principle: "The Lord protects the simple." However, starting to smoke would be prohibited because of the transgression of v'lo sasuru. According to students, when informed of the dangers of smoking, Rabbi Aaron Kotler ruled that smoking was a biblical transgression. Many Haredi rabbis have called on people not to smoke and called smoking an 'evil habit'. These rabbis include Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv, Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Shapiro, Rabbi Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz, Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, and Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach. Rabbi Shmuel HaLevi Wosner forbade people from starting to smoke and said that those who smoke are obligated to do everything they can to stop. All of these rabbis also said that it is forbidden to smoke in a public place, where others might be bothered by it. Among important Sephardi Haredi rabbis, Rabbi Ben Tzion Abba Shaul and Rabbi Moshe Tzadka called on youth not to start smoking. Other major Ashkenazi rabbis who explicitly forbade smoking include Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, Rabbi Moshe Stern, and Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Sheinberg. Smoking is specifically prohibited by Solomon Freehof, other Reform rabbis, as well as rabbis in the Conservative movement in the U.S. and Israel. There is a custom still practiced today by Hasidic and some Haredi grooms who hand out free cigarettes to their friends at their vort (engagement). Recent rulings against smoking by great rabbis do not have seemed to have stopped the tradition. Early on in the Hasidic movement, the Baal Shem Tov taught that smoking tobacco can be used as a religious devotion, and can even help bring the Messianic Era. Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev is quoted as saying that "a Jew smokes on the weekdays and sniffs tobacco on the Sabbath". Rabbi Dovid of Lelov taught that it is a good religious practice to smoke on Saturday nights after the Sabbath, and this practice is followed by the Rebbes of Lelov and Skulen, however the current Rebbe of Skulen discourages people from following his example, in light of current views opposing smoking, and he himself only takes a few brief puffs of a cigarette after Havdalah. Many Hasidic Jews smoke, and many who do not smoke regularly will smoke on the holiday of Purim, even if they do not do so any other time of the year, and some consider it to be a spiritual practice, similar to the smoke of the altar in the