Reply To: Would you choose army or kollel?

I’m too old for this to have an affect on me now, but I’d try to find a way to do both. The Jewish people need both learning and being adequately armed and trained to stay safe, and staying adequately armed and trained is not a contradiction to learning. It’s another area of learning. Jews need to learn Torah and to constantly enforce our connection to Hashem by doing that. But we also can’t be claiming, in the name of our learning, that we can’t give up a town here, a religiouly significant site there — and being fully prepared to defend that down to the last Chiloni.