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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Natalman, and this is Psychoactive, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the

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Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any

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Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media,

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Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as

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Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not

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Speaker 1: even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show

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Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use

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Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today, the issue

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Speaker 1: is a bit close to me personally. The subject we're

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Speaker 1: talk about today is Jews and cannabis. And what prompted

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Speaker 1: this was not that I just something like discovered I'm Jewish.

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Speaker 1: I mean Jewish all my life. As many of your

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Speaker 1: listeners hear the references I make from time to time,

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Speaker 1: but there was an exhibit re only in New York

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Speaker 1: that's actually playing for the rest of the year on

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Speaker 1: the subject Jews and cannabis. It's at a famous institute

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Speaker 1: called EVO, the Addition Institute for Jewish Research, which is

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Speaker 1: part of a broader umbrella organization called the Center for

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Speaker 1: Jewish History, which is committed to the preservation and study

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Speaker 1: of the history and culture of East European Jury, but

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Speaker 1: a key academic advisor and the head of their exhibitions,

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Speaker 1: Eddie Portnoy, has always been sort of drawn to looking

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Speaker 1: at the Devian side of things, and he came up

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Speaker 1: with this idea of doing an exhibit on Jews and cannabis,

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Speaker 1: which I just went to in May, which was fascinating.

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Speaker 1: Place was packed and so Eddie, thank you for joining

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Speaker 1: me on Psychoactive. Thanks for having mean so Eddie, what

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Speaker 1: was it that prompted you to, you know, do Jews

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Speaker 1: in cannabis. Well, one of the odd things was a

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Speaker 1: few years ago I happen to see online really kind

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Speaker 1: of beautifully sculpted glass bong in the shape of a

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Speaker 1: manora for the holiday of Hankka, and I thought, you know,

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Speaker 1: this is really kind of an unusual will think it's

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Speaker 1: this confluence of cannabis culture and Jewish culture. And I

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Speaker 1: thought to myself, you know, I work at a historical

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Speaker 1: research institute that has a really enormous archive with something

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Speaker 1: like twenty four million objects and artifacts and documents, and

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Speaker 1: I thought, you know, we've been collecting Jewish material culture

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Speaker 1: for almost a hundred years. This Manura bong is something

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Speaker 1: that's representative of Jewish material culture. This should be in

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Speaker 1: our collection. And so I contacted the company Grav that

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Speaker 1: makes it, and I told them what I just told you,

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Speaker 1: that I work at historical research institute that has this

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Speaker 1: huge archive, and I asked if they would donate it

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Speaker 1: to the archives, and they were very receptive. They said sure,

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Speaker 1: and they then following week it was in my office

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Speaker 1: and as it sat at my desk, I thought to myself, well,

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Speaker 1: the first thing I thought was why would anyone smoke

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Speaker 1: eight bowls of weed at a time. But the second

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Speaker 1: thing I thought was could I feasibly make an exhibit

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Speaker 1: on Jews and cannabis? You know, could this? Could this?

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Speaker 1: Is this something that I could actually create? Are there

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Speaker 1: more items like this? You know, what's the history of this?

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Speaker 1: And I began to do a bit of research and

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Speaker 1: sure enough I came up with really much more than

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Speaker 1: I would ever need to create an exhibit. And we

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Speaker 1: waited until COVID was a little bit calmer to open it.

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Speaker 1: But it opened it. As you said, the place was

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Speaker 1: packed and it's gotten a really great reception. So far. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, when looking at your background and what you've

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Speaker 1: written and done in the past, I feel a certain

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Speaker 1: kinship with you know, when I was doing my own

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Speaker 1: PhD in politics, you know, decades ago, and I was

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Speaker 1: always drawn to the kind of deviant side of things.

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Speaker 1: I was curious about deviant and about even thinking about devians,

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Speaker 1: not just in a sociological context, but a political context

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Speaker 1: and even in a global context. And my senses that

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Speaker 1: you also had that history. I mean, the book you

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Speaker 1: wrote was called I think Bad Rabbi tell us a

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Speaker 1: little bit about that to provide some broader context of this, right,

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Speaker 1: so bad Rabbi. The full title is Bad Rabbi and

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Speaker 1: Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press. This

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Speaker 1: book contains a wide variety of different stories, most of

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Speaker 1: them called from old Yiddish newspapers. And one of the

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Speaker 1: reasons I began doing this was when I was doing

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Speaker 1: research for my dissertation, which was on cartoons of the

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Speaker 1: Yiddish press. I had to read the Yiddish press extensively,

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Speaker 1: and I kept coming across really unusual articles about I

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Speaker 1: guess what you'd call Jews in trouble, but trouble of

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Speaker 1: their own making sort of bunglers and screw ups and

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Speaker 1: you know, criminals and people involved in violent situations. And

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Speaker 1: some of them were really hilarious. Some of them are tragic,

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Speaker 1: some are tragic comic. But I've sort of found this

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Speaker 1: trove of incredibly fascinating stories about Jews, mostly from the

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Speaker 1: early twentieth century, and they weren't the typical things you

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Speaker 1: thought of when you thought of, you know, Yiddish speaking Jews.

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Speaker 1: There are riots and murders and psychics and all kinds

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Speaker 1: of fights. They are knocked down, drag out battles during

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Speaker 1: divorce proceedings in rabbinical courts. It's almost as if it's

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Speaker 1: a kind of Yiddish Jerry Springer show. And when I

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Speaker 1: was at school and deeply studying the Jews of this era,

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Speaker 1: I never came across material like this. But yet in

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Speaker 1: Yiddish newspapers, this kind of material was legion and it

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Speaker 1: really fascinated me, and so I compiled the fair amount

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Speaker 1: of it and produced this book. M Well I saw it.

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Speaker 1: I think also some of the other exhibits, maybe the

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Speaker 1: ones that you've curated. There. There's one called Fight Club

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Speaker 1: about the Jewish boxers and how many Jewish champions that

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Speaker 1: were in boxing. There were Jews in space, jewsing comedy,

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Speaker 1: and Renaissance literature, jew Face, which was kind of the

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Speaker 1: variant of black face, mysterally involving Jewish and Jewish theater.

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Speaker 1: I mean, so it sounds like there's a number of

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Speaker 1: ones where you've kind of been drawn to looking at

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Speaker 1: this sort of surprising ways in which Jews play a

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Speaker 1: role in which you would not expect them to be playing. Right,

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Speaker 1: That's basically my m o. I look for aspects of

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Speaker 1: Jewish life that people really haven't scholars or really anyone

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Speaker 1: else hasn't really touched on a great deal. And often

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Speaker 1: this has to do with deviance, and some of it

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Speaker 1: winds up being really fascinating. And I could just add that,

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Speaker 1: you know, one interesting person who's connected to cannabis is

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Speaker 1: Howard Becker, who's one of the fathers of Devian studies

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Speaker 1: in sociology. And you know, he wrote one of the

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Speaker 1: early academic articles in the Orly nineteen fifties on cannabis use.

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Speaker 1: Howard Becker's I think he wrote Becoming a Marijuana User,

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Speaker 1: where he talked about what it means to learn how

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Speaker 1: to be high. I mean Howard Becker is still in

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Speaker 1: his nineties. He became a very famous sociologist, but no,

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Speaker 1: he was an early really leader in there. Now, one

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Speaker 1: of the things you put in the exhibit is you

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Speaker 1: go back to the period and it's a really very

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Speaker 1: rich period of the nineties, sixties and seventies when you

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Speaker 1: have both the counterculture as well as the Jewish researchers

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Speaker 1: and scientists who are basically, you know, advocating for marijuana

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Speaker 1: reform in the very early stages of the first wave

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Speaker 1: of marijuana reform, and who are disproportionately Jewish at that time. Now,

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Speaker 1: I'll say there was one name in the exhibit I

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Speaker 1: think that I did not recognize. I think it was

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Speaker 1: Walter Bromberg. Walter Bromberg, who was a psychiatrist, you know,

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Speaker 1: working in the nineteen thirties at Bellevue Hospital and he

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Speaker 1: did some of the first research on marijuana smokers who

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Speaker 1: had been brought into his ward and he produced i

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Speaker 1: think his first article in nineteen thirty four, and what

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Speaker 1: he found was brilliant opposition to what was happening in

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Speaker 1: the press, where marijuana was perceived as you know, something

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Speaker 1: that caused people to engage in violence. Or made them

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Speaker 1: psychotic in some way. He found that it didn't do

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Speaker 1: that at all. His findings showed that marijuana was not

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Speaker 1: particularly detrimental, at least not in the same way as

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Speaker 1: you know, opium, morphine or you know, even alcohol. Right,

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Speaker 1: And his recommendations I think shaped the LaGuardia Commission, which

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Speaker 1: was one of the early governmental commissions in the US

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Speaker 1: to come out basically advocating for some form of decriminalization

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Speaker 1: of cannabis back in the thirties, and headed up or

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Speaker 1: appointed by a mayor, Fiero LaGuardia, Italian name but half Jewish,

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Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, you'd just speaking Italian mayor. I'll tell

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Speaker 1: you there was a moment I remember in nineteen eighties seven,

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Speaker 1: and I had just started teaching at Princeton and been

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Speaker 1: asked to teach a corse on drug policy and gave

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Speaker 1: me an opportunity to invite some of the more prominent

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Speaker 1: figures in and I remember that's how I met Andrew

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Speaker 1: Wild who was actually my very first guest on Psychoactive

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Speaker 1: almost a year or so ago. And I'm sitting there

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Speaker 1: having dinner with Andy, and he says, he's you ever

