Does there exist a relationship between the military virtues of self-sacrifice, courage, and comradeship on the one hand, and the cultivation of religious, personal, and pietistic ethics on the other? This paper will explore this question by looking at the ways in which the Mesillat Yesharim – an 18th century Jewish pietistic and ethical tract – is studied and interpreted within the premilitary rabbinic academies of Israel’s national religious sector. I will argue that this text serves as a social and hermeneutic medium through which national religious young men and women are able to navigate between the competing responsibilities that characterize their social, political, and theological positionality within Israel. On the one hand popular interpretations of the sacred text call upon adherents to transcend their own personal interests, in a bid to serve the Jewish people and the State of Israel through military service. On the other hand, this sacred ‘responsibility’ for the statist and militant structures of Jewish sovereignty is balanced by the romantic ideals of self-exploration, and personal development. When seen through this social-hermeneutic context the Mesillat Yesharim serves as a pietistic and ethical vehicle through which young men and women, facing years of national service, work through some of the conflicting fidelities of their own moral worlds. In a broader sense, this article explores the some of the ways in which sacred textual interpretations can shine a light on the moral ambiguities inherent in the social arena of political and ethnic conflict.