Ecology as a Mitzvah 31
In view of the fact that physicians have universally warned against the great danger of smoking to human health, and since, in my opinion, it is forbidden by the Torah , which commands,“You shall carefully preserve your lives”(Deut. 15:4)..., you are not permitted to buy him cigarettes. Furthermore, whenever you see him with a cigarette in his mouth,... say to him,“Father, it is written in the Torah ,“You shall carefully preserve your lives,” and smoking is very harmful” in the hope that he will understand, overcome his urge, and give up the habit."
One of the foremost experts on medicine and halakhah, Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, has accepted the findings of medical experts and asserted that“smoking is the number one killer of humanity.” Disagreeing with Rabbi Feinstein’s position, he declared “that there is no reason to be complacent... and rule that, because smoking is widespread,” there are no grounds for prohibiting it. Rabbi Waldenberg cited the medical evidence that “cigarette smoking is the main cause of death from cancer... Hence, it is certainly absurd to turn a blind eye on all this and blithely to conclude that[in a case like this]‘The Lord will preserve the foolish.””'®
Scientific evidence has proven conclusively that smoking is not only dangerous but even lethal. The U.S. Surgeon General's Report, issued annually in volumes of five hundred pages each, has scientifically demonstrated the danger of smoking to every organ of the human body. Nonetheless, U.S. law requires only a minuscule reference to this report as a warning of the danger to health in the omnipresent smoking advertisements sponsored by the tobacco industry. The same is the case in Israel , where cigarette packages bear a tiny Health Ministry warning. Yet smokers continue to smoke and adolescents willingly addict themselves, despite the fact that in Western countries smoking is responsible for more deaths each year than gunshot wounds, terrorism, and AIDS combined. Aroused public opinion and antismoking legislation have barely begun to deal with the epidemic proportions of the problem.
When my son was about fourteen years old, he read my article on smoking in the halakhah that was about to be published in Davar, a national newspaper in Israel . He asked me how I could continue to smoke my pipe when I'had just written that it is dangerous and forbidden by Jewish law. My son claimed that my preaching was contradicted by my practice, saying,“You will