“When you approach the battle, the kohen shall come near … and say to them, “Hear O Israel, today you are approaching the battle against your enemies…” (Devarim 20:2-3)
Rashi comments here that even if the person going into battle has no merit other than the reading of the Shema, he is still worthy of being saved.
Expounding on this, the Nachlas Tzvi cites the Talmud’s analysis (Brachos 13a) of the placement of the three paragraphs of Shema, which do not appear adjacent to each other in the Torah.
Shema precedes V’hayah im shamo’a so that one will first accept upon himself the yoke of the Heavenly Kingdom and only then accept upon himself the yoke of mitzvos. It would seem then that the mitzvah of Krias Shema is unique in that its essence is the acceptance of the Divine yoke, i.e. complete subservience to Hashem. Thus, even if one did not fulfill the entire Torah, but he did accept the Divine yoke and did teshuva, he is like a complete tzaddik and he can confidently go to war.
V’hayah im shamo’a in turn precedes Vayomer because the mitzvos in the former are applicable both day and night, while the mitzvah of tzitzit relayed in the latter is only practiced during the day.
The Talmud continues that if someone lengthens the word echad in his recitation of Shema, his days and years will be lengthened. This would explain Rashi’s comment that the individual could be saved from death in battle. R’ Acha bar Yaakov cautions, however, that one must extend the daled of echad so that the word is sounded in its entirety; R’ Ashi warns that this is only so long as one does not pronounce the letter ches of echad hurriedly. R’ Chiya concludes that once one has crowned Hashem in Heaven and on earth and in the four corners of the world, he does not need to extend the word echad any further.
Rambam in Hilchos Melachim (7:15) writes that the description in the Torah of a man “who is afraid or fainthearted” is simply one who is not brave enough to go to battle. Once a person goes to war, says Rambam, he should rely solely on Hashem and not show any fright or fear, otherwise he transgresses the negative precept (Devarim 20:3) “Let your heart not be faint; do not be afraid; do not panic.” Furthermore, says Rambam, if he does fight with his whole heart, without fear, for the sake of Heaven, he is assured that not only will he not be harmed, but he will also gather merit for himself and his family and he will merit eternal life in the World to Come (Shmuel I 25:28).
The individual who goes to war must be without sin and he cannot be fainthearted, a characteristic that relies on the person’s emunah. It is for that reason that Rashi says that the reading of the Shema suffices to save him, because it demonstrates that the emunah of the individual is intact.
The Talmud (Brachos 33a) relates that people came for help to R’ Chanina ben Dosa because a snake was attacking them. R’ Chanina asked them to show him the hole of the snake. He then placed his heel over the mouth of the hole. The snake came out, bit him and then died. R’ Chanina placed the snake over his shoulder and brought it into the bais medrash. He said to those assembled there: “See, my children: It is not the snake that kills, but sin that kills.” Here too, it’s not war that takes life – it’s the sin that takes life.
When Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld was young, he received a draft notice. He went to the great tzaddik, the Divrei Chaim, for a bracha.
The Divrei Chaim said to him, “You want to become a general in the army? You have to become a general in Eretz Yisrael.” He then blessed him, and told him to return home and bandage his hands.
As R’ Yosef Chaim was returning home he noticed that his hand and arm had begun to swell up. He followed the instructions of the Divrei Chaim, and then went to respond to the summons he had received from the draft board. When they saw his swollen hand and arm, they exempted him.
By the time he returned to the yeshiva in Pressburg, it was already night time. Suddenly, R’ Yosef Chaim felt great pain in his left hand and saw that his arm had become even more swollen. It was already 2:00 in the morning, and he was afraid that he would not be able to put on his tefillin the next morning. With nowhere to go and nothing else to do, he began to bear down heavily on his inflamed and puffed up hand, desperateto relieve the pain somewhat. Suddenly blood began to spurt out in an endless stream, and it was a while before he was able to control its flow.
When R’ Yosef Chaim awoke the next morning, his arm had returned to its normal size. He followed up the bizarre incident with a visit to the doctor, who told the young man that if he had not rid himself of the infection the way he did it could have traveled through his bloodstream and caused him to die.
R’ Yosef Chaim knew that he had been saved in the merit of his will to fulfill the mitzvah of tefillin.
