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Sorry, nothing that grandiose. There was a civilian Kohen Gadol (high priest), and then there was his military equivalent, known as the mashuach milchama -- the Kohen appointed for war. The mashuach …

Your example is politically loaded. Let's try a simpler one. Joe makes a vow not to eat chocolate. Then he finds himself on a desert island where there is no food other than chocolate, and he will ot …

Off the top of my head, I can think of two Talmudic passages you might apply here. Sanhedrin 16a -- a state of war, to a degree: נכנסו חכמי ישראל אצלו אמרו לו אדונינו המלך עמך ישראל צריכין לפרנסה אמר …

A complicated subject. See this post from bein din l'din blog. In some cases it's wisest not to mix in; Rosh is famous for saying that if you insert yourself into a fight between A & B, eventually A …

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein responded in 1979 to a question from Kfar Chabad -- "you asked me to spell out all the practical guidelines on the laws of milchemet mitzva applicable today. I only answer practi …

Not really an explanation per se, but Rabbi Hershel Schachter points out that it was treated halachically (at least in its earlier stages) as a milchemes reshus, not a milchemes mitzvah, because the o …

"Cherem" implies that it is "off limits" from the general population; it will belong either to the kohanim, the Temple, Hashem, sacrificed, burned, something like that -- the Average Joe isn't going t …

What's right or wrong is dependent on the will of God, which may differ in differing situations. King Saul had clearly been (by Samuel) told to kill all the animals, and he disobeyed. King David w …

The question has been raised in contemporary times vis-a-vis Israeli soldiers. (And if I recall correctly from a lecture by Rabbi J D Bleich, Jewish soldiers in the British Army during WWII as well.) …

See Rabbi Michael Broyde's excellent essay (entitled, in various versions, either "Only the Good Die Young" or "Judaism is Not a Suicide Pact!") here. An excerpt: It is clear to me that the vast …

"Shifting one's personal clock" and the like -- the example you gave was someone who finds himself in the wilderness and has no sense of what day it is -- the Talmud says he should start some sort of …

At the simplest level, the point is hakol kol yaakov vehayadayim yedei esav -- Yaakov fights via prayer, while Esav fights with his fists. More accurately -- Yaakov knows that God is in control, so th …

Pants: Rabbi Adin Shteinzaltz (Even-Yisrael) has written that there may be situations where pants are more modest than skirts, observing that Jewish Yemenite women traditionally wore skirts on top of …

Short answer: there is a great deal of leeway when we're dealing with this scale of life. (Shabbos 42a talks about "so the public won't be damaged.") When Bennett began his term a while ago, Rabbi Yos …

Let's start with the captive. This only applies when the Kingdom of Israel is going to war. That has to be declared at the national level and has a particular legal status. As an individual I can't d …