shevet levi and milchamah.

bar ilan is down (or at least the yu link to access it isnt working for me), so i cant do any research about this or post any quotes.  but i noticed something interesting in rashi in this weeks parsha - when hashem sends bnei yisrael to go attack midyan, bnei yisrael send 1000 people from each shevet.  rashi comments - including shevet levi.

the rambam, at the end of hilchos shemittah viyovel writes that shevet levi doesnt go to milchamah, because their job is yoru mishpatecha liyaakov - to teach torah to bnei yisrael.  people in r shachter's shiur have told me that r shachter understands this rambam to even be referring to a milchemes mitzvah.  assuming that the rambam agrees with the sifri quoted by rashi, this would seemingly be a proof that the above rambam is limited to milchemes reshus.  this (in my opinion) makes more sense; the rambam, when discussing milchemes mitzvah famously writes that everyone must go to fight: במלחמת מצוה הכל יוצאין ואפילו חתן מחדרו וכלה מחופתה - in my hebrew, hakol means everyone, including leviim.

(parenthetically, the sefer hachinuch writes that women are exempt from hearing the parsha of amalek since women do not go out to war.  the minchas chinuch attacks with this rambam - in a milchemes mitzvah, women are part of the war effort as much as men are - kallah me-chupasah.  we clearly reject the chinuch (women all come to hear parshas zachor), presumably because we accept the position of the minchas chinuch / rambam.)

whats really interesting (and politically controversial nowadays) is that it wasnt like we needed shevet levi to fight - we sent only 12000 soldiers from a nation with 600,000 males between 20-60.  that last 1000 could easily have come from somewhere else.  apparently, it was still important for every shevet to play a part in taking G-d's vengeance against the enemies of G-d.   draw your own conclusions.

when bar ilan comes back up i have a few things i want to check up about this topic.