Q:
Is smoking permitted or prohibited by the Torah law? If it is forbidden, why is it, that so many rabbis smoke?
A:
And the answer is Hakodosh Boruch Hu gave a commandment which is the beginning of the Torah, the preface to the Torah; only I’ll say it in Lithuanian: Ner bukt durness. In Lithuanian it means ‘don’t be a fool’. That’s the first mitzvah of the Torah: Ner bukt durness – Do not be a fool. That’s not mine, by the way. The Alter of Slabodka said that.
אדם תועה מדרך השכל – If a man wanders away from the way of seichel, בקהל רפאים ינוח – he deserves to have a place in the cemetery (Mishlei 21:16). A man who doesn’t use the seichel that Hashem gives him deserves a place in the cemetery.
The first thing is to use good common sense. And if you see on the package that it warns you that smoking can cause cancer, emphysema, all kinds of diseases, and you are such a big chacham that despite it you’re going to smoke, then who knows what you deserve to get for that?
And don’t tell me there are people who are lamdanim who smoke. There are plenty of people who look like lamdanim but it’s only a mask. Inside they’re very far from being lamdanim. And therefore we should know, who cares who does wrong things? You follow the seichel.
Today it’s so clearly understood that smoking is a perilous practice that anybody who smokes has labeled themselves as the opposite of a chacham.
TAPE # 998 (February 1995)