אחיכם יעלו למלחמה ואתם תשבו Moses asked the two and half tribes that wanted to settle in the land on the opposite side of the Jordan River: ''Your brothers go to war and you will stay behind?" TO me this seems relevant to the yeshiva world that has had a petur [permission to be excused] from service in the Israeli Defense Force ever since the 1948 war of Independence. I do appreciate learning Torah, but I do not see it as an excuse not to do any other mitzvah, furthermore, i think that this war is in the category of michemet mitzva [obligatory war]--as opposed to milchemet r'shut [permissible war].
