legalize marijuana, that what they say, hey.

hey, what's up true believers? guess what's goin on this weekend?

It's a big conflict for me this year, and, like other halacha vs. morality questions, it's more problematic in Israel.

You see kids, dope smoking is forbidden on the sabbath, except to save your life, of course. The World Cannabis March, a.k.a. The Million Marijuana March is the first saturday in May, and for a jew of the orthodox persuasion who smokes marijuana and cares for it's legalization, it might feel important to go to the cannabis march for the sake of solidarity with the cause of liberating God's creations from the yoke of heavyness and trauma. And so, in high school, I would dutifully walk over the Williamsburg bridge every first shabbos in May, to march in New York's Million Marijuana March, with my black hat and jacket, tie-clasp key strapped firmly to mine tie.

I later years, i'd get involved with the organization that put the march on, Cures Not Wars, certainly one of the most appreciated resources of my youth. www.cures-not-wars.org has the local info for your local march, in whatever country or province you happen to dwell.

There's three in Israel this year, isn't that something? Tel aviv, Jerusalem and Eilat, oh my! I have no real involvement in the Jerusalem one, in Gan Sacher, and I wonder if I should even go, because it means something else to have an event here on Saturday, holy Saturday than it would in universal ol' America.

How much do I believe in Shabbos? So much, right? More than like anything, isn't that odd? How much am I to respect my own beliefs, how much to challenge them to duels to the death. I know Shabbos is deeper than the things we do to preserve it, and I also know that once those things are devalued, the priority flood gates rush open. If i'm not forced somehow to not work on Shabbos, I have no excuse not to work on shabbos.

Weed, reefer, pot, marijuana, lets say, as much as I love, I don't believe in the redemptive power of as much. I have not come to a theology where god rewards me for smoking grass, and appreciates the sacrifices I make in order to be able to nessesarily. I don't believe that cannabis consumption is inherently redemptive, a position I might have wanted to take at points in my youth.

And there is a school of thought like that in the psychedelic community, that the High is inhernetly divine, and You are Encharged to go to that place at all costs. Chayuv Inish libisumai, only that one day, is what we agreed.

"we", ha haha ha ha!

I love my loopholes, and used to dig getting high on shabbos from the shotties that gentiles would blow in my mouth upon being told of my situation.

"Hey. excuse me sir? Happy cannabis liberation day! I couldn't help but notice the phat blunt you've got there, and i'll tell you... I'm a religious jew, and cannot smoke on the Sabbath, saturday, nor can I even ask you for a hit or anything... But if you want to blow a shottie in my face, I wouldn't have to turn away."

What kind of stoner would refuse the chance to share in that? There are halachic issues with maris ayin, evil eye from people seeing him do this to me and somehow being led to think that he was actually doing it for me, as opposed to just, you know, blowing his own smoke where ever he wanted, but that might be secondary to the kiddush hashem of religious people turning out to be "cool" and supporting the movement.

It might still be a halachic problem, I don't do it very often, just when gentiles want to get me high for their own sake, do I have to stop them? It's more of a problem in public, I guess.

In Jerusalem, it's so loaded. One can only benfit from stuff done on Shabbos by gentiles, or those not chayuv in Shabbos... but in J-town, everybody's probably Jewish, so... supporting the movement is supporting Sabbath violation maybe.

Now... though I've been flirting with and talking about all sorts off anti-nomian values and ideas, i'm still inside, functionally orthoprax, and even though I might see the liberated future, I don't live there most of the time. To the degree that I will go outside of the boundary of the law, endangering perhaps my immortal soul, ha ha, as if, I have not unless it seemed really worth it. This is a general practical rule I tend to hold by, if you're going to risk your life, only do it for things worth dying for. Like, if i'm going to break a rule, it should be only if it's holier than if I had kept it, like the Yom Kippur Feast at the finishing of the Holy Temple construction, something on that level. I feel like g-d respects that more than just violation from sloth or convenience. It's really, really wrong to break shabbos for money, because what does that say about money? But to break Shabbos for love...?

I've known people who related to marijuana as a protective amulet, that as long as they had some on them, they were safe from harm. There are Rastafarian sects, like the bobo if I'm not mistaken, where death is seen as a symptom of sin or failure, and marijuana as a protection against that. It would be cool if that was how it works...

I was talking to a friend tonight about a controversial wedding we'd been to earlier that week. The teachers of the school that the bridegroom was learning at wouldn't go to the wedding ceremony itself, because of theological issues with how the wedding was done (they used the invocation "like the law of moses and israel" but all the blessings were done by a woman, and the wife-purchase thing was left out too.) One of the teachers, however, came for the dancing afterwards, and spoke publicly before the school to clarify and open up discussion about why he didn't go, and why he supports the love happening anyway. While he couldn't be a part of what was happening, partially because of a sense of being pressured into taking a stand to support the way it was done, partially because of his responsibility as head of the School, but how that didn't mean he thought they were wrong in doing it the way that they did it. Really, he supports them, their love and their decisions... he just can't be a part of the ritual.

Is that hypocritical? To say I believe that something is good, but can't actually be involved in it for reasons of the holy? maybe. But i'm doing that too. Jerusalem in Gan Sacher, this saturday at 4. Tel aviv, Eilat, i don't have the details here, but google aleh yarok or check out the affor linked www.cures-not-wars.org and they should have everything you need to know.

do what thou wilt, right? ha
ha
ha