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Speaker 1: wonder or maybe worry about how many Jews are involved,

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Speaker 1: and we were just talking about cannabis, but brought a

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Speaker 1: drug policy reform because you know, it was him. Then

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Speaker 1: there was Arnold Treeback, who had just co created the

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Speaker 1: Drug Policy Foundation to advocate against the drug war. But

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Speaker 1: then you had Lester grin Spoon Harvard Medical School and

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Speaker 1: Norman Zendberg at Harvard Medical School. And you had Ed Brecker,

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Speaker 1: who had written the Editors of Consumers Report, which is

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Speaker 1: a breakthrough book challenging the major drug work. John Kaplan,

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Speaker 1: a Standford law professor who together with Grinspoon, wrote a

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Speaker 1: couple of the key books in the early seventies, basically

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Speaker 1: advocating for some reform. And so it raises the interesting

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Speaker 1: question of was there ever a sense of marijuana legalist

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Speaker 1: Asian or marijuana being something of a Jewish conspiracy. Some

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Speaker 1: people thought, so, you know, one of those people being

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Speaker 1: Richard Nixon. Well, now that you mentioned Nixon, I mean,

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Speaker 1: let's just go to the famous clip of his He's

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Speaker 1: talking to hr Holden and his aid and he's complaining

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Speaker 1: about marijuana and Jews Jewish matter always. So just in

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Speaker 1: case you couldn't make out what Nixon was saying, there

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Speaker 1: he says, you know, it's a funny thing. Every one

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Speaker 1: of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish.

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Speaker 1: What the crisis the matter with the Jews? Bob? He

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Speaker 1: says to Bob Holdman, what's the matter with them? I

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Speaker 1: suppose it's because most of them are psychiatrists. So, Eddie,

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Speaker 1: what's your take on that Nixon quote? Right? So, on

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Speaker 1: the one hand, it's hilarious, and on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: and it's terrible because you know, it obviously reveals Nixon's

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Speaker 1: anti Semitism and his obvious pension for conspiracy theory. But

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Speaker 1: what's actually happening here is this quote was recorded in

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Speaker 1: the Oval office on his secret recording apparatus on I

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Speaker 1: Believe one, and he was about to officially launch his

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Speaker 1: drug war, and Lester Grinsapon's book Reconsidering Marijuana had come

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Speaker 1: out a few weeks earlier, and this was a book

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Speaker 1: written by a Harvard University psychiatry professor published by Harvard

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Speaker 1: University Press. It's clearly something that's respected and legitimate. And

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Speaker 1: the end result is that marijuana is not detrimental, it's

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Speaker 1: even something that should be legalized. And obviously this is

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Speaker 1: backed up by years of research, and so Nixon is

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Speaker 1: furious because he's about to launch the drug war and

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Speaker 1: this very obviously Jewish psychiatrist comes out with this book

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Speaker 1: that's going to be problematic for him. And it's connected

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Speaker 1: to this in some way. Is the other people who

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Speaker 1: are involved in legalization and some of the people who

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Speaker 1: Nixon is also trying to get at with the drug

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Speaker 1: war are the Yippies, who are also Certainly anyone can

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Speaker 1: join the Yippies, and probably most of you know, I

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Speaker 1: don't think that there was any kind of official membership.

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Speaker 1: So the Yippies was a political organization. Some people call

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Speaker 1: them the groucho Marxists. They were this kind of radical

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Speaker 1: left wing political group who was very performative some of

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Speaker 1: the things they did. And if anyone saw the recent

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Speaker 1: Chicago Seven movie, the Chicago Seven essentially the founders of

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Speaker 1: the Yippies, and they would go into the gallery of

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Speaker 1: the New York Stock Exchange and in the middle of

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Speaker 1: trading throw out hundreds of dollar bills and the traders

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Speaker 1: would all go running to grab the dollar bills, and

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Speaker 1: it was obviously meant to embarrass them. They also did

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Speaker 1: things like threatened to spike the water system of Chicago

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Speaker 1: with LSD. During the night Democratic Convention, they attempted to

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Speaker 1: levitate the Pentagon. They were all kinds of funny formative activities.

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Speaker 1: But one of the interesting things that I actually didn't

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Speaker 1: know about the Hippies until I started doing research on

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Speaker 1: this was that marijuana legalization was central to their political platform.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, their official flag, which is a black

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Speaker 1: flag with a red star, also has a marijuana leaf

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Speaker 1: embossed on it. And if you read their newspapers, among

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Speaker 1: them the Yipster Times or Overthrow, they're full of articles

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Speaker 1: about legalization and the importance of legalization. So Nixon hated

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Speaker 1: these people, and obviously they hated Nixon as well, and

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Speaker 1: so they were always at each other's streaks. But one

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Speaker 1: way that Nixon could harm them was by instituting a

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Speaker 1: drug war in which they would wind up in jail.

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Speaker 1: And so that was part and parcel of the drug wars.

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Speaker 1: Put users in jail and use resources for that instead

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Speaker 1: of other possibly more useful matters. And it just so

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Speaker 1: happens that all five of the founders of the Yippies

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Speaker 1: were Jewish, I mean Abbie Hofman and his wife Anita,

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Speaker 1: and Jerry Rubin, who were both in the trilog Chicago

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Speaker 1: seven and Nancy Krishan and Paul Krasner. So once again,

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Speaker 1: none of them probably all that connected in their adult

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Speaker 1: lives to their judaism, but nonetheless organizing this kind of

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Speaker 1: anarchistic group. And then of course he had Alan Ginsburg, right,

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Speaker 1: the famous poet, right. Yeah, so Ginsburg he was actually

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Speaker 1: one of really the early adopters of legalization as a platform.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, he and Ed Sanders of the Fugs,

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Speaker 1: if anyone remembers, the Fugs band did really interesting stuff,

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Speaker 1: actually did some Yiddish songs, so they also had a

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Speaker 1: Yiddish connection. But Alan Ginsburg and had Sanders founded Limar

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Speaker 1: or legalized marijuana in New York, and in late ninety

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Speaker 1: four began organizing public protests in support of marijuana legalization.

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Speaker 1: These were really, I believe, the first public protests in

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Speaker 1: support of legalization. He also wrote articles, I think in

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Speaker 1: the Atlantic promoting legalization. He was very active in this regard,

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Speaker 1: and I guess it's somewhat unusual to have a literary

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Speaker 1: figure do this. But one interesting thing here is the

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Speaker 1: connection he makes between generation. So one interesting thing about

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Speaker 1: Ginsberg iscause I understand that he began to use cannabis

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Speaker 1: as a results of his connection with the jazz scene.

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Speaker 1: Jazz musicians have been using cannabis since the twenties, and

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Speaker 1: he's also this link between the jazz scene and the

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Speaker 1: popularization of cannabis and the nineties sixties counterculture, which he's

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Speaker 1: also involved in, And so that makes him a kind

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Speaker 1: of unusual figure in that regard. Well, you know, there's

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Speaker 1: also something else because you go back to the thirties,

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Speaker 1: right when you had both very common marijuana use among

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Speaker 1: jazz musicians. Annu also had beginnings of reefer madness with

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Speaker 1: Harry ann Slinger, the head of the FARO Bureau of

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Speaker 1: Narcotics and others. But I mean that was the point

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Speaker 1: where you had many musicians right who had reefer songs,

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Speaker 1: and many of them didn't even have lyrics. But I

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Speaker 1: think that you had Fats Waller and Duke Ellington and

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Speaker 1: Jeane Krupa. But then you had a Jewish guy like

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Speaker 1: Benny Goodman, the famous clarinetist who had his song Texas

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Speaker 1: tea Party. And then the one who perhaps me the

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Speaker 1: greatest connection here was Mesro, a clarinetist. Among other things,

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Speaker 1: he did a song sending the viper, but who had

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Speaker 1: other connections? So just tell us a little bit about

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Speaker 1: miss Misroe. Right, So, mess Mesro was born in Chicago,

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Speaker 1: learned to play saxophone in reform school. He was, you know,

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Speaker 1: admittedly not a great kid, but learning to play saxophone

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Speaker 1: kind of saved him. He got into the jazz scene

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Speaker 1: in Chicago, played with a number of great and as

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Speaker 1: a jazz musician, he began using cannabis because apparently a

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Speaker 1: lot of people who were doing it, and he, while

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Speaker 1: in Chicago, made a connection with a particular Mexican dealer

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Speaker 1: who apparently had higher quality marijuana than others. In late twenties,

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Speaker 1: he moved to New York to become part of the

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Speaker 1: Harlem jazz scene. And he's not really able to support himself.

