Volume 32: Number 120
Wed, 13 Aug 2014
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Message: 1
From: via Avodah
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 09:56:29 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Insights Into Halacha: Smoking and Halacha: A
From Toby Katz
From: Kenneth Miller via Avodah <avo...@lists.aishdas.org>
R' Yitzchok Levine forwarded a link to us:
> To find out more, read the full article "Insights Into Halacha:
> Smoking and Halacha: A Historical Perspective"
> http://ohr.edu/this_week/insights_into_halacha/5717
That article says (among many other things):
> The Gadol HaDor, Rav Moshe Feinstein zt"l, in a brief teshuva
> dated several months after the Surgeon General's initial
> report, wrote that although it is certainly appropriate to
> abstain from smoking, nevertheless, one cannot say that smoking
> is outright assur, ...
I have never been able to follow that logic. ....The halacha is not to do
unhealthy things, and that will change dependent on the current medical
knowledge.
Can anyone help me understand what Rav Moshe is saying?
Akiva Miller
>>>>>
There cannot be a blanket issur to do dangerous things, because there are
degrees of risk. The only blanket issur is to do something that has a 99%
or 100% risk, like putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.
There are people who smoke and live into their 90's -- I know a lady like that
who is still smoking and healthy beli ayin hara. Smoking can actually
have health benefits for some people (it can prevent Parkinson's for example,
and it suppresses some symptoms of schizophrenia). People eat tons of
sugar and fat, and sit at their computers all day with no exercise. People
drive cars every day, need I tell you that is risky behavior? And tragically
in my own neighborhood a man was shot and killed in cold blood on his way
to shul, just this past Shabbos. Probably the killers wanted to rob him and
he didn't have anything to give them. The risk is small but everyone
knows that there are chayos ra'os inhabiting our neighborhood, and we all walk
to shul on Shabbos anyway.
It is certainly wrong for anyone to start smoking now, knowing that the
risks are significant, but there can't be a blanket issur.
--Toby Katz
t6...@aol.com
..
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Message: 2
From: Rich, Joel
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 10:31:53 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Insights Into Halacha: Smoking and Halacha: A
That article says (among many other things):
> The Gadol HaDor, Rav Moshe Feinstein zt"l, in a brief teshuva
> dated several months after the Surgeon General's initial
> report, wrote that although it is certainly appropriate to
> abstain from smoking, nevertheless, one cannot say that smoking
> is outright assur, ...
I have never been able to follow that logic. ....The halacha is not to do unhealthy things, and that will change dependent on the current medical knowledge.
Can anyone help me understand what Rav Moshe is saying?
Akiva Miller
>>>>>
When you compare it to Rav Moshe's tshuva banning smoking marijuana it
makes for a great Rorschach test. One explanation might be that there was
a realization that people would not give up smoking overnight and that a
transition period was need as general society (and orthodox society
assimilated a new reality) Another might be that statistical correlation
is not enough to drive an issur (look at the mortality statistics for
obesity and tell me what takana should be made)
KT
Joel Rich
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Message: 3
From: Kenneth Miller
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:24:08 GMT
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Insights Into Halacha: Smoking and Halacha: A
R"n Toby Katz wrote:
> There cannot be a blanket issur to do dangerous things, because
> there are degrees of risk. The only blanket issur is to do
> something that has a 99% or 100% risk, like putting a gun to your
> head and pulling the trigger. There are people who smoke and live
> into their 90's...
I can certainly understand that a posek might choose to pasken that way,
but that's not the logic that Rav Moshe used. His logic, according to a
portion of the teshuva that I referred to but RTK did not, was this:
> Rav Moshe adds that especially since many Gedolim smoked, it is
> impossible to say that such an act is truly forbidden[13].
That's the part I was asking about. I would think that an activity's
permissibility should be based on the consensus of expert physicians of the
time. It makes absolutely no sense to me that the halachos of dangerous
foods might be based on the actual practice of another era's gedolim.
On the other hand, the following thought occurred to me a few days ago: If
I am understanding Rav Moshe's reasoning correctly, then it is entirely
consistent with other halachos where current medical thought differs with
the past, such as eating fish and meat together. The only difference is
that for fish and meat we hold onto the previous era's chumra, and for
smoking he holds onto the previous generation's kula.
GOING BACK to RTK's suggestion that the threshold of danger should be
"something that has a 99% or 100% risk", that would seem to conflict with
what current poskim seem to say about insects in fruit. If a greater than
10% chance of eating a bug would render this food assur, I'd be surprised
to find that it could be technically mutar to deliberately become addicted
to smoking if the chance of dying from it is only 11%. (I phrased it that
way because if I am going to invoke bugs, then I have to admit that each
act of eating them is a separate issur, and that's very different than an
occasional smoke, where the risk is extremely small.)
Akiva Miller
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Message: 4
From: Kenneth Miller
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:55:30 GMT
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Insights Into Halacha: Smoking and Halacha: A
R' Joel Rich wrote:
> When you compare it to Rav Moshe?s tshuva banning smoking marijuana
> it makes for a great Rorschach test. One explanation might be that
> there was a realization that people would not give up smoking
> overnight ...
Thank you very much, because that Rorschach test gets even better when you
take his reasoning behind the marijuana ban, and try to apply it to
alcohol, which people would give up even more reluctantly than the smoking.
For more of my views on this, see my post in Avodah 25:301, at http://www.aish
das.org/avodah/vol25/v25n301.shtml#02
Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
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Click to Learn #1 Carb that Kills Your Blood Sugar (Don't Eat This!)
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Message: 5
From: elazar teitz
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 21:03:40 +0300
Subject: Re: [Avodah] The Chatam Sofer and the Admor of Munkatch Say
If they say so, who are we to argue? All we can do is pray that Oseh
shalom bimromav Hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu v'al kol Yisraeil.
EMT
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