420 is the gematria of smoke

A few years ago, i went to Israel to find the mysterious hidden Torah of Marijuana.

Torah, by definition, as I had grown up with it in Hebrew Day School, was the source a root of all good and all truth, and dealt with everything. If so... Where's the Weed?

Might sound like a flippant question to anyone who doesn't take marijuana seriously. But I did. I was seriously touched by it, around the third year of high school. I had been horrendously bummed out by romantic and intellectual frustration, coupled with an inability to do any much homework despite harsh attempt at self discipline and committment... and then along came Mary.

I had been turned on by the littlest trickle of heart and mind expanding music and culture, Nirvana, Sublime, 311,The Beatles, Ginsburg and Kerouac and Hendrix... positive radio and bookstore cheese that gave me some inspired insight on, you know, a sweeter way of relating to life.

It was clear since the first time my mom told me that no, Columbus did not discover America, the "Indians" were already living here until they got slaved and poxed to death, that the authorities' descriptions of Reality were comming from a priority other than a pure devoted search for the Real Truth. Marijuana prohibition seemed to my teenage soul to epitomize this Governmental dishonesty regarding not-just-our-history.

Like, as every half-concious stand up comic has pointed out (from Lenny Bruce to Chris Rock)
Marijuna, unlike alcohol, tobbacco, or refined sugar, doesn't kill people, has never been atributed to any death except maybe the folks who get shot by police or federal officers sometimes, and tends to actually, uh, discourage violence...

Blah, blah, everybody knows, everybody knows.

When i first smoked weed, it gave me a peace with my surroundings that i had not had in a long time. When i third smoke weed, It gave me memories of feelings that i had not experienced since i was 4 years old, simple burbles of experience that i had been too word addicted and perspective-caught to relate through. When I tenth smoked weed, I had a chance to actually see infinity work, as cicles within circles, going all the way in each direction, until they came around the otherside.

And I thought, wow, where did this go? How could it be we didn't know about this?

And by "we," I mean the Jews of course.

I'd hate to give this away, but maybe everyone knows about this already too... I've wondered if this secret assumption isn't the secret of the healing of Christianity...
The tradition passed down to religious Jews in the schools we go to, i do think pretty much across the orthodox board (which can otherwise be pretty diverse theologically, make no mistake) is that, on Mount Sinai, after we left Egypt, God told Moses everything.

Mamish everything. how it begins, how it ends, right? But furthermore, how to relate to people and families, how to build the perfect utopian economic system, how to enforce social justice and prevent corruption, how to ressurect the dead and animate clay, how to conjure demons and make them wait your tables, how to make people's kidney explode...

The secret names that all the angels answer too, the secret languages of all the animals, the secret of folding space to be able to teleport from place to place, the secret of how to transmogrify cucumbers into venison, the secret powers of every plant, and the appropriate context.

In Yeshiva, we all heard the story of the Lithuanian (or was it Portugese?) Rabbi who taught his brain surgeon how to do brain surgery better, because he had learned it out of a passage of the talmud somehow. Becuase, ostensibly, it's all there.

I had this fantasy about the desert Israelites... Moses taught them everything. They could win every war and conquer the holy land because they were like tantric ninja masters, who's daily prayer services included asanas now unknown to us. They had the knowledge of how to be ideally developed human beings, and they devoted it all to G-d, because, truth be told, what else is there?

And all the invasions they did were justified, because the peoples they were anhiliating were child sacrificing whore-mongers-idolators, but we still cried over every baby we smashed, and prayed that the world would soon come to it's senses.

But, sadly enough, as the generations progressed, we forgot more and more... just boiling down our tradition to whatever we thought was most important for our kids to know. But, for anyone with the eyes to search, it could all be dug out...

As such... where's the ganja? And the yoga for that matter, something that touched my life and re-sensitized me to my body too right around then, where did they go?

The oral tradition was forbidden to write down until we got scared that if we didn't write it down, we'd forget it. Yogic positions and breathing patterns I guess are easier to show some one than the are to write down maybe... but how could i relate to marijuana in a sacred way, without a tradition of how to sacramentalize it?

Was there a blessing I could say? A particular intention I would use to open up cosmic portals while toking? What guidance did my tradition have to give me with this, since it seemed to have so much to say about all my other everyday activites...

How could it be we didn't have a tradition, of Pot as much as we do of wine? I guess it was hard to score bud in exile maybe, but... some hint of it had to be somewhere in our tradition, right?

So... after high school, I went to Israel, ostensibly to learn Torah, and experience the holiness of the land... but also to find

a) community wrestling with this same question. I could ask my shul rabbi for insight, and listen to him repeat a modern rabbinic prohibition based on lies and suck-up-to-the-man disinformation, but maybe there were people in Israel really struggling with these mysteries, and maybe they'd found something good, and

b)sources, written ones, dealing with Marijuana, in some way or another. Be it in the Pentateuch, the Prophets, Psalms, mishna, Talmud, Midrash, Old Kabbalah, Chassidus... Wherever I could and also

c) Organize a million marijuna march for Jerusalem. How could the international roster of cities hosting ganja day protests not include the very center of the universe.

Next Blog, i'll start to tell you what i found. But before i finish this one, i'll tell you about one of the cutest marijuna torahs ever uncovered.

The Hebrew word for Smoke is AShaN

AShaN is a three letter root word, Ayin, Shin and Nun.

Get ready, this is cool...

In hebrew numerology, every letter is a number. Like, if in english, instead of writing "1" we wrote "a" and "b" was 2 and "j" was 10 and "k" was 20 and "t" was 100
and so on... It's called Gematria. Y'all saw Pi, right? yeah, cool...

Ayin is 70
Shin is 300
Nun is 50

what does that equal?

hahahahahhahahahahahahaha

The same numerological equivelent to the word "mimitzrayim"
which means "Out from Egypt(lit: constriction/boundary)"

Because all solid objects are held together by boundaries
and attachments
and only Smoke
is free
to float up and out towards the heavens

cute, yeah? more to come, with Jah blessings :>

---Yoseph