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Speaker 1: So because he has this Mexican connection, he begins selling

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Speaker 1: marijuana and apparently he becomes one of the most popular

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Speaker 1: figures in Harlem. Because of this, he becomes Louis Armstrong's

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Speaker 1: personal dealer. Louis Armstrong was frequent user. He called it muggles,

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Speaker 1: which he references in a number of his songs. And

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Speaker 1: as you said, mes Mesro gets named dropped in a

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Speaker 1: lot of songs. In fact, in Harlem of the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: marijuana was known as mez and he used to sell

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Speaker 1: these pre roles that everyone called mes roles. And he

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Speaker 1: was Albert Goldman, who's this journalist and scholar and well

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Speaker 1: known biographer of people like John Lennon and Lenny Bruce

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Speaker 1: and Elvis. He wrote a history of Marijuana America that

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Speaker 1: came out in late seventies and he wrote that mesro

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Speaker 1: was really one of the most seminal figures in the

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Speaker 1: popularization of cannabis in the United States. And yet to

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Speaker 1: a certain degree, he's been forgotten in this regard, you know,

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Speaker 1: with the exception of mentioned in these books. Which is

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Speaker 1: interesting here is he's this Jewish kid from Chicago who

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Speaker 1: gets involved in the jazz scene, gets involved with cannabis

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Speaker 1: use and sales in New York and then Alan Ginsberg

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Speaker 1: winds up as a fan of jazz, going to show

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Speaker 1: starts smoking cannabis because of that, and then he becomes

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Speaker 1: this link to the counterculture and the ultimate large scale

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Speaker 1: popularization of marijuana use as part of this growing youth culture,

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Speaker 1: him being the marijuana deal supplier for the most famous

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Speaker 1: marijuana use her in American history, which was Louis Armstrong,

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Speaker 1: You know, Louie Armstrong, clearly not the black Man, a Baptist,

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Speaker 1: I think, but somebody who wore a star of David

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Speaker 1: all his adult life. I think because he had a

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Speaker 1: very close relationship with the Jewish family when he was

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Speaker 1: a kid, and he saw that family is having kind

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Speaker 1: of enabled him to help him become who he was,

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Speaker 1: not least by helping him buy his first trumpet when

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Speaker 1: he was very younger. Yeah, so you get the counterculture

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Speaker 1: from the thirties and the jazz era and then going

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Speaker 1: into the sixties, and then in the exhibit you mentioned,

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Speaker 1: I think some of the musicians famous Jewish musicians, although

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Speaker 1: they were may not have been known for being famous

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Speaker 1: because they were Jewish. But one I think was shel Silverstein, right,

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Speaker 1: who was a writer and a poet, a cartoonist, songware player.

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Speaker 1: I think it was most famous for children's books like

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Speaker 1: The Giving Tree and A Light in the Attic. And

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Speaker 1: he also wrote that Johnny Cash song A Boy named Sue.

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Speaker 1: But what was his contribution to marijuana songology? Verstein wrote,

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Speaker 1: I got stone and I missed it missed. It's a

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Speaker 1: song about someone who gets high and then misses out

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Speaker 1: on some things. So it's the sort of comic song

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Speaker 1: about you know what happens to you if you get

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Speaker 1: too high? So Phillips wrote, you can't get stone enough.

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Speaker 1: And so this is obviously a popular thematic in the

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Speaker 1: nineties sixties, all of these you know, folk singers and

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Speaker 1: rock stars would come to sing songs about cannabis in

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Speaker 1: some way. We'll be talking more after we hear this ad. Now,

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Speaker 1: the most famous song I think that's associated with marijuana

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Speaker 1: but may not actually have been about marijuana, was by

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Speaker 1: a guy named Bob Zimmerman who became Bob Diller, right right,

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Speaker 1: Rainy Day Woman, Yeah, yeah, a day Women number twelve

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Speaker 1: and thirty five and everybody must get stoned. But was

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Speaker 1: that actually about getting high? Right? So he claims it's not.

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Speaker 1: He claims it's about getting stone in the biblical sense

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Speaker 1: of people stoning you if you've done something wrong. But

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Speaker 1: he's obviously referencing getting stone, you know, getting high. There's

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Speaker 1: no question that that's the reference, and that's clearly what

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Speaker 1: made the song funny and popular, even though he's evidently

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Speaker 1: talking about something else. Dylan also famously introduced the Beatles

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Speaker 1: to marijuana, and by doing so may have changed the

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Speaker 1: course of music history. Although interesting, right Ringo Star from

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Speaker 1: the Beatles, I think at one point writes an anti

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Speaker 1: marijuana's song. And I was actually talking Eddie to a

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Speaker 1: Steve Bloom, you know who's been a marijuana journalist for

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Speaker 1: decades at high times. Now he has lived stoner, and

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Speaker 1: he pointed me to another song called the Pot Smokers

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Speaker 1: Song by Neil Diamond in eight Do you know about this?

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Speaker 1: But ye, I didn't know about it. That sounds great,

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00:20:01,440 --> 00:20:04,200
Speaker 1: I'll tell you it's an anti marijuana song. I think

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Speaker 1: Neil Diamond had visited Phoenix House, the drug treatment facility

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Speaker 1: absence only drug treatment facility and headed by Mitch Rosenthal,

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Speaker 1: also Jewish and a notorious kind of drug warrior, and

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Speaker 1: Neil Diamond writes this terrible song, the Pot Smoker's Song,

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Speaker 1: all anti marijuana, all equating it with heroin, and then

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Speaker 1: years later he basically Recn's He says that writing that

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Speaker 1: song almost destroyed his career. He realized it was a

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Speaker 1: difference between marijuana and heroin. So yeah, different twist on

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Speaker 1: the marijuana and songs aspect to all of this stuff. Wow,

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Speaker 1: that's so fascinating. I guess it's not as big of

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Speaker 1: a hit as Sweet Caroline. No, No, that's right, that's right,

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Speaker 1: exactly lucky for him. But then if you jump forward

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Speaker 1: Amy Winehouse right, which you know, dies tragically in her

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Speaker 1: mid to late twenties and writes with the rehab song.

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Speaker 1: But she has another song addicted. It's clearly something she enjoys.

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Speaker 1: That's the gist of the lyric. Yeah, yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: the key was you smoke all my weed man, you

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Speaker 1: gotta call the green man. And then separately, there is

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Speaker 1: in the Jewish music world of Klezmer music. You introduced

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Speaker 1: me to something there I knew nothing about. Right. This

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Speaker 1: is a song by the Kleismatics. Lyrics are written by

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Speaker 1: Michael Wex. It's sheer more lakhan if and it's the

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Speaker 1: reefer song in Yiddish, then run out and in Yiddish

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Speaker 1: there are there are a fair number of drinking songs,

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Speaker 1: and the Klismatics as a band who helped revive Klezmer music,

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Speaker 1: which is Jewish traditional Eastern European music that most often

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Speaker 1: gets played at weddings and sort of celebratory events. They

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Speaker 1: decided that they wanted to put in an album of

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Speaker 1: drinking songs, and they felt that they needed to update

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Speaker 1: their material and have a song about smoking weeds. So

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Speaker 1: they created this Yiddish reefer song, and I believe it's

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Speaker 1: the only song in Yiddish about smoking cannabis. One of

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Speaker 1: the points you made at the opening of the exhibit,

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Speaker 1: and it was as part of the exhibit from which

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Speaker 1: I learned the most, was that in some respects, when

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Speaker 1: you look at the history of Jews in cannabis, there's

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Speaker 1: relatively little, almost nothing in terms of the history of

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Speaker 1: Jews in Europe, in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Yiddish Europe,

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Speaker 1: Christian Europe, that it was sort of absent. And if

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Speaker 1: you really want to look at the history of Jews

400
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Speaker 1: and cannabis, you have to go back, maybe to the

401
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Speaker 1: Bible or else to the role of the Jews, the

402
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Speaker 1: Sephardic Jews as opposed to the ash Can Nazi Jews

403
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Speaker 1: in Europe, the Sephardic Jews living in North Africa, in

404
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Speaker 1: Egypt and Spain, where there is the more of a connection.

405
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Speaker 1: And maybe you could just tell us a little bit

406
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Speaker 1: about the origins of cannabis in the Bible, and then

407
00:22:38,240 --> 00:22:41,199
Speaker 1: continuing through into the Middle Ages in that part of

408
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Speaker 1: the world. Cannabis has been around, obviously for thousands of years.

409
00:22:44,800 --> 00:22:46,720
Speaker 1: It's been in the Middle East for thousands of years.

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Speaker 1: It's mentioned in the Bible and the Talmud, and the

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Speaker 1: Talmud which is compendium of Jewish law, as well as

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Speaker 1: a number of other religious texts. And in the Bible

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Speaker 1: they refer to something called kannebos, and this is Hebrew,

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00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:05,399
Speaker 1: and it's usually translated as fragrant stock or aromatic cane,

415
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Speaker 1: And in Exodus, for example, it's it's used to make

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Speaker 1: anointing oil. Some translators call it sweet calamus, which is

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Speaker 1: another plant. It's not really clear that that's what it

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Speaker 1: is at all, and it's also not clear that it's

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Speaker 1: actually cannabis, but a number of medieval rabbis and scholars

420
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Speaker 1: today believe that it is cannabis, and one of its

421
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Speaker 1: roles in the Bible, in addition to being used in

422
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Speaker 1: making anointing oil, is as part of something called the

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Speaker 1: cat at which which is a mixture of herbs and

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Speaker 1: spices that was produced to create incense that was burned

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Speaker 1: in the ancient temple in Jerusalem. And the burning of

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Speaker 1: incense actually had was an integral part of Jewish ritual,

427
00:23:48,840 --> 00:23:52,199
Speaker 1: and so this kind of bossum appears in this regard.

428
00:23:52,320 --> 00:23:55,760
Speaker 1: And so one component of this squatt or the incense

429
00:23:55,800 --> 00:23:58,080
Speaker 1: that's burned in the temple is something called the malaya

430
00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:01,400
Speaker 1: shan or, which in Hebrew means this smoke riser, and

431
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:05,240
Speaker 1: it's an element that apparently makes the smoke go directly up.

