Drafting Women for the Army and national service

Drafting Women for the Army
Rabbi Alfred  Cohen
https://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/735795/rabbi-alfred-cohen/drafting-women-for-the-army 

 Although we usually think of halacha - the study of Jewish law - as a dry, academic discipline, it is really a mistake to think of it in those terms. Halacha has a dynamic all its own; it is impossible to rule on a halachic matter from a distance, on a theoretical plane.

The halacha reflects much more than a choice between two intellectual alternatives; at certain times, it demands that the pasek, the rabbinic authority, consider the proposed action in the context of the times and the implications it might have for society. The Chazon Ish chose not to approach the question of a woman's going to war in the academic fashion that the topic had been discussed by scholars for some two thousand years. Nor did he dissect the problem into specific legal questions - may a woman bear arms, is it a mitzvah for a woman to fight for the Land of Israel, are there wars where she should be included, etc. On the contrary, the Chazon Ish saw the matter entirely as an issue of morality going to the very heart of Judaism. In a letter to a colleague, his brother-in-law Rav Yaakov Koniefsky reported that the Chazon Ish had declared that if the law were indeed passed, it was the duty of every Jew to resist unto death - literally. For him it represented an encroachment upon the prohibition of "Arayof" - immorality and licentiousness - which is one of the three mitzyot for which a Jew must choose death rather than transgress. Rav Koniefsky also writes that the Chazon Ish, the Brisker Rav, and the Tchebiner Rav all concurred that if the measure became law, every family with·a draft-age daughter would have to leave the country! So strong were they in opposing the danger that they equally opposed a similar plan to draft girls not for the army but for some alternate National Service.

They left no doubt as to the cause for their opposition - the army in any country. and Israel is no different, is a place where moral standards are relaxed. to say the least, and it was just not the proper environment for a Jewish daughter, Against their will, the girls would be affected by the atmosphere and the environment to which they would be exposed, a milieu which would replace the positive reinforcement they would have gotten at home from parents and family.
Rabbis Isser Zalman Meltzer and Tzvi Pesach Frank also issued pronouncements that a person must choose death rather than accede to the government decree, as did the Steipler Rav and Rav Shach. When another rabbi suggested that perhaps it would not be so terrible if the girls served under carefully supervised conditions, the Chazon Ish retorted that the rabbi's opinion was totally worthless and, had he had any children, he would not have been able to say something like that The Chazon Ish actually ruled that the Sabbath should be desecrated to avoid compliance with a draft order and urged parents and teachers to inculcate young women with the laws of dying "al kiddush Hashem;' in sanctification of the Name.