Q:
Is there anything wrong with a religious girl who smokes?
A:
The truth is there is no such thing as a religious girl smoking. That’s the plain truth; take it from me, she’s not religious. She only puts up a front. It cannot be. Because if she can bring herself to smoke, it’s an attitude of libertarianism.
Now, I’ll explain how it could happen. If she had the habit beforehand and then she became a baalas teshuvah. But even then, it’s entirely out of character. Smoking is definitely a masculine habit. It’s a bad habit, but it’s a masculine habit. And even though there are plenty of women who smoke today, it still didn’t gain any heter and it’s ossur because of לא תלבש. A woman cannot do masculine things.
And besides that, it’s just as beautiful on her as raising a big handlebar moustache. A woman with a cigarette in her mouth, she thinks that she is emulating a cowboy on a horse – that’s what the billboards tell her. She sees him nonchalantly holding a cigarette as he’s riding out towards the desert on a horse. All she needs is a ten-gallon hat. But it’s out of character for a woman. If she wants to be a woman, it’s necessary for her to do only womanly things.
And that’s of supreme importance in Torah, and it’s important in maintaining her status in married life, or to get married. Hakadosh Baruch Hu knows psychology better than anybody else and He knows that a woman has to have only womanly characteristics.
June 30, 1977