432
00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:08,320
Speaker 1: And there's a twelfth century Spanish rabbi is known as

433
00:24:08,400 --> 00:24:12,840
Speaker 1: Nahumanities in his commentaries on Exodus, seems to claim that

434
00:24:13,040 --> 00:24:16,880
Speaker 1: this sort of mysterious element, the smoke razer is kannebosum

435
00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:22,320
Speaker 1: or cannabis. Additionally, there's the recipe for this incense is

436
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:25,359
Speaker 1: not found in the Bible, It's not found anywhere, and

437
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:28,840
Speaker 1: in fact, the recipe itself was held by a particular

438
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 1: family in Jerusalem, the of Tina's family, and they notoriously

439
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 1: refused to tell anyone what exactly was in it, and

440
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:39,600
Speaker 1: so no one really knows. There are a number of

441
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:41,639
Speaker 1: books that claim to know what exactly is in it,

442
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:44,439
Speaker 1: but apparently no one. No one actually does know. And

443
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:48,200
Speaker 1: there is also just more evidence as to what kind

444
00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:50,879
Speaker 1: of bosa maybe in the Talmud, there's a story and

445
00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:53,120
Speaker 1: the Talmud, as I said, as a compendium of Jewish law.

446
00:24:53,240 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 1: There's a story in which Rabbi Akiva finds a boy

447
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 1: in Jerusalem laughing and crying at the same time, and

448
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:02,239
Speaker 1: so he asks them, you know, why, what's going on

449
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:04,480
Speaker 1: while you're laughing and crying at the same time. And

450
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: it turned out that he was in a field of

451
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:11,400
Speaker 1: the secret herb that made part of this incense. And

452
00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:13,720
Speaker 1: so I think that if you're in a field of

453
00:25:13,760 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 1: this herb that's part of this incense, and you're laughing

454
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:18,760
Speaker 1: and you're crying, there's something about a type of psychoactive

455
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:21,760
Speaker 1: ingredient that may be part of that. Another aspect to

456
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:26,159
Speaker 1: this is my Monitis, who's another well known medieval rabbi,

457
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: I mean, perhaps the greatest of all the medieval era

458
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:32,879
Speaker 1: right Jewish philosophers. And he was an astronomer, He was

459
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:35,879
Speaker 1: a physician, a personal physician to the Sultan salad In.

460
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:37,800
Speaker 1: So I mean really, I mean, of all the great

461
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:40,880
Speaker 1: Jewish scholars, probably the ones who my Monity stands out

462
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:43,440
Speaker 1: one of the best known from this era. So all

463
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:47,160
Speaker 1: of these rabbis and scholars attempt to make sense of

464
00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:50,040
Speaker 1: the sort of the flora and the fauna that's in

465
00:25:50,080 --> 00:25:53,879
Speaker 1: the Bible, and so of course my monty is his

466
00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:59,800
Speaker 1: definition of kane bosm is that it's a reddish green plant.

467
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:03,760
Speaker 1: It's used in medicine, and it's imported from India. India

468
00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:06,959
Speaker 1: had long been a source for cannabis, and this is

469
00:26:07,119 --> 00:26:09,880
Speaker 1: more evidence that kind of bosum does appear to actually

470
00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 1: be cannabis. Additionally, there was a Polish scholar named Jula

471
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:18,280
Speaker 1: Bennett who claimed that linguistically, kind of bosam came from

472
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:21,720
Speaker 1: the Scythian word, and the Scythians were a Middle Eastern

473
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:24,760
Speaker 1: tribe that preceded the Israelites I think by number of

474
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 1: thousands of years or hundreds of years, and they were

475
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:30,119
Speaker 1: known to have used cannabis and their rituals. Is it

476
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:33,840
Speaker 1: just coincidence that kind of bosam sounds so much like cannabis.

477
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: It may be, but it's actually not clear. It may

478
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:39,919
Speaker 1: be coincidence, and it may be that that's where the

479
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:44,960
Speaker 1: etymology actually stems from. And there is archaeological evidence also

480
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:48,160
Speaker 1: from some of the digs in Israel and Palestine. Looking

481
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:51,600
Speaker 1: at right, that's correct. So in the nineteen sixties, archaeologists

482
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: began to excavate a dig of an ancient synagogue in

483
00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:58,600
Speaker 1: a town called Telerod, which is near the Dead Sea,

484
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:01,320
Speaker 1: and it was actually be in the nineties sixties. But

485
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 1: one of the things they found that they didn't investigate

486
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:07,960
Speaker 1: was that there are two small altars in this synagogue

487
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:10,480
Speaker 1: ruin and on the tops of the altars was the

488
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: burned residue of some substance. So they took it for

489
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:17,200
Speaker 1: carbon dating and for chemical analysis, and they found that

490
00:27:17,359 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 1: one the residue was from the third century, which is

491
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: when the synagogue was apparently active, and on one of

492
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:27,119
Speaker 1: the altars was the burned residue of frankinsense, and the

493
00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 1: other altar was the burned residue of cannabis, and they

494
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: found cannabinoids found cb d, t h C, CBN, And

495
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 1: this is, you know, yet another indication that the ancient

496
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 1: Hebrews were burning cannabis in religious ceremonies, and apparently not

497
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:46,679
Speaker 1: only the temple in Jerusalem. So what's fascinating here is

498
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:50,879
Speaker 1: and obviously with the advent of the diaspora two thousand

499
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:54,160
Speaker 1: years ago along the way, there are certain rituals that

500
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:57,520
Speaker 1: you're not you know, either because they must be performed

501
00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:00,119
Speaker 1: in Jerusalem in the Temple or because they got us

502
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:02,400
Speaker 1: along the way that have just sort of disappeared from

503
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:06,239
Speaker 1: normative Jewish ceremony, and these appeared to be one of them.

504
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 1: I mean, we still on Saturday night, at the end

505
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:12,880
Speaker 1: of the Sabbath, a ritual called Havdalah is performed, which

506
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: separates the holiness of the Sabbath from the secularity of

507
00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:20,240
Speaker 1: the work a day week. And part of that ceremony

508
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:25,399
Speaker 1: is to smell sweet herbs, and so that maybe the

509
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 1: remnant of the use of incense in ancient times. It's

510
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:32,280
Speaker 1: not it's entirely clear, but it maybe or the ritual

511
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: just disappeared entirely. But there are currently people who are

512
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 1: trying to reintegrate cannabis use into Jewish ritual, which is

513
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:42,960
Speaker 1: you know something that's that's pretty fascinating. Yeah, I think

514
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: you're talking about. There's a cannabis sader out in Oregon

515
00:28:46,240 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 1: and a couple of Roy and Clear Kaufman organized some

516
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 1: of your In fact, I was invited to it. I

517
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:52,240
Speaker 1: was unable to go. I was very Sabbath. They came

518
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:55,680
Speaker 1: out with a cannabis Agata and created a nonprofit called

519
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 1: They are basically I think too, you know, the substitute

520
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:01,960
Speaker 1: cannabis for let us the Sader plate and promote consumption

521
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 1: of cannabis as part of the passover. Going back to

522
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:08,000
Speaker 1: the ancient stuff, you also had a couple of posts

523
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: in an exhibit involving the Cairo Geniza and just maybe

524
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: explain what that was and what was found there. Right,

525
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:18,320
Speaker 1: So this isn't really ancient, it's really from the medieval period.

526
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:22,040
Speaker 1: It's from the eleventh through the fourteen centuries. And you know,

527
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:24,000
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that I found in

528
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:26,560
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe and in Europe, and generally you really don't

529
00:29:26,600 --> 00:29:29,200
Speaker 1: find much activity, and there's a little bit, but you

530
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 1: don't find much activity with Jews and cannabis or really

531
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 1: many people in cannabis. I mean, there's some intellectuals who

532
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:37,240
Speaker 1: sort of explore it, and I'm sort of a mass scale.

533
00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 1: Cannabis is available for rope making or textiles, but it's

534
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: not used as as an intoxican at all. So when

535
00:29:43,040 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 1: I began this research, one of the things I found

536
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:47,880
Speaker 1: was I needed to find Jews who were in an

537
00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:51,280
Speaker 1: area where cannabis was used regularly, and that turned out

538
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 1: to be the Middle East, where hashish has been a

539
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 1: popular intoxican for thousands of years, and so Jews who

540
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 1: live in the Middle East who are either Safardim or

541
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:05,240
Speaker 1: the descendants of Spanish Jews or Miserachim who are considered

542
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:07,520
Speaker 1: Eastern Jews or Jews who have remained in the Middle

543
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 1: East from the beginning. They were dispersed throughout North Africa

544
00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:16,720
Speaker 1: and the Arabian Peninsula and other places, generally throughout the

545
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:21,160
Speaker 1: Middle East, and because Hashish was was generally popular, they

546
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: used it as well. You know, Jews always participated to

547
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:26,320
Speaker 1: varying degrees in the cultures in which they reside, and

548
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,960
Speaker 1: so because has she was commonly used in these places,

549
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:32,840
Speaker 1: they did as well. And so generally you don't find

550
00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:36,720
Speaker 1: documentary evidence of things like hashish use. It's you know,

551
00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:39,920
Speaker 1: like trying to find documentary evidence of something someone eight,

552
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:43,160
Speaker 1: although you can sometimes find that in some ways. But

553
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:47,560
Speaker 1: there was a synagogue in Egypt called the Benezer Synagogue,

554
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:50,960
Speaker 1: and most synagogues, I would say almost all synagogues have

555
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:55,560
Speaker 1: a special room called the giniza. And what that essentially

556
00:30:55,880 --> 00:31:01,400
Speaker 1: is is a storage room for damaged documents, damaged prayer books,

557
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:05,360
Speaker 1: damaged bibles, damaged torahs, damaged Talmud's, things that people can

558
00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:07,400
Speaker 1: no longer use. And the reason that these things need

559
00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:10,120
Speaker 1: to be stored is that, according to Jewish tradition, you're

560
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:14,520
Speaker 1: not allowed to just casually throw these books away because

561
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 1: they contain the name of God, and as a result,

562
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 1: you have to store them until you have enough to

563
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 1: bury them in a ceremony, which is what's traditionally done.

