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Observant Smokers Get ‘Kosher for Passover’ Cigarettes

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Leading Sephardic sage Rabbi Ovadia Yosef does not approve of smoking, but recognizes the need to make kosher for Passover cigarettes available for those who do.
Leading Sephardic sage Rabbi Ovadia Yosef does not approve of smoking, but recognizes the need to make kosher for Passover cigarettes available for those who do.
Observant Jews in Israel who find it difficult to spend an extended period of time without smoking will be happy to learn that they can now enjoy cigarettes that have been newly certified kosher for Passover.

The Badatz Beit Yosef kosher certification that is supervised by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the Shas party and Israel’s Sephardic community, has officially approved a range of cigarette brands from the Israeli Dubek tobacco products company, certifying that they do not contain any chametz (leaven), which is forbidden to ingest throughout Passover.

Badatz Beit Yosef is giving the Pesach certification in spite of Rabbi Yosef’s publicly stated opposition to smoking. “Doctors are against smoking; they say it causes lung cancer,” Rabbi Yosef stated in one of his weekly Motzoei Shabbat Torah lectures two years ago. “Whoever can refrain from it, all the better; he should take every effort to keep away from it.”

A spokesman for Badatz Beit Yosef explained to The Jerusalem Post that while it is true the Sephardic sage disapproves of smoking, he recognizes if that an individual already has the habit, he needs to be sure that the cigarettes he smokes are definitely chametz-free during Pesach.

When he spoke critically about smoking, Rabbi Yosef noted, “A person who is used to smoking – it’s hard to quit, but he should distance himself from it a step at a time.”

According to halacha, it is forbidden to eat or even possess any leaven or products containing leaven for the entire holiday of Pesach, which lasts for seven days in Israel and eight days elsewhere.

The Badatz Beit Yosef spokesman related that the group’s representatives had been invited to the cigarette manufacturer’s factory, where they discovered that certain additives to the tobacco that is used in cigarettes could be categorized as food and thus require inspection to ensure that they do not contain any bit of chametz. The spokesman pointed out that even the glue that connects the filter to the cigarette must not contain any leaven. “Although smoking is certainly a mistake, it is better that this error not be compounded by also breaking the laws of Passover, which are extremely stringent,” he said.

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