Orthodox Jews who commit traffic violations or who smoke are just as ineligible to serve as witnesses in rabbinical courts or in Jewish weddings as pork-eating, Shabbat-desecrating secular Jews, according to a leading religious Zionist rabbi.
In a halachic opinion made public ahead of a conference on road safety, Rabbi Re'em Hacohen, head of the Hesder Yeshiva in Otniel, near Hebron, said that reckless drivers and smokers show a callous disregard for human life - whether their own or others - and are therefore considered invalid witnesses.
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