564
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:26,320
Speaker 1: So in the Benezer Synagogue, beginning in the ninth century,

565
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:30,400
Speaker 1: they began throwing away the books that were damaged, and

566
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:33,760
Speaker 1: in addition to books, it turned out that for the

567
00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: next thousand years until the nineteenth century, this community throughout

568
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:43,800
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of documents that ranged from wedding contracts,

569
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:47,440
Speaker 1: business contracts, all kinds of literature ranging from prose to

570
00:31:47,560 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 1: poetry to popular songs, letters, all kinds of correspondence to

571
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: and from businesses, individuals, the government. And it is an

572
00:31:55,560 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 1: incredible historical trove of documentary evidence that shows how this

573
00:32:01,080 --> 00:32:04,240
Speaker 1: community lived and what they did with their interests were,

574
00:32:04,280 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 1: what literature they read, all kinds of fascinating aspects that

575
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: we would never know otherwise had this stuff actually gotten

576
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 1: thrown away. This ins it was discovered in the late

577
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: nineteenth century by scholars who began researching it and also

578
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:19,360
Speaker 1: began taking it to wherever they lived. So there's a

579
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 1: huge trove of it in St. Petersburg, it's a huge

580
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: trove of it in Cambridge, England, there's trove of it

581
00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 1: to New York that Jewish Theological Seminary, and in a

582
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:30,880
Speaker 1: variety of other places. But there are now certain projects

583
00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 1: scholars who focus on this, and one of them is

584
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 1: the Princeton guinessa project where they've taken digitized images of

585
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,880
Speaker 1: a lot of these documents and uh created databases of them.

586
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 1: And so I looked in their database and discovered that

587
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:48,480
Speaker 1: there were a number of documents that referenced Hashish, and

588
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:52,240
Speaker 1: theoretically there shouldn't be surprising. Initially I was surprised, but

589
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 1: then once I thought about the society in which they lived,

590
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:58,360
Speaker 1: it really made sense. And so, you know, there are

591
00:32:58,400 --> 00:33:01,080
Speaker 1: things like letters to people, and I can read the

592
00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 1: text of one of them, and a lot of this

593
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: material is written in Judeo Arabic, which is Jewish version

594
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 1: of Arabic that's written in Hebrew letters and was the

595
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:13,760
Speaker 1: vernacular of the Jews in this time and place, and

596
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:17,360
Speaker 1: so this letter is it's very short, and it's dated

597
00:33:17,400 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: to the from the twelfth to the thirteen centuries, and

598
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: it reads as follows, me the esteemed Elder Abu el Hassan,

599
00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:27,320
Speaker 1: God preserve him graciously obtained for the bear with the

600
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:31,440
Speaker 1: silver that he has fifty deer hums imitation sem nuty silk.

601
00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: He also has two carrots of ingots silver. Obtain hashish

602
00:33:35,520 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: for me with them after I kiss your hands and

603
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 1: feet peace. This is like a twelve th century venmo,

604
00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:44,760
Speaker 1: please buy me wheat. You know, here's money, Please buy

605
00:33:44,760 --> 00:33:47,800
Speaker 1: me wait, which shouldn't come as a surprise. But you know,

606
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 1: when people think about ancient or medieval societies and the

607
00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:53,800
Speaker 1: way that people live, there's just you know, there's a

608
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: certain certain sensibility or certain stereotypes that people have, and

609
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:01,800
Speaker 1: hashish usage is not is generally not one of them.

610
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 1: Like I never learned about Joos using hasheesh in Hebrew school.

611
00:34:05,520 --> 00:34:08,120
Speaker 1: If I did, I might have stayed in Hebrew school.

612
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:11,520
Speaker 1: But certain things get canonized, and this is not one

613
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 1: of them. There are a number of works by a

614
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 1: particular writer that we're found, and he's thought to have

615
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:20,160
Speaker 1: lived in mom Look ruled Egypt around thirteen hundred from

616
00:34:20,160 --> 00:34:23,200
Speaker 1: the year thirteen hundred and he calls himself Nasir the

617
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:25,600
Speaker 1: Hebrew litera tour. They think he's kind of like a

618
00:34:25,640 --> 00:34:29,279
Speaker 1: popular bard. He sings his songs at weddings and in

619
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:32,960
Speaker 1: the marketplace, in another sort of popular events. And a

620
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:36,560
Speaker 1: number of his songs were found in the Genisa, and

621
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 1: one of them is called Wine My Religion, and it's

622
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:44,120
Speaker 1: basically a wine versus Hashish battle song. It's like a

623
00:34:44,200 --> 00:34:46,720
Speaker 1: rap battle, you know, between wine and hashe like again,

624
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:50,320
Speaker 1: this is not something you necessarily expect from the fourteenth century,

625
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:54,879
Speaker 1: written in Judeo Arabic, found in a synagogue waist bin.

626
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:57,320
Speaker 1: But one of the things he does is he Nasir

627
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:00,600
Speaker 1: really likes wine. He loves wine, and he really dislikes

628
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 1: hashish and the people that use it. And so in

629
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:06,440
Speaker 1: the song he talks about how hash has a way

630
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:09,319
Speaker 1: of scrambling your brain. People that use it they eat

631
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 1: everything in sight, their eyes turn all red, they slack

632
00:35:12,239 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 1: off at work. These are the same stereotypes that people

633
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:18,360
Speaker 1: discussed today. But yet you have this early fourteenth century

634
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:21,799
Speaker 1: reference to it in Judeo Arabic that in consideration of

635
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:26,000
Speaker 1: Jewish documents that people dig out of archives, this is

636
00:35:26,040 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 1: not something that gets a lot of play in the

637
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:31,080
Speaker 1: scholarly world. So for me, this is really kind of

638
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 1: a fascinating reference. I mean, obviously Nasir doesn't like hashish,

639
00:35:34,400 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: but it clearly references Jews who do, and there were

640
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 1: quite clearly Jews who were using it in fourteenth century

641
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:43,879
Speaker 1: Egypt and doubtlessly all over North Africa in the Middle

642
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:46,560
Speaker 1: East because it was just commonly used. In the exhibit,

643
00:35:46,560 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 1: there are a number of other references to this kind

644
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:52,799
Speaker 1: of usage as well. Let's take a break here and

645
00:35:52,840 --> 00:36:08,440
Speaker 1: go to an ad. You have another part of the

646
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: exhibit where you briefly mentioned this tradition and Judaism of

647
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:16,360
Speaker 1: gaumatria or numerology right where letters have numerical values. And

648
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 1: for many people they most familiar with this is that

649
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 1: typically if you see Jews wearing anything that's kind of

650
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: Jewish oriented around their neck on a necklace, it might

651
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: be the star of David, or the other thing will

652
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:29,480
Speaker 1: be the high the letters, and you would right and

653
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:32,480
Speaker 1: is eight, and you would is ten as eighteen and

654
00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:35,160
Speaker 1: that means light. But you had something there about the

655
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 1: possible numerology around four, right, So gamatri or or Hebrew numerology,

656
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:43,799
Speaker 1: and every Hebrew letters are accorded in numeric value, and

657
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: this is most prominently used in Kabala. And what they

658
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 1: do is they take these numbers and they create words

659
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:51,879
Speaker 1: out of them, or they take words and they add

660
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:54,239
Speaker 1: up their numeric value and they create new words or

661
00:36:54,280 --> 00:36:57,600
Speaker 1: phrases or things like that. Using this system. The number

662
00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:03,200
Speaker 1: four twenty turns into word ashan, which is smoke in Hebrew.

663
00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 1: It turns into a lot of other words as well.

664
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:08,319
Speaker 1: But this was useful for us because we have this

665
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 1: really kind of with this brilliant artist Steve Marcus make

666
00:37:11,160 --> 00:37:13,799
Speaker 1: this amazing poster that you know, has four twenty at

667
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:15,360
Speaker 1: the top and the word has shot at the bottom

668
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:18,280
Speaker 1: and a plume of smoke creating the number four twenty

669
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:21,759
Speaker 1: and also coincidentally insaid that the kids initially came up

670
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:24,200
Speaker 1: with four twenty, which is apparently the time they used

671
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:26,400
Speaker 1: to leave school and go get high as a code

672
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 1: word for that was a group of mostly Jewish kids

673
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:31,440
Speaker 1: who called themselves the wal Does and they were, you know,

674
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:34,360
Speaker 1: somewhere in northern California. And this is obviously coincidence, but

675
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 1: it's a good coincidence. Yeah, you know, it's funny because

676
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 1: when you think about that strand of Judaism, Hasidic Judaism,

677
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:43,759
Speaker 1: a real kind of more spiritually oriented Judaism in a way,

678
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 1: and one in where there's more drinking and dancing in

679
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:48,279
Speaker 1: addition to all of the scholarship you see with other

680
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:50,640
Speaker 1: elements of Judaism, but and with the ballsh until the

681
00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:53,280
Speaker 1: founder of that some hundreds of years ago, you would

682
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 1: think that there would have been cannabis associate with that,

683
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,799
Speaker 1: but I guess simply because it just wasn't around in

684
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:00,840
Speaker 1: that part of the world were Jews were living in

685
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:02,880
Speaker 1: central eastern Europe, they just didn't know about if they

686
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:05,040
Speaker 1: didn't have access to it or anything like that. Right

687
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:07,640
Speaker 1: right there is an author whose name is Josef le

688
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 1: Needleman who wrote a book called Cannabis Hasidus, and one

689
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:13,960
Speaker 1: of the things that he argues is that all of

690
00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:17,760
Speaker 1: the early Hasidic masters smoked pipes, and they were known

691
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:21,879
Speaker 1: to reach heights of ecstasy after smoking their pipes. So

692
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 1: his claim is that they possibly were smoking cannabis, although

693
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:28,279
Speaker 1: it's not clear that historically it was actually available, but

694
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 1: you never know. It's never mentioned explicitly anywhere, but it's

695
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: still a fascinating idea. What's interesting today is that because

696
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:38,480
Speaker 1: cannabis is now legal in more places than it had been,

697
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:43,400
Speaker 1: there are Hasidium and other Orthodox Jews who are now

698
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: using cannabis. Certainly they were using it before under the radar.

