made policy for a twenty-first-century democratic state. HaRambam lived centuries before the restoration of Jewish sovereignty. He wrote for dispersed Jewish communities, not for a modern state responsible for its own defence. Israel’s existence presents constitutional, political, military, and social questions that medieval Jewish thought could scarcely have anticipated.
Yet that historical distance makes his perspective no less valuable. HaRambam reminds us that difficult public questions should not be reduced to ideological absolutes. They require careful legal reasoning, moral judgment, and an appreciation that competing values often deserve protection rather than elimination.
That insight is especially important today. Israel’s Haredi community now constitutes close to 15% of the country’s population and continues to grow. As the community has grown, a question that once affected a relatively small sector has become a matter of national importance, with significant implications for Israel’s security, economy, and social cohesion, as highlighted in the Israel Democracy Institute’s Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply whether military service should be universal, but how a modern Jewish state can preserve both its physical security and its spiritual inheritance while maintaining a genuine sense of shared responsibility.
How that balance should ultimately be achieved belongs to democratic deliberation. Military service, civil service, and other forms of national contribution are matters of public policy. HaRambam cannot decide those questions for us. He can, however, remind us that enduring societies depend upon citizens who recognize responsibilities alongside rights and who understand that the common good sometimes demands shared sacrifice.
HaRambam’s own life offers perhaps the clearest lesson. He devoted himself to Torah while practising medicine, earning his livelihood, and serving his community. Scholarship and public responsibility were not competing ideals but mutually reinforcing commitments. Israel cannot flourish without its spiritual inheritance, nor can it survive without those who defend it. Consulting HaRambam does not relieve us of the responsibility to resolve our own contemporary challenges. Rather, it reminds us that a healthy Jewish society requires both spiritual excellence and shared civic responsibility.
The enduring challenge is not choosing between the book and the sword, but ensuring that neither is carried at the expense of the other.
