Soldiering, which for almost two millennia was almost entirely foreign to Jewish thought and practice, has by virtue of universal conscription become a rite of passage to citizenship in the Jewish state. For practicing orthodox Jews in Israel this change generates dilemmas that are intellectual as well as behavioural, and has necessitated both doctrinal and institutional adaptations. At the same time, the responses thus evoked are forcing Israel's decision-makers to reconsider the traditional role of the Israel Defence Force (IDF) as their country's most evocative symbol of national unity.