Benji
@benji
Benji
@benji
• In my favorite talk of the entire symposium, Sam Shonkoff described two modes of connecting with history. The first mode claims that drugs played a role in advancing Judaism—for example, that hassidic Judaism was boosted by poor Jews eating ergot-filled rye bread (ergot being chemically related to LSD). These claims are tenuous at best and have little to provide modern Jewish psychedelic users beyond some modicum of validation.
• Instead, Shonkoff argued, the more common move is to make a hermeneutical claim: my ancestors may not have tripped on shrooms, but I can understand them because I tripped on shrooms. The biggest public advocate of this idea was Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, whose LSD trip with Timothy Leary could reasonably be said to have inaugurated psychedelic Judaism. For Zalman, psychedelics offered moderns a way to get in touch with the past, even if that past didn’t involve psychedelics, and even if we’ll inevitably project ourselves onto the past that we’re retrieving. Like so many previous generations, psychedelic Judaism willfully and enthusiastically injects itself into our shared history. What could be more authentically Jewish than that?
• But, as some of the other speakers noted, there’s actually a third mode: the Jewish history of altered states of consciousness. This mode encompasses mystical texts in which the senses become mixed (discussed by Eliot Wolfson and Nathaniel Berman). It might also include Biblical and Talmudic sources that point to drumming-induced trance states, as well as female-run vineyard rituals (argued by Jill Hammer). Most usefully, it could even include the real-but-obscure history of Jewish shamans (ba’alei shem), whose use of esoteric rituals, intricate ceremonies, and herbal medicines was importantly raised up by Yosef Rosen (much of this tradition died off when medical schools began accepting Jewish students).
• This flourishing, moreover, has a clear path to maturation. It’s so straightforward, in fact, that I can spell it out in broad strokes right here, in no particular order:
• Create a suite of definitive studies on the history of Jewish psychedelic use, consciousness alteration, and practical guides (some of these are already in the works!)
• Fund research teams on Judaism and psychedelics
• Establish mechanisms for cultural exchange between American and Israeli psychedelic users
• Encourage experimentation with psychedelic-boosted Jewish rituals, both communal and individual
• Design and expand trainings for facilitators and trip sitters
• Collect oral histories of Jewish psychedelic use from the 1950s until today
• Further develop informal online networks, as well as regional networks
• Draft a statement of principles for psychedelic Judaism
• Publish guidelines for safe use
• Develop Jewish thought about addiction
• Create pedagogical tools for communities with little exposure to psychedelics, so that they can appreciate them intellectually and/or try them if interested (coercion is never okay)
• Devise strategies for engagement with major rabbinic institutions
• Establish a national organization to link all the people in the psychedelic Judaism space and perhaps do public advocacy
To merge his life in the common tide of other lives was harder for him than any fasting or prayer, and it was his constant failure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul at last a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubts and scruples.
• It has frequently been remarked, about my own writings, that I emphasize the notion of attention. This began simply enough: to see that the way the flicker flies is greatly different from the way the swallow plays in the golden air of summer. It was my pleasure to notice such things, it was a good first step.
• An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter. Such openness and empathy M. had in abundance, and gave away freely…
• I was in my late twenties and early thirties, and well filled with a sense of my own thoughts, my own presence. I was eager to address the world of words — to address the world with words.
• Then M. instilled in me this deeper level of looking and working, of seeing through the heavenly visibles to the heavenly invisibles.
• I think of this always when I look at her photographs, the images of vitality, hopefulness, endurance, kindness, vulnerability…
• We each had our separate natures; yet our ideas, our influences upon each other became a rich and abiding confluence.