699
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:50,400
Speaker 1: But three years ago I was in Megi Budge, which

700
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:54,320
Speaker 1: is a town in Ukraine where the Balshamtov, the founder

701
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:58,600
Speaker 1: of Hasidism, is buried, and when we arrived there at

702
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:01,640
Speaker 1: the cemetery, the first thing we saw was a group

703
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:04,560
Speaker 1: of hassid Um sharing a joint, and so that was

704
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 1: not expected, but also to a certain degree, I guess,

705
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:11,040
Speaker 1: not completely unexpected. And it's really interesting because you see now,

706
00:39:11,080 --> 00:39:14,320
Speaker 1: I mean, there's videos on YouTube of these hyper orthodox

707
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:18,160
Speaker 1: ninety year old, you know, Orthodox rabbis blessing medical marijuana.

708
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:20,719
Speaker 1: And I know that in my own interactions with some

709
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:24,120
Speaker 1: of the Lebovit, the Hasidic community in Brooklyn, I can

710
00:39:24,120 --> 00:39:27,360
Speaker 1: see there's an ease around marijuana. This seems to be

711
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:30,759
Speaker 1: that even though I guess an Orthodox Judaism, it's not

712
00:39:30,920 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 1: treated the same as alcohol. There's a sense in which

713
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:35,840
Speaker 1: there seems to be a greater toleration of it, and

714
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:39,040
Speaker 1: maybe not just for medical but even sometimes outside the medical.

715
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:41,160
Speaker 1: But what's your perspective on this right there, I think

716
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:43,479
Speaker 1: definitely for medical and you know, since it's become legal,

717
00:39:43,560 --> 00:39:45,799
Speaker 1: especially in New York, I think you'll find that it

718
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:49,480
Speaker 1: will become a regular feature of theirs and many other

719
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:53,120
Speaker 1: people's lives. And one of the reasons is that there's

720
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:57,399
Speaker 1: a ruling or a law in Judaism called din, which

721
00:39:57,400 --> 00:39:59,880
Speaker 1: means the law of the land is the law. And

722
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:04,360
Speaker 1: what that means is that if something is illegal in

723
00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:08,000
Speaker 1: wherever you live, it's also illegal for you as a Jew.

724
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:11,319
Speaker 1: And if it's permitted, it's also permitted to you as

725
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:14,200
Speaker 1: a Jew. I mean, obviously something like bacon is not

726
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: going to be permitted, but because cannabis is available as

727
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 1: a medication and as something recreational, this is something that

728
00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:25,880
Speaker 1: you'll find Orthodox Jews using it just like everyone else does. Yeah.

729
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 1: Often times wonder about when tobacco enters Europe in the

730
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds and then just sort of takes over Europe

731
00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:35,440
Speaker 1: during the seventeenth centuries, cetera. I wonder how the Jewish

732
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:37,719
Speaker 1: scholars and rabbis dealt with that at the time, and

733
00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:40,759
Speaker 1: whether it was something like marijuana where it's initially a

734
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:44,279
Speaker 1: look down upon or prohibited and then depending upon what

735
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:47,359
Speaker 1: the broader society says about its legality, that shapes them.

736
00:40:47,440 --> 00:40:49,920
Speaker 1: But do you have any idea about how how tobacco

737
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 1: I don't, but it's a great question. I don't actually know.

738
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: But tobacco, especially among Hassidam, became extremely popular obviously throughout Europe.

739
00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:01,879
Speaker 1: It was like spread like wildfire. You know, everyone spoke.

740
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:05,359
Speaker 1: It was extremely common. It was also common, especially if

741
00:41:05,400 --> 00:41:08,280
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier than all the early Hasidic masters smoked

742
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:11,840
Speaker 1: pipes and they also did snuff was also extremely popular

743
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:14,000
Speaker 1: there as well, So using tobacco in a variety of

744
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:17,360
Speaker 1: ways was very common. I don't know if initially Rabbis

745
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:20,439
Speaker 1: looked at it a scance or not, but if it

746
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:24,719
Speaker 1: was legal and wasn't perceived as harmful, then it was

747
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:29,280
Speaker 1: okay and certainly acceptable for use. Although you can't smoke

748
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:33,400
Speaker 1: chopper course, well, I mean most earingshibit folks on the US.

749
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:36,360
Speaker 1: But obviously there's this part about Israel, and Israel, you know,

750
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:40,360
Speaker 1: in recent decades really became the epicenter of medical marijuana research.

751
00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 1: And you have a little part there about Raphael michelan

752
00:41:43,080 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 1: sort of the godfather of marijuana research. So tell us

753
00:41:46,080 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: about your interactions with him. Right, So, Rafel Maulm is

754
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 1: in his nineties. I think he's still doing research and

755
00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:54,640
Speaker 1: as you said, he's the godfather of cannabis research. He

756
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: was a young chemist. He got a PhD in chemistry

757
00:41:57,880 --> 00:42:02,320
Speaker 1: from the Whitesman Institute and when he started his career,

758
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:06,080
Speaker 1: he realized that he was in a small country and

759
00:42:06,160 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 1: he had a small research budget, and that if he

760
00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:11,319
Speaker 1: wanted to make a mark in his field, he would

761
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 1: have to engage in research on a topic that was

762
00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:19,799
Speaker 1: not typically researched in big countries with big institutions that

763
00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 1: had big research budgets. And he happened to read about

764
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:26,359
Speaker 1: hashisha arrests in the newspapers and he thought, you know,

765
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: this is maybe a possibility for something to work on.

766
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 1: So he contacted the police and he asked them if

767
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 1: he told them that he was a chemist, you know,

768
00:42:34,520 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: working at Hebrew University, and he asked that if they

769
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:41,000
Speaker 1: would give him, you know, the hashish that they had confiscated,

770
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: and they agreed and he began to work on it,

771
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 1: and in the early nineteen sixties he became the first

772
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:52,040
Speaker 1: chemist to isolate th HC and CBD. And he understood

773
00:42:52,040 --> 00:42:56,760
Speaker 1: even then that these substances would come to have medical applications,

774
00:42:56,920 --> 00:43:01,040
Speaker 1: and he's worked on cannabis entire career. Mostly his his

775
00:43:01,080 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 1: work focuses on cannabinoids, and by the early nineties he

776
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:10,120
Speaker 1: and his colleagues discovered the endocannabinoid system, which is a

777
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:15,080
Speaker 1: complex cell signaling system that regulates a variety of bodily

778
00:43:15,120 --> 00:43:19,160
Speaker 1: functions in mammals. And this includes appetite, mood, memory, sleep,

779
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:22,759
Speaker 1: and it's it's almost as if the human body produces

780
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:27,280
Speaker 1: its own version of THC in order to regulate homeostasis,

781
00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:31,000
Speaker 1: which bodies required order to maintain stability. And so he's

782
00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:33,719
Speaker 1: really a major figure in cannabis research, and he very

783
00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:36,959
Speaker 1: much helped and it took it really took way too long.

784
00:43:37,040 --> 00:43:39,239
Speaker 1: It took, you know, so many years to break the

785
00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:43,320
Speaker 1: stigma on cannabis as something legitimate on which to research.

786
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:46,279
Speaker 1: His initial research has led to all kinds of successful

787
00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:50,400
Speaker 1: trials that indicate the medicinal value of cannabis for a

788
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: wide variety of ailments. He's really really a major figure

789
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:57,360
Speaker 1: and his work services the basis for for all cannabis

790
00:43:57,440 --> 00:43:59,320
Speaker 1: research today. But also, you know, one of the ironies

791
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:02,560
Speaker 1: here is that creational use is not legal in Israel. Nowtheless,

792
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: Israel is still at the forefront of cannabis research. They've

793
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:09,040
Speaker 1: created hundreds of different kinds of strains of medical marijuana

794
00:44:09,080 --> 00:44:13,080
Speaker 1: that you know, target specific ailments, have all undergone clinical trials.

795
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: Apparently that also export a lot of medical marijuana. Al Right, well,

796
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:18,880
Speaker 1: let's just come back a bit to the president. And

797
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:21,479
Speaker 1: in the United States, I mean, obviously there were all

798
00:44:21,520 --> 00:44:24,239
Speaker 1: of the scholars ACT in the late sixties, early seventies,

799
00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:28,000
Speaker 1: Grinspoon and Zendberg, Andy Wile and others. More recently, there's

800
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:30,040
Speaker 1: Julie Holland, who you have in the exhibit. There is

801
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: Ethan Roussel of kind of famed medical marij wanna research

802
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:35,759
Speaker 1: who sounds Italian but in fact is Sephardic Jewish, and

803
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:38,000
Speaker 1: many Safari Jews have names that sound like their Italian

804
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,320
Speaker 1: Mitch early wine professor Suny Albany, whose writing was crucial

805
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands in this area. But then

806
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 1: there's the political domain here. I was thinking about the

807
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:50,120
Speaker 1: fact that if you look at the politicians, i mean

808
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:53,000
Speaker 1: even at the national level, who had been deeply involved

809
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: in cannabis reform, probably the major champion of marijuana reform

810
00:44:57,200 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 1: going back a decade ago was Barney Frank, you know, Jewish, right,

811
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:04,560
Speaker 1: and then Earl Blumenauer, who's not Jewish, Morrigan steps into

812
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:07,160
Speaker 1: his shoes. But if you look at the major marijuana

813
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:09,120
Speaker 1: bill coming out of Congress each year and out of

814
00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:12,080
Speaker 1: the House, it's Jerry Nadlin, my congressman on the Upper

815
00:45:12,120 --> 00:45:14,640
Speaker 1: West Side. And then if you look at on the

816
00:45:14,680 --> 00:45:18,600
Speaker 1: Senate side, who's the trio leading the marijuana legalization effort.

817
00:45:18,680 --> 00:45:21,799
Speaker 1: It's Chuck Schumer, the Jewish New York Senator who's a

818
00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:25,920
Speaker 1: majority leader. It's Ron Wyden from Oregon, also Jewish, and

819
00:45:25,960 --> 00:45:28,920
Speaker 1: it's Corey Booker, who has typically been described as the

820
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:31,560
Speaker 1: most Jewish nine Jew in the US Senate. But then

821
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:34,359
Speaker 1: I looked back Eddie historically, and if you look at

822
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: the early marijuana decriminalization bills in Congress in the seventies,

823
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:44,880
Speaker 1: the two sponsors were Ed Cootch then a liberal Jewish

824
00:45:44,960 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 1: congressman in New York who became something of a drug

825
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 1: warrior when he became mayor, and Jacob Javitt, the liberal

826
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 1: Jewish senator from New York as well. And so, I mean,

827
00:45:55,200 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 1: you know, I sometimes worry about even pointing out all

828
00:45:57,040 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 1: these Jewish connections, and I kind of like wishing something

829
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:02,320
Speaker 1: here to be Oh my god, federal marijuana legalization is

830
00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:05,480
Speaker 1: entirely a Jewish conspiracy here, but it's really striking the

831
00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:08,520
Speaker 1: extent to which it's been playing a very leading role

832
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:12,000
Speaker 1: on marijuana reform, and any thoughts about that. Part of

833
00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:16,319
Speaker 1: this I think comes from the traditional Jewish place in society,

834
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:19,200
Speaker 1: which is off to the side. And what I mean

835
00:46:19,239 --> 00:46:22,279
Speaker 1: by that is, for thousands of years, and especially in

836
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:26,080
Speaker 1: the medieval period, Jews did not have any sort of

837
00:46:26,120 --> 00:46:28,720
Speaker 1: citizenship on power with anyone else I mean, and obviously

838
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: in medieval society has no one really had anything called citizenship.

839
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:35,920
Speaker 1: But they were prohibited from engaging in certain kinds of occupations,

840
00:46:35,960 --> 00:46:39,240
Speaker 1: they were prohibited from owning land, they were forced into

841
00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 1: certain kinds of occupations, and their opportunities were very much limited.

842
00:46:43,280 --> 00:46:47,000
Speaker 1: And this is something that occurred for many centuries, and

843
00:46:47,120 --> 00:46:51,080
Speaker 1: as a result, Jews were really required to scramble to

844
00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 1: make a living, and that forced them to engage in

845
00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:59,440
Speaker 1: either black market or gray market activities, and this to

846
00:46:59,520 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 1: a certain became a Jewish tradition. And because of this

847
00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:08,360
Speaker 1: you find Jews getting involved in let's say, risky New technologies.

848
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:11,600
Speaker 1: You can think of things like the early film industry

849
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:15,000
Speaker 1: or the early recording industry. People tend to forget that

850
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth early twentieth century Jews couldn't enter

851
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 1: proper society. You find this tendency for Jews to gear

852
00:47:23,719 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 1: themselves to doing things that are sometimes risky but also

853
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:31,360
Speaker 1: sometimes have a big payoff. So when it comes to

854
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:35,960
Speaker 1: something like cannabis, Jews saw this risk. They also, to

855
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:38,520
Speaker 1: a certain degree, coming from a different direction, saw this

856
00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:43,640
Speaker 1: kind of injustice that this substance was illegal when it

857
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:49,160
Speaker 1: was clearly not particularly harmful or even beneficial. Additionally, with

858
00:47:49,239 --> 00:47:51,560
Speaker 1: the advent of the drug war, the sense of justice

859
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:56,200
Speaker 1: kicked in even more because not only they as in

860
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 1: the guise of the hippies or other members of other

861
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:02,160
Speaker 1: left wing organization, but they also clearly saw that minorities

862
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:05,799
Speaker 1: were suffering the most from interdiction during the drug war.

863
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 1: That sense of justice that tends to be part of

864
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:12,279
Speaker 1: especially secular Jewish culture really kicked in and became part

865
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 1: of this equation. But you know, it's also a moment

866
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:16,960
Speaker 1: to talk about and when it comes to the money

867
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:19,319
Speaker 1: and the politics of this thing. You know, when I

868
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:22,800
Speaker 1: think back to six when we did the first medical

869
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:26,160
Speaker 1: marijuana initiative. Now, the person who instigated it was Dennis Barron,

870
00:48:26,280 --> 00:48:28,719
Speaker 1: not Jewish, you know, and AIDS activists in San Francisco

871
00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:31,359
Speaker 1: who drafted it. But then I came in in order

872
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 1: to raise the money and put together the campaign the

873
00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:35,080
Speaker 1: whole thing, and the guy I hired to leave the

874
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 1: campaign was Bill Zimmerman, Jewish, and the three major donors

875
00:48:39,040 --> 00:48:43,000
Speaker 1: were George Sorrows and Peter Lewis, the head of Progressive Insurance,

876
00:48:43,080 --> 00:48:45,920
Speaker 1: and George zimmer the founder of the Men's Warehouse, all Jewish,

877
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 1: So I mean essentially it was quote unquote Jewish money

878
00:48:49,120 --> 00:48:51,239
Speaker 1: and I was the kind of major doma running the thing.

879
00:48:51,239 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 1: And Bill zmin who basically led that first medicalmar Wana

880
00:48:53,680 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 1: initiative and basically the next half dozen that came thereafter.

881
00:48:57,719 --> 00:48:59,719
Speaker 1: On the other hand, when you look at some of

882
00:48:59,719 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: the tax that were coming directed at, especially Sorrows and

883
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:05,840
Speaker 1: me back years ago on that one of them was

884
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:09,800
Speaker 1: a m Rosenthal, the Jewish former you know, executitor of

885
00:49:09,800 --> 00:49:12,240
Speaker 1: the New York Times, who was a rabid drug warrior.

886
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:15,279
Speaker 1: It was Mitch Rosenthal, Jewish, who was a founder of

887
00:49:15,440 --> 00:49:18,160
Speaker 1: Phoenix House and radically in support of the drug war.

888
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:22,000
Speaker 1: It was her cleber professor at Columbia and Yale who

889
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 1: was the deputy drugs are into the first drugs are

890
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:28,560
Speaker 1: William Bennett, right, it was a Senator from California, Diane Feinstein,

891
00:49:28,719 --> 00:49:32,440
Speaker 1: and more recently a Congresswoman from Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

892
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 1: So there's been a healthy dose of Jewishness on the

893
00:49:36,560 --> 00:49:39,839
Speaker 1: anti marijuana and pro drug war side as well. Now,

894
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 1: their numbers and influence obviously don't compare to the role

895
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:45,840
Speaker 1: of Jews on the kind of pro reform side, But

896
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:47,960
Speaker 1: I think we need to point out that it's not

897
00:49:48,080 --> 00:49:51,120
Speaker 1: all been one sided in this regard. Sure, of course

898
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:54,640
Speaker 1: not it never is. Obviously, the anti semis will will

899
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:57,279
Speaker 1: claim if there's some sort of conspiracy. But there's there's

900
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:00,640
Speaker 1: an expression in Yiddish Zemlin of I should blink that

901
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:03,480
Speaker 1: which means if you open a role, a jewel pop out,

902
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:05,880
Speaker 1: And what that really means is you could find Jews

903
00:50:05,960 --> 00:50:09,120
Speaker 1: everywhere when you want them and when you don't want them.

904
00:50:09,239 --> 00:50:11,200
Speaker 1: So and it's the same in this matter as well.

905
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:13,840
Speaker 1: Jewish drug warriors and there are Jews who are for

906
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 1: the legalization of Yeah no, I guess that's true. Well,

907
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:19,560
Speaker 1: just to bring it up right now to the whole

908
00:50:19,560 --> 00:50:21,920
Speaker 1: marijuana industry that's booming. I was trying to figure out

909
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:23,880
Speaker 1: it would almost make sense that Jews would play a

910
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: disproportionate role in this, because Jews are deeply involved and

911
00:50:27,160 --> 00:50:30,879
Speaker 1: successful in commerce, disproportionally wealthy relative to the average part

912
00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:34,080
Speaker 1: of the American population. But I'm wondering if that's fully

913
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:37,200
Speaker 1: true when I look around at some of the biggest companies,

914
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:38,759
Speaker 1: I was trying to go through a list to them,

915
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing, you know, benk Hold or a Green Thumb.

