[Avodah] [Areivim] netilat yadayim

[Zev Sero]

On 12/01/2012 11:31 AM, Saul.Z.Newman at kp.org wrote:
>
> _http://yeranenyaakov.blogspot.com/2012/01/rav-mordechai-eliyahu-and-netilat.html_
> a wartime bracha.....

What a wonderful story, but I wonder about the halacha here.  Isn't it
an explicit halacha that soldiers in camp in wartime are exempt from
netilat yadayim for meals?  AIUI this has nothing to do with pikuach
nefesh, and is not merely a leniency bish'at had'chak but rather a
condition of the basic halacha; just as one is exempt from washing if
one eats mezonot, so one is exempt if one is a soldier in a camp at war
(provided there are 10 soldiers there).  Further, in such a situation,
even if water is plentiful and one chooses to wash anyway, wouldn't the
bracha be levatalah?


-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon