WEBVTT - Eddy Portnoy on Jews and Cannabis 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:07.720 Hi, I'm Ethan Natalman, and this is Psychoactive, a production 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:11.600 of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the 0:00:11.640 --> 0:00:15.040 show where we talk about all things drugs. But any 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.760 views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media, 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:23.480 Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.400 an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.720 even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.680 should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:44.720 any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today, the issue 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:47.599 is a bit close to me personally. The subject we're 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:51.960 talk about today is Jews and cannabis. And what prompted 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:54.320 this was not that I just something like discovered I'm Jewish. 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:55.760 I mean Jewish all my life. As many of your 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:58.360 listeners hear the references I make from time to time, 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:00.639 but there was an exhibit re only in New York 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:03.240 that's actually playing for the rest of the year on 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.959 the subject Jews and cannabis. It's at a famous institute 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:10.560 called EVO, the Addition Institute for Jewish Research, which is 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:13.040 part of a broader umbrella organization called the Center for 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:16.280 Jewish History, which is committed to the preservation and study 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:19.000 of the history and culture of East European Jury, but 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:22.720 a key academic advisor and the head of their exhibitions, 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:26.600 Eddie Portnoy, has always been sort of drawn to looking 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.039 at the Devian side of things, and he came up 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:32.600 with this idea of doing an exhibit on Jews and cannabis, 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:35.800 which I just went to in May, which was fascinating. 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:39.319 Place was packed and so Eddie, thank you for joining 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:42.600 me on Psychoactive. Thanks for having mean so Eddie, what 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:45.639 was it that prompted you to, you know, do Jews 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:48.760 in cannabis. Well, one of the odd things was a 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:51.280 few years ago I happen to see online really kind 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:54.840 of beautifully sculpted glass bong in the shape of a 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.840 manora for the holiday of Hankka, and I thought, you know, 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:00.680 this is really kind of an unusual will think it's 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:05.760 this confluence of cannabis culture and Jewish culture. And I 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:07.640 thought to myself, you know, I work at a historical 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:11.360 research institute that has a really enormous archive with something 0:02:11.400 --> 0:02:15.200 like twenty four million objects and artifacts and documents, and 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:18.400 I thought, you know, we've been collecting Jewish material culture 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:21.280 for almost a hundred years. This Manura bong is something 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.160 that's representative of Jewish material culture. This should be in 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.400 our collection. And so I contacted the company Grav that 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:30.240 makes it, and I told them what I just told you, 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:32.320 that I work at historical research institute that has this 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:35.240 huge archive, and I asked if they would donate it 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:39.640 to the archives, and they were very receptive. They said sure, 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:42.280 and they then following week it was in my office 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.799 and as it sat at my desk, I thought to myself, well, 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:48.040 the first thing I thought was why would anyone smoke 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:50.920 eight bowls of weed at a time. But the second 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:54.119 thing I thought was could I feasibly make an exhibit 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:56.560 on Jews and cannabis? You know, could this? Could this? 0:02:56.639 --> 0:02:58.480 Is this something that I could actually create? Are there 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:00.600 more items like this? You know, what's the history of this? 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:03.280 And I began to do a bit of research and 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:06.799 sure enough I came up with really much more than 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:09.560 I would ever need to create an exhibit. And we 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:12.920 waited until COVID was a little bit calmer to open it. 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:14.840 But it opened it. As you said, the place was 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:18.320 packed and it's gotten a really great reception. So far. Yeah. Well, 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:20.399 you know, when looking at your background and what you've 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:22.320 written and done in the past, I feel a certain 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:24.399 kinship with you know, when I was doing my own 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:28.040 PhD in politics, you know, decades ago, and I was 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:30.680 always drawn to the kind of deviant side of things. 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:33.680 I was curious about deviant and about even thinking about devians, 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:36.800 not just in a sociological context, but a political context 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.480 and even in a global context. And my senses that 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:41.720 you also had that history. I mean, the book you 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.640 wrote was called I think Bad Rabbi tell us a 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:48.280 little bit about that to provide some broader context of this, right, 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:50.760 so bad Rabbi. The full title is Bad Rabbi and 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:53.640 Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press. This 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:56.960 book contains a wide variety of different stories, most of 0:03:56.960 --> 0:04:00.640 them called from old Yiddish newspapers. And one of the 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.720 reasons I began doing this was when I was doing 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:06.000 research for my dissertation, which was on cartoons of the 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:08.920 Yiddish press. I had to read the Yiddish press extensively, 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:14.000 and I kept coming across really unusual articles about I 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:16.640 guess what you'd call Jews in trouble, but trouble of 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:20.440 their own making sort of bunglers and screw ups and 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:24.760 you know, criminals and people involved in violent situations. And 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.599 some of them were really hilarious. Some of them are tragic, 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:31.200 some are tragic comic. But I've sort of found this 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:36.159 trove of incredibly fascinating stories about Jews, mostly from the 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:40.320 early twentieth century, and they weren't the typical things you 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:43.680 thought of when you thought of, you know, Yiddish speaking Jews. 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:49.320 There are riots and murders and psychics and all kinds 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:52.240 of fights. They are knocked down, drag out battles during 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:55.720 divorce proceedings in rabbinical courts. It's almost as if it's 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:59.560 a kind of Yiddish Jerry Springer show. And when I 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:03.320 was at school and deeply studying the Jews of this era, 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:06.760 I never came across material like this. But yet in 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:11.039 Yiddish newspapers, this kind of material was legion and it 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:13.960 really fascinated me, and so I compiled the fair amount 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:16.560 of it and produced this book. M Well I saw it. 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:18.760 I think also some of the other exhibits, maybe the 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:21.680 ones that you've curated. There. There's one called Fight Club 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:25.320 about the Jewish boxers and how many Jewish champions that 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:28.719 were in boxing. There were Jews in space, jewsing comedy, 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.719 and Renaissance literature, jew Face, which was kind of the 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.640 variant of black face, mysterally involving Jewish and Jewish theater. 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:37.359 I mean, so it sounds like there's a number of 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:39.480 ones where you've kind of been drawn to looking at 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:42.640 this sort of surprising ways in which Jews play a 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:46.520 role in which you would not expect them to be playing. Right, 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:50.360 That's basically my m o. I look for aspects of 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.400 Jewish life that people really haven't scholars or really anyone 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:56.440 else hasn't really touched on a great deal. And often 0:05:56.440 --> 0:05:59.240 this has to do with deviance, and some of it 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:01.880 winds up being really fascinating. And I could just add that, 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:04.839 you know, one interesting person who's connected to cannabis is 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:08.240 Howard Becker, who's one of the fathers of Devian studies 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:11.080 in sociology. And you know, he wrote one of the 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.920 early academic articles in the Orly nineteen fifties on cannabis use. 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.000 Howard Becker's I think he wrote Becoming a Marijuana User, 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.240 where he talked about what it means to learn how 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:21.919 to be high. I mean Howard Becker is still in 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.200 his nineties. He became a very famous sociologist, but no, 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:27.640 he was an early really leader in there. Now, one 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:29.560 of the things you put in the exhibit is you 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:31.720 go back to the period and it's a really very 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.320 rich period of the nineties, sixties and seventies when you 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:39.320 have both the counterculture as well as the Jewish researchers 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:43.840 and scientists who are basically, you know, advocating for marijuana 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:46.400 reform in the very early stages of the first wave 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:51.440 of marijuana reform, and who are disproportionately Jewish at that time. Now, 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:53.360 I'll say there was one name in the exhibit I 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:55.560 think that I did not recognize. I think it was 0:06:55.720 --> 0:07:00.279 Walter Bromberg. Walter Bromberg, who was a psychiatrist, you know, 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.760 working in the nineteen thirties at Bellevue Hospital and he 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.760 did some of the first research on marijuana smokers who 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:11.080 had been brought into his ward and he produced i 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:14.080 think his first article in nineteen thirty four, and what 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.160 he found was brilliant opposition to what was happening in 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:21.360 