[Intl-tobacco] Israel: Haredi papers consider banning tobacco ads (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Haredi papers consider banning tobacco ads
by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich
Source: Jerusalem Post, Monday, 2/21/00

15 Adar I 5760 (February 21) - The editors and managers of of Hamodia and
Yated Ne'eman, the two Ashkenazi haredi dailies, will meet soon to discuss
whether to refuse to accept tobacco advertising, which constitutes a major
chunk of their income. Both papers said they will follow instructions from
their rabbis.

Full-page Dubek advertisements with religious themes, handled by a haredi
woman advertising agent in Bnei Brak, have appeared for many years in
these papers.

One, for example, shows a havdala candle and spice box - signifying the
end of Shabbat - alongside a pack of cigarettes, with the slogan shavua
tov ("A good week"); another refers to cigarettes and "the lips of wise
men."

Tobacco companies have long claimed that their ads "merely try to persuade
existing smokers to switch to their brand, instead of getting non-smokers
to start smoking."

The Jerusalem-based Hamodia, read primarily by a hassidic audience, and
the Bnei Brak-based Yated Ne'eman, which has a Lithuanian (mitnagdim)  
following, are three years behind the anti-tobacco campaigns of Yom
Le'Yom, the Shas-affiliated weekly inspired to take action by party
spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

The Sephardi-oriented Yom Le'Yom went so far as to bar all cigarette
advertisements from its pages, even though Dubek and other companies
supplied a major part of its advertising income.

Hamodia editor Elazar Knopf said yesterday that "we'll certainly discuss
it. We will do whatever our rabbis rule." He declined to say how much
money the paper received each year for Dubek's ads.

Haim Rieger, the advertising manager at Yated Ne'eman, said that a
discussion on whether to adopt a new advertising policy regarding tobacco
will be held this week. "There are all kinds of legal and other
implications," he said.

The question of tobacco advertising in the Ashkenazi haredi papers was
raised by forceful rulings by leading rabbinical authorities against
smoking given prominence on Friday by the two Ashkenazi haredi dailies.
Unprecedented front-page news articles accompanied large advertisements
placed by Rabbis Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Aharon Yehuda Leib Steinman, Moshe
Shmuel Shapira, Michl Yehuda Lifkovitz, Nissim Karelitz, and Shmuel
Auerbach.

The articles and the advertisements in the two papers called on young
people not to start smoking, and for those who already smoke to "gradually
try to quit."

A few weeks ago, The Jerusalem Post was the first to publish an even more
rigorous ruling by prominent Bnei Brak sage Rabbi Shmuel Halevy Wosner,
which appeared in an boxed ad on the Friday front pages of both Hamodia
and Yated Ne'eman.  Wosner called on people not only to avoid starting to
smoke altogether, but said that if they were already hooked, they should
gradually kick the habit.

He also declared that smokers should not light up in public places and
thus harm others, and stated that "those that advertise [cigarettes] in
the newspapers and those who assist in this dangerous thing" will have to
take responsibility for the harm they cause."