"An enthusiastic and interesting excursion into the psychedelic
fringes of hasidic culture."
Alan Moore
"Here's this emerging genius dude who has a big and growing following in
real life and online - this guy who makes Judaism new and real again,
who digs deep into the Chassidic tradition for its deeply stoned
truths. A Jewish Terence McKenna, mining the Torah's hidden landscape..."
Douglas Rushkoff
Cannabis Chassidis is a book, published now by
Autonomedia Press, about the history, implications, impact and conditionally reccomended use of Marijuana and other natural entheogens in Judaism and it's related heresies. The author is in North America until December, you can contact him to come and speak-perform on the subject through Jim@autonomedia.org
"Some years ago, I came to Jerusalem,
just out of high school,
looking for an authentic religious tradition
for how to smoke
marijuana
...rightly, helpfully, more effectively
and more meaningfully.
What I found additionally and instead
was a living culture, wrestling with the mystery
of how to incorporate the exctatic; and the
mystery of the causes for it's repression,
along with alot of brilliant guidance and terrible truths about the
nature of religion, law, idealism and drugs.
Cannabis Chassidis: The Ancient and Emerging Torah of Drugs (A memoir)
details the question and it's exploration: How could it be that
something as inherent to modern life as
Marijuana, something with a
rich history of human usage, has no tradition in Torah, a guidance
system that I was raised to understand as encompassing everything good
that one should know? There are answers for what
IS there in the
tradition, rich allusions to herbs and smokes used in different
capacities, and the more interesting answers and questions are about
what there isn't in the tradition, and why.
And along the way, the spectrum of an experience of living mystical
subculture
is explored, and the romantic idealization and redemptive
potential of both Psychedelia and Religion are touched and felt
deeply, in the context of outstanding communities and individuals who
have experienced the glories and the failures of both.
Yoseph Leib travels and studies throughout Jerusalem, New York, and
Rainbow Country U.S.A, in search of guidance about how
Cannabis and
psychedelics have and have not been used in both ancient and emerging
Hassidic traditions, and what the way we have related to our desires
for medicines, gods, and intoxicants can teach us about how we relate
to ourselves, our community, and our G-d. The glorious problem of how
what we can learn can set us free, in all kinds of ways.
To order:
http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&products_id=691
or you can just read it here as it appeared as a blog. Feel welcome either way! Questions, comments, or shabbos invitations should be sent to Zakifkififim@gmail.com