916
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:42,560
Speaker 1: You know, you must have looked into this some what

917
00:50:42,560 --> 00:50:45,200
Speaker 1: what was your take on that? First of all, there

918
00:50:45,200 --> 00:50:49,480
Speaker 1: are hundreds thousands of new companies and it's impossible to

919
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:51,680
Speaker 1: keep track of them, so it's really hard to say.

920
00:50:51,920 --> 00:50:54,360
Speaker 1: My general perception is that there are a lot of

921
00:50:54,440 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 1: Jews involved in this industry. I would suspect that they're

922
00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:00,680
Speaker 1: not a majority, and I'm talking current, but I would

923
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:03,840
Speaker 1: say that they're probably is a pretty significant minority. I

924
00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 1: guess could well be, could will be. Welly, let me

925
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:07,520
Speaker 1: ask you. I mean, this has been fascinating for me.

926
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:10,479
Speaker 1: I love the fact that we intersected on this issue here,

927
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:12,560
Speaker 1: What do you imagine? I mean, can you imagine doing

928
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:15,400
Speaker 1: an episode on Jews and some other element of psychoactive

929
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:17,440
Speaker 1: drugs in the future, or is this going to be

930
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:20,719
Speaker 1: it for evil exhibits on Jews and psychoactive drugs of

931
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:24,080
Speaker 1: any sort. You know, if something comes up, it's always possible.

932
00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:26,319
Speaker 1: And I will say that when I first broached this

933
00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 1: idea to a number of people, the first thing out

934
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:32,640
Speaker 1: of their mouths was you gotta do psychedelics, you know,

935
00:51:32,719 --> 00:51:36,200
Speaker 1: Jews and psychedelics, and I I would want to wait

936
00:51:36,239 --> 00:51:38,800
Speaker 1: for that. I want to silo cannabis because it's something

937
00:51:39,080 --> 00:51:41,200
Speaker 1: you know, distinct, and I don't want to sort of

938
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:44,839
Speaker 1: mix it up with something else. But if I find that,

939
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:46,960
Speaker 1: like I did with cannabis, that there is a significant

940
00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:50,000
Speaker 1: history to this, and there's significant activity on the part

941
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:54,759
Speaker 1: of Jews, either in the industries or in creating new rituals,

942
00:51:54,880 --> 00:51:57,040
Speaker 1: then I'm open to anything that. I think any kind

943
00:51:57,080 --> 00:52:00,160
Speaker 1: of culture that people create that's sort of based their

944
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: traditions is fascinating to me. And if I'm able to

945
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:06,799
Speaker 1: develop something on Jews and psychedelics, I'd be happy to well.

946
00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:09,160
Speaker 1: And if you go that way, remember to ask me

947
00:52:09,600 --> 00:52:13,880
Speaker 1: about the time twenty years ago when Ramdas otherwise known

948
00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:17,560
Speaker 1: as Richard Albert, who had been Timothy Larry's colleague at Harvard,

949
00:52:17,719 --> 00:52:20,560
Speaker 1: he was doing his ram Das and Friends gathering at

950
00:52:20,560 --> 00:52:22,360
Speaker 1: the Omega Institute of New York. It was just a

951
00:52:22,360 --> 00:52:24,759
Speaker 1: couple of weeks after nine eleven and two thousand and one,

952
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 1: and he invited me to join the other DOSses, you know,

953
00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:31,080
Speaker 1: Lamassuria Doss and Christna Doss and Ron Das. So I

954
00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:32,880
Speaker 1: got to be Ethan Dos for a week, and it

955
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:36,000
Speaker 1: turned out that Junkie Poor was in the middle of

956
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:39,800
Speaker 1: the week, and so I started ragging on all of them,

957
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:42,160
Speaker 1: like here we are probably half the people act as

958
00:52:42,200 --> 00:52:44,680
Speaker 1: gathering our lab to Jews, right, And if you think

959
00:52:44,680 --> 00:52:47,399
Speaker 1: about it, what did ram Das, Krishna Doss, Lamassiria Dos

960
00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:50,560
Speaker 1: all having common. They all were bar mitzvooed, they all

961
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:54,400
Speaker 1: did psychedelics. They all went to India to find their guru.

962
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:57,280
Speaker 1: They all came back to America to become a spiritual

963
00:52:57,360 --> 00:52:59,960
Speaker 1: leaders who had ambivident relationships, you know, with their judys.

964
00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 1: And then a couple of days there they're all kind

965
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:03,919
Speaker 1: of sheepish about it and A couple of days later,

966
00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 1: Ron Dass pulls me into his room, gets me, sticks

967
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:09,400
Speaker 1: a joint in my mouth this when he was smoking seven,

968
00:53:09,440 --> 00:53:11,319
Speaker 1: gets me high, and he says, Ethan, I want you

969
00:53:11,360 --> 00:53:14,520
Speaker 1: to league called kneed Ray Services tonight and for his

970
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:17,520
Speaker 1: whole group. And so that like me and Rondas and

971
00:53:17,640 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 1: Lamassuria DAWs and Mickey Lemley also Jewish. He was doing

972
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:22,759
Speaker 1: a documentary about ron Dust. Got up there and I

973
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:25,520
Speaker 1: let a call kneed Ury Service at Ron Dawson friends

974
00:53:25,560 --> 00:53:27,840
Speaker 1: gathering back, you know, two weeks after nine eleven. It

975
00:53:27,920 --> 00:53:29,719
Speaker 1: was one of the more remarkable moments in my wife,

976
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:32,719
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that. That's amazing. Yeah, that's amazing. All right,

977
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:34,800
Speaker 1: you know what you're in the exhibit? Oh well, Guyle,

978
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:37,320
Speaker 1: that about getting I'll get a two friend in that case.

979
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:39,600
Speaker 1: But Eddie, listen, I think he did a marvelous job

980
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 1: with the exhibit. I'm so glad you did. It was

981
00:53:41,680 --> 00:53:44,600
Speaker 1: so much fantastic energy and enthusiasm. You put together a

982
00:53:44,600 --> 00:53:47,400
Speaker 1: great panel when you're there. And so I surely hope

983
00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:50,800
Speaker 1: that EVO is going to be doing other exhibits involving

984
00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:54,000
Speaker 1: Jews and psychoactive drugs. As for this one, it will

985
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:57,880
Speaker 1: be still showing at EVO. That's why I the o

986
00:53:58,440 --> 00:54:00,880
Speaker 1: based at the Center for Jewish History sixteen Street in

987
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:03,319
Speaker 1: New York, or just google Juice in Cannabis. It's going

988
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:05,239
Speaker 1: to be showing there through the end of the year.

989
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:07,279
Speaker 1: If you're visiting New York or living New York, I

990
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:10,120
Speaker 1: strongly encourage you to check it out. And Eddie, thank

991
00:54:10,160 --> 00:54:12,879
Speaker 1: you ever so much for being my guest on Psychoactive.

992
00:54:13,000 --> 00:54:20,840
Speaker 1: Thank you had a great time. If you're enjoying Psychoactive,

993
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:23,719
Speaker 1: please tell your friends about it, or you can write

994
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:26,279
Speaker 1: us a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get

995
00:54:26,320 --> 00:54:29,440
Speaker 1: your podcasts. We love to hear from our listeners. If

996
00:54:29,480 --> 00:54:32,400
Speaker 1: you'd like to share your own stories, comments and ideas,

997
00:54:32,520 --> 00:54:35,560
Speaker 1: then leave us a message at one eight three three

998
00:54:36,160 --> 00:54:42,080
Speaker 1: seven seven nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero,

999
00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:45,759
Speaker 1: or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot

1000
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:48,879
Speaker 1: com or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man.

1001
00:54:49,320 --> 00:54:52,280
Speaker 1: You can also find contact information in our show notes.

1002
00:54:52,680 --> 00:54:57,040
Speaker 1: Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures.

1003
00:54:57,160 --> 00:55:00,520
Speaker 1: It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's for deduced by

1004
00:55:00,520 --> 00:55:04,880
Speaker 1: noam Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden,

1005
00:55:05,080 --> 00:55:09,280
Speaker 1: Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures,

1006
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:12,239
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and

1007
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:16,680
Speaker 1: me Ethan Edelman. Our music is by Ari Blusien and

1008
00:55:16,760 --> 00:55:20,880
Speaker 1: a special thanks to A. Brios F Bianca Grimshaw and

1009
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:35,440
Speaker 1: Robert bb. Next week I'll be talking with Norman Ohler,

1010
00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:38,880
Speaker 1: an award winning German novelist, screenwriter and journalist who has

1011
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:42,279
Speaker 1: written a fascinating book called Blitzed All about the use

1012
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:45,440
Speaker 1: of methamphetamine and other drugs by Hitler and a German

1013
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:48,719
Speaker 1: military during World War Two. No army in the world

1014
00:55:48,719 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 1: I've ever done this to to march for three days

1015
00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:54,800
Speaker 1: and three ninths because no human being can stay awake

1016
00:55:54,920 --> 00:55:57,799
Speaker 1: for three days and three ninths without an artificial stimulant,

1017
00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:01,520
Speaker 1: but with methamphetamine is actually possible. So the German army

1018
00:56:01,640 --> 00:56:05,759
Speaker 1: used this no longer time window of being able to

1019
00:56:05,800 --> 00:56:11,239
Speaker 1: be active to overrun the enemies which had to go

1020
00:56:11,360 --> 00:56:14,879
Speaker 1: to sleep. Actually subscribe to cycleactive now see it, don't

1021
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:15,200
Speaker 1: miss it.