the press, where marijuana was perceived as you know, something 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:24.080 that caused people to engage in violence. Or made them 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:27.760 psychotic in some way. He found that it didn't do 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:30.640 that at all. His findings showed that marijuana was not 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:34.240 particularly detrimental, at least not in the same way as 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:38.320 you know, opium, morphine or you know, even alcohol. Right, 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:41.600 And his recommendations I think shaped the LaGuardia Commission, which 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.760 was one of the early governmental commissions in the US 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:48.280 to come out basically advocating for some form of decriminalization 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:50.360 of cannabis back in the thirties, and headed up or 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:54.360 appointed by a mayor, Fiero LaGuardia, Italian name but half Jewish, 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:57.600 right right, Yeah, you'd just speaking Italian mayor. I'll tell 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.040 you there was a moment I remember in nineteen eighties seven, 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:04.520 and I had just started teaching at Princeton and been 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:06.760 asked to teach a corse on drug policy and gave 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.280 me an opportunity to invite some of the more prominent 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:11.640 figures in and I remember that's how I met Andrew 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:14.640 Wild who was actually my very first guest on Psychoactive 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:16.920 almost a year or so ago. And I'm sitting there 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:19.080 having dinner with Andy, and he says, he's you ever 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:23.120 wonder or maybe worry about how many Jews are involved, 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:24.640 and we were just talking about cannabis, but brought a 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.680 drug policy reform because you know, it was him. Then 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.120 there was Arnold Treeback, who had just co created the 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:33.960 Drug Policy Foundation to advocate against the drug war. But 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:37.120 then you had Lester grin Spoon Harvard Medical School and 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:41.160 Norman Zendberg at Harvard Medical School. And you had Ed Brecker, 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:43.559 who had written the Editors of Consumers Report, which is 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.560 a breakthrough book challenging the major drug work. John Kaplan, 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:49.560 a Standford law professor who together with Grinspoon, wrote a 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.600 couple of the key books in the early seventies, basically 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:56.040 advocating for some reform. And so it raises the interesting 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.960 question of was there ever a sense of marijuana legalist 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:03.960 Asian or marijuana being something of a Jewish conspiracy. Some 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:06.400 people thought, so, you know, one of those people being 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:09.160 Richard Nixon. Well, now that you mentioned Nixon, I mean, 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:12.360 let's just go to the famous clip of his He's 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:16.360 talking to hr Holden and his aid and he's complaining 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:34.520 about marijuana and Jews Jewish matter always. So just in 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.240 case you couldn't make out what Nixon was saying, there 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.680 he says, you know, it's a funny thing. Every one 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:44.080 of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:47.040 What the crisis the matter with the Jews? Bob? He 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:49.760 says to Bob Holdman, what's the matter with them? I 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:54.240 suppose it's because most of them are psychiatrists. So, Eddie, 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.160 what's your take on that Nixon quote? Right? So, on 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:00.000 the one hand, it's hilarious, and on the other hand, 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.400 and it's terrible because you know, it obviously reveals Nixon's 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:07.120 anti Semitism and his obvious pension for conspiracy theory. But 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:10.480 what's actually happening here is this quote was recorded in 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:13.920 the Oval office on his secret recording apparatus on I 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:20.400 Believe one, and he was about to officially launch his 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:24.520 drug war, and Lester Grinsapon's book Reconsidering Marijuana had come 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:26.959 out a few weeks earlier, and this was a book 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:30.720 written by a Harvard University psychiatry professor published by Harvard 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:35.280 University Press. It's clearly something that's respected and legitimate. And 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:40.120 the end result is that marijuana is not detrimental, it's 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:43.160 even something that should be legalized. And obviously this is 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:46.360 backed up by years of research, and so Nixon is 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:49.240 furious because he's about to launch the drug war and 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:53.079 this very obviously Jewish psychiatrist comes out with this book 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.840 that's going to be problematic for him. And it's connected 0:10:56.840 --> 0:10:59.559 to this in some way. Is the other people who 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:03.040 are involved in legalization and some of the people who 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:06.720 Nixon is also trying to get at with the drug 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:11.040 war are the Yippies, who are also Certainly anyone can 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:13.360 join the Yippies, and probably most of you know, I 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:15.599 don't think that there was any kind of official membership. 