I
place HaShem
before me, always.
(Psalm 16:8)
This is a
great rule
of the Torah!
(Shulkhan Arukh)
--------------------
--------------------
|
|
Any
Questions??
Contact Us:
P. O. Box 59-700,
Chicago, IL. 60659 USA
Tel. 773-761-3777
Fax 773-761-9670
email.
koshertorah@hotmail.com
The
Written Works of
Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok
Copyright © 1997 - 2004
by Ariel Bar Tzadok.
All rights
reserved.
Thou shalt not smoke!
A Bnei Brak rabbi
has declared that smoking
is as much a sin as eating a ham sandwich.
The 151-page book in a red faux-leather binding with gilt lettering looks like any of thousands of titles on the shelves of yeshivot, synagogues and religious Jewish homes around the world. But Haim Lelo Ishun Al Pi Hatorah is remarkable, as it uses the unique terminology and debating style of Orthodox Jewry to declare that manufacturing, selling or smoking tobacco violates halacha (Jewish law).
Thus, says its author, Rabbi Yehezkel Ishayek of Bnei Brak, smoking (or in any way dealing in tobacco) is as forbidden by Jewish law as eating pork... in fact more so, as one person's smoking can physically harm and even kill other people, which eating a ham sandwich does not.
The Jerusalem-born Ishayek was for 38 years the personal secretary of the late Rabbi Eliezer Schach, head of the famous Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak and undisputed rabbinical arbiter of Israeli Lithuanian Jewry. A Sephardi of Iraqi origin, Ishayek attended a Talmud Torah in Tel Aviv, then Yeshivat Merom Zion, and then Ponevezh itself. In 1963 he met Rabbi Schach, who was so impressed by the young man that he made him his personal assistant, which he remained until the rabbi's death in 2001 at the age of 106.
Ishayek says nobody in his family smokes, but he became interested in tobacco and its dangers at the end of 1999, when then-health minister Shlomo Benizri (of Shas) established a public committee to recommend ways to reduce the habit in Israel. The public body was established at the recommendation of High Court of Justice officials involved in the suit by the Israel Medical Association to declare tobacco a "dangerous drug."
Ishayek attended each of the more than three dozen sessions, heard all the testimony, and hoped action would quickly be taken. But although the five-member committee - headed by Judge Alon Gillon, registrar of the Supreme Court - was supposed to report back six months later, Gillon has inexplicably postponed completing the report, and nearly five years later, anti-smoking activists are still waiting for its findings and recommendations.
They are especially disappointed that Gillon, who quit a lifelong tobacco habit when he was diagnosed with upper-esophageal cancer, and whose father died at 52 from lung cancer - has not produced. Because of the unexplained and embarrassing delay, the Health Ministry has to apply to the court periodically to ask for an official extension.
ALTHOUGH ISHAYEK says he is concerned about all Israelis, he put special focus on the haredi sector, among whom smoking has been widespread for many years. He says he has seen young haredi men - fathers of many children - needlessly die of heart disease, lung cancer and other tobacco-related ailments, leaving widows and orphans behind.
"I don't have much contact with the secular and modern Orthodox communities," he explains.
Over generations, many haredi boys have been initiated by their relatives and even their fathers, who give them their first puff on Purim or after their bar mitzva. Many leading rabbis, especially hassidic rebbes, have been chronic users of tobacco. I recall interviewing a leading Jerusalem rabbinical figure about two decades ago and asking him why he had never declared smoking was in violation of halacha. After some hesitation, his face blanched. "But I can't do that.," he said. "I myself smoke... a lot."
Not long afterwards, he suffered his first heart attack and became chronically disabled, but he never issued a ruling that smoking was forbidden.
"I felt I had to do something about haredi men who smoke." The number of haredi women who light up, Ishayek adds, is so small that it is not worth mentioning. If there are any, they are penitent Jews who got hooked when they were still secular. Apparently, the average haredi woman - who gives birth to a large number of children - has long been aware of the harm that smoking can cause her children, and smoking is regarded as immodest or male behavior.
TO TARGET the problem, Ishayek financed a telephone survey of haredi men to find out how many of them admit to smoking. The Motagim polling firm found that 19.4% do - a 30% drop from a few years ago. Although haredim - especially hassidim - have a smokey public image, Ishayek says they smoke significantly less than secular men (29% of whom smoke). The survey also found that 11% of yeshiva students smoke, which is probably less than their counterparts in the universities.
