“And for Those Who Use It to Perform Unifications (Yiḥudim)—It Is Self-Evidently Permitted”: Tobacco in the Shulḥan ha-Ṭahor of the Komarno Rebbe

Abstract

This article offers a renewed, interdisciplinary, and integrative reading of the halakhic rulings concerning tobacco issued by R. Yitzḥak Isaac Yehudah Yechiel Safrin, the Komarno Rebbe (1806–1874), in his work Shulḥan ha-Ṭahor. The article surveys R. Safrin’s various treatments of tobacco, its smoking, and its inhalation. It demonstrates how R. Safrin’s halakhic position on tobacco is connected to his Hasidic-mystical worldview. In this respect, the article continues an existing scholarly trend that points to a systematic relationship between R. Safrin’s halakhic world and his Hasidic-mystical world. His halakhic rulings concerning tobacco are examined against the backdrop of the distinctive status accorded to tobacco in Hasidism as a psychoactive substance possessing spiritual potential. The analysis of the Hasidic and halakhic sources draws on anthropological studies of the spiritual use of tobacco among Indigenous cultures in South America, as well as insights from contemporary psychedelic research.