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:19.840 So the Yippies was a political organization. Some people call 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:23.920 them the groucho Marxists. They were this kind of radical 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:27.640 left wing political group who was very performative some of 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.240 the things they did. And if anyone saw the recent 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:33.640 Chicago Seven movie, the Chicago Seven essentially the founders of 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:36.960 the Yippies, and they would go into the gallery of 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:39.120 the New York Stock Exchange and in the middle of 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:43.040 trading throw out hundreds of dollar bills and the traders 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:45.560 would all go running to grab the dollar bills, and 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.280 it was obviously meant to embarrass them. They also did 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:52.120 things like threatened to spike the water system of Chicago 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:56.560 with LSD. During the night Democratic Convention, they attempted to 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:01.439 levitate the Pentagon. They were all kinds of funny formative activities. 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:03.760 But one of the interesting things that I actually didn't 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:06.680 know about the Hippies until I started doing research on 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:11.280 this was that marijuana legalization was central to their political platform. 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:13.640 And in fact, their official flag, which is a black 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:16.160 flag with a red star, also has a marijuana leaf 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:19.240 embossed on it. And if you read their newspapers, among 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:22.920 them the Yipster Times or Overthrow, they're full of articles 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:27.160 about legalization and the importance of legalization. So Nixon hated 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.800 these people, and obviously they hated Nixon as well, and 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:31.640 so they were always at each other's streaks. But one 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:36.760 way that Nixon could harm them was by instituting a 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:39.800 drug war in which they would wind up in jail. 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:42.679 And so that was part and parcel of the drug wars. 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:46.960 Put users in jail and use resources for that instead 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:50.040 of other possibly more useful matters. And it just so 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:53.600 happens that all five of the founders of the Yippies 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:56.360 were Jewish, I mean Abbie Hofman and his wife Anita, 0:12:56.480 --> 0:12:58.680 and Jerry Rubin, who were both in the trilog Chicago 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:02.880 seven and Nancy Krishan and Paul Krasner. So once again, 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:05.559 none of them probably all that connected in their adult 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:08.760 lives to their judaism, but nonetheless organizing this kind of 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:11.760 anarchistic group. And then of course he had Alan Ginsburg, right, 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:14.559 the famous poet, right. Yeah, so Ginsburg he was actually 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:17.760 one of really the early adopters of legalization as a platform. 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:22.120 In nineteen sixty four, he and Ed Sanders of the Fugs, 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:26.560 if anyone remembers, the Fugs band did really interesting stuff, 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:28.679 actually did some Yiddish songs, so they also had a 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:31.720 Yiddish connection. But Alan Ginsburg and had Sanders founded Limar 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:36.640 or legalized marijuana in New York, and in late ninety 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:41.200 four began organizing public protests in support of marijuana legalization. 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.240 These were really, I believe, the first public protests in 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:47.599 support of legalization. He also wrote articles, I think in 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:51.439 the Atlantic promoting legalization. He was very active in this regard, 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:54.480 and I guess it's somewhat unusual to have a literary 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:57.520 figure do this. But one interesting thing here is the 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:01.240 connection he makes between generation. So one interesting thing about 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:06.199 Ginsberg iscause I understand that he began to use cannabis 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:08.800 as a results of his connection with the jazz scene. 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:12.360 Jazz musicians have been using cannabis since the twenties, and 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:16.320 he's also this link between the jazz scene and the 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:20.720 popularization of cannabis and the nineties sixties counterculture, which he's 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:23.280 also involved in, And so that makes him a kind 0:14:23.280 --> 0:14:26.240 of unusual figure in that regard. Well, you know, there's 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:28.640 also something else because you go back to the thirties, 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:31.160 right when you had both very common marijuana use among 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:34.560 jazz musicians. Annu also had beginnings of reefer madness with 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:36.480 Harry ann Slinger, the head of the FARO Bureau of 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:38.880 Narcotics and others. But I mean that was the point 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:42.000 where you had many musicians right who had reefer songs, 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:43.560 and many of them didn't even have lyrics. But I 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:46.160 think that you had Fats Waller and Duke Ellington