But Ishayek decided to launch his self-appointed campaign against haredi smokers nevertheless, as the percentages still constitute many tens of thousands. He self-published his NIS 16 book, producing 1,200 copies and sending them to rabbis, synagogues and yeshivot in haredi neighborhoods around the country. There has been enough interest and demand to justify a second printing, he says. The book begins with endorsements from leading rabbis and halachic arbiters, as well as two prominent physicians. A list of the diseases caused by smoking, the fact that 10,000 Israelis die of active and passive smoking each year, and the constituents of tobacco and its smoke (including DDT, ammonia, 43 carcinogens, 4,000 chemicals and even chocolate or licorice to get children hooked) are presented early on.
The author then gives the halachic background: Preserving one's health is an important positive commandment; smoking in public involves desecration of God's name by acting counter to the rulings of the Hafetz Haim (Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan) and many other greats who came out against smoking; the late Rabbi Moshe Feinstein declared that smokers who expose others to their smoke must compensate them financially for the damage they cause; that smokers are a bad example to youth; and that saving people from smoking may be a greater mitzva than redeeming Jewish captives.
BUT THe book is just one avenue to his goal. With help from the municipalities of Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and others, he has printed letters personally addressed to haredi yeshiva students aged 16 to 18 describing the severe health dangers posed by tobacco, explaining the halachic background, and urging them not to start smoking, as prevention is much easier than quitting. Ishayek's lobbying also helped push the government to author a bill to bar the sale of tobacco products to minors.
Direct mailing of anti-smoking material to the haredi committee, he says, is an effective method, since members of the community are not exposed to TV, secular newspapers or even radio stations. He is happy to report that there are now very few leading rabbis who smoke - at least in public.
"That is history. Those rabbis who smoke now or did in the past started when it wasn't well known that smoking was bad for you," Ishayek continues. "But today they do know, and don't want to be a bad example."
Rabbi Schach smoked for many years, but stopped "in one day" when his doctor told him it was dangerous. In 1984 he issued a letter barring smoking in his yeshiva.
But the haredi newspapers have remained far behind, says Ishayek. The Agudat Yisrael daily Hamodia (read mostly by hassidim) gratefully accepts full-page ads from the Dubek tobacco monopoly. Tobacco ads with religious themes, handled by a haredi woman advertising agent in Bnei Brak, have appeared for many years. One, for example, shows a havdala candle and spice box alongside a pack of cigarettes, with the slogan Shavua tov ("A good week"). The Bnei Brak-based Yated Ne'eman, which has a Lithuanian following and was established by Rabbi Schach, stopped accepting tobacco ads six months ago, but resumed at Purim this year. Ishayek has collected signatures from hundreds of haredi readers of Yated Ne'eman demanding that this practice stop.
Yom Le'Yom, the Shas weekly, adopted a no-tobacco-ad policy seven years ago after Ovadia Yosef, the Shas spiritual leader, ordered it to do so. But just recently, the Shas paper again began accepting Dubek ads (with no official comment from Yosef). The weekly was quoted as explaining that it did so for financial reasons, and that the prominent Health Ministry-mandated warnings "were enough to get the message across."
Although Ishayek clearly says smokers violate halacha, none of the prominent rabbis quoted in the book go that far. They say it is forbidden to start, and that one must try very hard to stop, but they fall short of declaring outright that smokers are sinners.
Among those rabbis who in the past have made such statements is Rabbi Simha Hacohen Kook of Rehovot. In addition, the Bostoner Rebbe (Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Horowitz) declared in 1997 that smokers are committing "slow suicide," and urged his followers and other haredim to quit or not to start smoking. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has declared that smokers "deserve 40 lashes," and that those who market tobacco are in league with the Angel of Death. He also privately tells his close family and followers that they must stop smoking.
But perhaps, as Ishayek's little volume is distributed among more rabbis and yeshivot, his message and unwavering stance will infiltrate the minds and consciences of the most prominent religious leaders and lead to a unanimous stand - that smoking is as forbidden as eating a ham sandwich or violating the Sabbath, and is indeed equivalent to committing suicide.
Rabbi
Ishayek's book, Haim Lelo Ishun Al Pi Hatorah,
can be purchased at haredi bookstores,
by contacting him at 17 Rehov Hazon Ish, Bnei Brak 51502,
or by calling (03) 618-7876.
This article can also be read at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/
ShowFull&cid=1083468519488&p=1006953080053
Copyright 1995-2004 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/