o thanks-i'm lookin forward to reading it.

wow
gosh whatta golus

rafi,

is it possible to download these scribd docs?

dont know but I can email it to you

Thank you very for this document, it was an interesting read. If you have any other IDF Shaylos, that pertain to various holidays or lifecycle events please post them.

Also for the edification of your readers, there are several very good books out there dealing with IDF service and halacha. Rav Goren's Meishiv Milhama in three volumes is not exactly portable, but very important. The all-time classic is Dinei Tzava v'Milahama from Rav Min HaHar. We ALL carried that one in our pockets or efodim 20+ years ago. Mine is pretty worn out. Or Yitzhak by Rav Yitzhak Yakobovitch was very good. Dealt more with specific issues, while Rav Min HaHar covered all the basics for soldiers in the field. The piece on 'rehuyot batank' in Or Yitzhak always stuck in my mind. HaRav Zechariah Ben Shlomo from Yeshivat Shaalvim wrote Hilchot Tzava. Thorough, and very useful. We originally got them as two small volumes from the yeshiva in the late 80s. This is the closest up-dated comparable sefer in scope that I know of for Rav Min HaHar's sefer. Last Pesah I gave a one-volume small copy to a nice young man from RBS who should be in the IDF just now, I believe. From the Fabian family. There is also Tzava K'halacha from Rav Yosef Tzvi Rimon at Yeshivat Har Etzion. What little I've looked at it, it is also excellent. More like shiurim in the foundations of applicable halacha, than just piskei halacha.

I was a little surprised, btw, by some of the answers in that document you presented. (Though, admittedly, I only skimmed some of it.) In addition to being talmidei hachamim, have these people served as field soldiers? One that sticks in my mind was the answer about fasting on Tisha B'Av. I got a pretty different approach from Rav Mordechai Eliyahu shlit'a when spending the summer in the area outside Tzur in the mid-80s.

Summer Olympics were then, too. I remember one crew in the field who managed to hook up a small TV to a vehicle battery. They took turns watching the games by sticking their heads under a blanket so the TV wouldn't be visible from a distance.

kol ha-kavod to your shul. but why in english? is this a translation of a hebrew work made for english-speaking soldiers?

i remember when i was in yeshivah looking through all the halakhah books for soldiers that the guys were learning for when they were drafted. real halakhah le-ma'aseh.

it's sad that they need to live under these circumstances, but nice to see their commitment to upholding halakhah under those circumstances.

mordechai - very interesting.. I have no idea about the specific rabbis.

loz - most of the pirchei shoshanim work is in english..

mordechai:

i remember some of those names you mention from what the israelis were learning.

Of course, our most valuable resource was that many of the ramim and senior talmidim in the yeshivot where I learned had been there before us. There is no substitute for Torah SheBaal Peh and Masoret. ;-)

The very first mechinah k'dam tzvai came about to create a firm halachic and hashkafic basis for young men who didn't want to sit in yeshiva before serving, but who cared very much about their responsibilities as dati soldiers. IIRC, Rav Eli Sadan left Mercaz HaRav (where he taught our shiur in Maharal) to start that out in Eli. The idea really took off.

Oh, in my comment about the Or Yitzhak, that should be 'reshuyot batank'. Oops.