and 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:48.320 Jeane Krupa. But then you had a Jewish guy like 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:51.280 Benny Goodman, the famous clarinetist who had his song Texas 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:53.360 tea Party. And then the one who perhaps me the 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:57.760 greatest connection here was Mesro, a clarinetist. Among other things, 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.520 he did a song sending the viper, but who had 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:02.360 other connections? So just tell us a little bit about 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:05.200 miss Misroe. Right, So, mess Mesro was born in Chicago, 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:09.600 learned to play saxophone in reform school. He was, you know, 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:12.440 admittedly not a great kid, but learning to play saxophone 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:14.560 kind of saved him. He got into the jazz scene 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:17.520 in Chicago, played with a number of great and as 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:21.520 a jazz musician, he began using cannabis because apparently a 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:23.920 lot of people who were doing it, and he, while 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:27.640 in Chicago, made a connection with a particular Mexican dealer 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:33.400 who apparently had higher quality marijuana than others. In late twenties, 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:35.760 he moved to New York to become part of the 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:39.880 Harlem jazz scene. And he's not really able to support himself. 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:43.880 So because he has this Mexican connection, he begins selling 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.640 marijuana and apparently he becomes one of the most popular 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:50.880 figures in Harlem. Because of this, he becomes Louis Armstrong's 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:55.560 personal dealer. Louis Armstrong was frequent user. He called it muggles, 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:57.600 which he references in a number of his songs. And 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:00.560 as you said, mes Mesro gets named dropped in a 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.760 lot of songs. In fact, in Harlem of the nineteen thirties, 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:07.080 marijuana was known as mez and he used to sell 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:10.680 these pre roles that everyone called mes roles. And he 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.160 was Albert Goldman, who's this journalist and scholar and well 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.160 known biographer of people like John Lennon and Lenny Bruce 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:21.120 and Elvis. He wrote a history of Marijuana America that 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.400 came out in late seventies and he wrote that mesro 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:25.680 was really one of the most seminal figures in the 0:16:25.720 --> 0:16:29.200 popularization of cannabis in the United States. And yet to 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:32.000 a certain degree, he's been forgotten in this regard, you know, 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:34.240 with the exception of mentioned in these books. Which is 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:37.280 interesting here is he's this Jewish kid from Chicago who 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.200 gets involved in the jazz scene, gets involved with cannabis 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:43.400 use and sales in New York and then Alan Ginsberg 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:46.040 winds up as a fan of jazz, going to show 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:49.680 starts smoking cannabis because of that, and then he becomes 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:53.200 this link to the counterculture and the ultimate large scale 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:57.080 popularization of marijuana use as part of this growing youth culture, 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.960 him being the marijuana deal supplier for the most famous 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:04.760 marijuana use her in American history, which was Louis Armstrong, 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:08.119 You know, Louie Armstrong, clearly not the black Man, a Baptist, 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:10.840 I think, but somebody who wore a star of David 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:13.359 all his adult life. I think because he had a 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:15.760 very close relationship with the Jewish family when he was 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:17.920 a kid, and he saw that family is having kind 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.240 of enabled him to help him become who he was, 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:22.800 not least by helping him buy his first trumpet when 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:25.600 he was very younger. Yeah, so you get the counterculture 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:28.040 from the thirties and the jazz era and then going 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:32.119 into the sixties, and then in the exhibit you mentioned, 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:36.359 I think some of the musicians famous Jewish musicians, although 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:38.720 they were may not have been known for being famous 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:42.000 because they were Jewish. But one I think was shel Silverstein, right, 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:44.840 who was a writer and a poet, a cartoonist, songware player. 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:47.199 I think it was most famous for children's books like 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:49.199 The Giving Tree and A Light in the Attic. And 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:51.720 he also wrote that Johnny Cash song A Boy named Sue. 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:56.520 But what was his contribution to marijuana songology? Verstein wrote, 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:04.240 I got stone and I missed it missed. It's a 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:06.640 song about someone who gets high and then misses out 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:08.880 on some things. So it's the sort of comic song 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:10.600 about you know what happens to you if you get 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:13.320 too high? So Phillips wrote, you can't get stone enough. 