• Corpus ID: 2679119

Smoking in Jewish Law Yael Farzan

@inproceedings{Farzan2014SmokingIJ,
  title={Smoking in Jewish Law Yael Farzan},
  author={Yael Farzan},
  year={2014}
}

• Yael Farzan
• Published 2014
• Law

Decades ago, before rabbinic authorities knew of the extreme dangers entailed in smoking, it was believed that smoking was not prohibited according to Jewish law. These early rabbinic authorities base their ruling on two Talmudic principles: that one should not enforce a restrictive decree on a population unless the majority of people can follow it (Baba Kamma 79b), and that it is better for people to commit an inadvertent sin than an intentional one if they will not keep the decree anyway (Shabbath 148b). However, both arguments are not applicable when a person’s life is at stake (pikuach nefesh), which is the case with smoking.