Podcast: Shlomo Brody on What the Jewish Tradition Says about Going to War

The rabbi and scholar of just-war theory looks at the ethical parameters for nations thinking about going to war.

An Israeli soldier at a house in northern Israeli hit by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile, June 19, 2024. Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

An Israeli soldier at a house in northern Israeli hit by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile, June 19, 2024. Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Observation
June 21 2024
About the author

A weekly podcast, produced in partnership with the Tikvah Fund, offering up the best thinking on Jewish thought and culture.

Podcast: Shlomo Brody

 

Last month, host Jonathan Silver spoke with the rabbi Shlomo Brody about Jewish military ethics. They spoke, in particular, about the Jewish ethical tradition’s conception of right conduct once a war has begun: how one ought to calibrate the force of a maneuver to the threat it is meant to neutralize, how one ought to balance collateral damage and civilian casualties with force protection, and other related questions. This week, Brody joins Silver once again to discuss the reasons nations go to war—that is, to discern in Jewish history, Jewish text, and the drama of modern Zionism, the ethical parameters of thinking about going to war in the first place. As with their previous conversation, this conversation is informed by Brody’s recently published book, Ethics of Our Fighters.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

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