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:15.919 And so this is obviously a popular thematic in the 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:19.320 nineties sixties, all of these you know, folk singers and 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:22.280 rock stars would come to sing songs about cannabis in 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:41.360 some way. We'll be talking more after we hear this ad. Now, 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:44.560 the most famous song I think that's associated with marijuana 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:48.920 but may not actually have been about marijuana, was by 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:53.200 a guy named Bob Zimmerman who became Bob Diller, right right, 0:18:53.359 --> 0:19:01.040 Rainy Day Woman, Yeah, yeah, a day Women number twelve 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:04.159 and thirty five and everybody must get stoned. But was 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:07.240 that actually about getting high? Right? So he claims it's not. 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:10.320 He claims it's about getting stone in the biblical sense 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:12.760 of people stoning you if you've done something wrong. But 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:16.600 he's obviously referencing getting stone, you know, getting high. There's 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:18.960 no question that that's the reference, and that's clearly what 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:22.000 made the song funny and popular, even though he's evidently 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:26.440 talking about something else. Dylan also famously introduced the Beatles 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:29.919 to marijuana, and by doing so may have changed the 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:34.000 course of music history. Although interesting, right Ringo Star from 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:36.360 the Beatles, I think at one point writes an anti 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:39.040 marijuana's song. And I was actually talking Eddie to a 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:41.679 Steve Bloom, you know who's been a marijuana journalist for 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:44.280 decades at high times. Now he has lived stoner, and 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:47.800 he pointed me to another song called the Pot Smokers 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:52.000 Song by Neil Diamond in eight Do you know about this? 0:19:56.560 --> 0:20:01.200 But ye, I didn't know about it. That sounds great, 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:04.200 I'll tell you it's an anti marijuana song. I think 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:08.360 Neil Diamond had visited Phoenix House, the drug treatment facility 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:11.560 absence only drug treatment facility and headed by Mitch Rosenthal, 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:15.159 also Jewish and a notorious kind of drug warrior, and 0:20:15.240 --> 0:20:19.320 Neil Diamond writes this terrible song, the Pot Smoker's Song, 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:23.160 all anti marijuana, all equating it with heroin, and then 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:26.560 years later he basically Recn's He says that writing that 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:29.080 song almost destroyed his career. He realized it was a 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:32.439 difference between marijuana and heroin. So yeah, different twist on 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:35.720 the marijuana and songs aspect to all of this stuff. Wow, 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:37.800 that's so fascinating. I guess it's not as big of 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:41.000 a hit as Sweet Caroline. No, No, that's right, that's right, 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:44.240 exactly lucky for him. But then if you jump forward 0:20:44.400 --> 0:20:47.960 Amy Winehouse right, which you know, dies tragically in her 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:53.399 mid to late twenties and writes with the rehab song. 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:57.040 But she has another song addicted. It's clearly something she enjoys. 0:20:57.119 --> 0:20:59.400 That's the gist of the lyric. Yeah, yeah, I think 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:01.520 the key was you smoke all my weed man, you 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:05.240 gotta call the green man. And then separately, there is 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:09.160 in the Jewish music world of Klezmer music. You introduced 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:11.960 me to something there I knew nothing about. Right. This 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:14.520 is a song by the Kleismatics. Lyrics are written by 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:18.240 Michael Wex. It's sheer more lakhan if and it's the 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:27.879 reefer song in Yiddish, then run out and in Yiddish 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:29.920 there are there are a fair number of drinking songs, 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:34.600 and the Klismatics as a band who helped revive Klezmer music, 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:39.000 which is Jewish traditional Eastern European music that most often 0:21:39.000 --> 0:21:42.520 gets played at weddings and sort of celebratory events. They 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:44.399 decided that they wanted to put in an album of 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:46.959 drinking songs, and they felt that they needed to update 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:49.440 their material and have a song about smoking weeds. So 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:52.320 they created this Yiddish reefer song, and I believe it's 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:56.399 the only song in Yiddish about smoking cannabis. One of 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:59.520 the points you made at the opening of the exhibit, 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:01.200 and it was as part of the exhibit from which 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:04.240 I learned the most, was that in some respects, when 0:22:04.280 --> 0:22:07.520 you look at the history of Jews in cannabis, there's 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:11.240 relatively little, almost nothing in terms of the history of 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:15.320 Jews in Europe, in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Yiddish Europe, 0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:17.680 Christian Europe, that it was sort of absent. And if 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:19.520 you really want to look at the history of Jews 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:21.159 and cannabis, you have to go back, maybe to the 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:23.560