The Shed 2009
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Cannabis Chassidis17/05/09
Book presentation and interaction by Yoseph Leib.
Cannabis Chassidis
Cannabis Chassidis ran as a weblog from January 2005 to May 2007, detailing the question and its 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 capacitities, and the more interesting answers and questions are about what there isn’t in the tradition, and why.
Along the way, the spectrum of an experience of Judaism’s 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 has come to a header in his relationship with both drugs (marijuana) and religion (judaism) that makes it hard to feel right talking about either. Because he’s lost faith in the inherent infallible redemptive power of either, and disillusionment is heartbreaking. For it’s not that the virtue of either doesn’t exist, only that his confidence in pursuing either into the great pit of infinity is now in question.
Public will be invited to sing along in whatever language, or with no language but the sound of their heart's deepest yearnings. An introductory chapter of the book will be read, and then open up for questions, trying to stimulate a debate on the issues raised by the book.