Arms and the Jew

Derek Penslar, a historian at the University of Toronto, begins his sweeping account of Jews and the military with an anecdote regarding a talk he gave at a Toronto synagogue about Jewish soldiers in modern armies. After the talk, he asked members of his audience whether any of them had had military service. There were a number of elderly veterans there and others whose fathers or grandfathers had served in the Second World War or Korea and some parents of soldiers serving in Afghanistan. But the only man who was applauded by the audience was an older man who had served in the Harel Brigade of the Israeli Army in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Why did the audience have that reaction?

There are not many Jews in the Canadian Forces today. But there are young Canadians serving in the Israel Defense Forces. The former receive little acknowledgement from their community; the latter...