Psychedelic Judaism is going to win

The energy is there and the obstacles are surprisingly few

Last week, a remarkable thing happened: Harvard University hosted a conference on religion and psychedelics, 62 years after that same university fired two professors for loudly encouraging psychedelic use on campus.

The convening felt momentous, and not just because it coincided with Ash Wednesday, Ramadan, and the Hebrew month of Adar. The sold-out event, hosted by Harvard Law School and attended by hundreds, featured more than thirty speakers, most advocating for the normalization and/or legalization of psychedelics, including in ritual contexts. Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS, was there, too. (You can see the schedule here.)

I don’t know what a coming out party for religious psychedelic use looks like, but it can’t be far from this.

I participated in this conference, and I want to tell you about it—but I also want to tell you what I heard behind it. This isn’t going to be a perfect breakdown of everything I saw and heard. Instead, I have an agenda in mind. I want to describe what this remarkable convening says about the state of psychedelic Judaism and where it sits in relation to the other religious psychedelic movements on display.

Psychedelic Judaism is already quite advanced

This wasn’t an explicitly Jewish conference—but also, it sort of was.

Jewish scholars occupied more space than Christian, Muslims, or indigenous religious traditions. The longest single talk of the convening was about Jewish mysticism. And while I don’t know the composition of the virtual audience, the in-person crowd was so Jewish that the organizers put together a special meet-and-greet session for us to connect.

Some of this, of course, extends from the fact that the conference was organized by Jay Michaelson and Noah Feldman, both Jews who write about contemporary Judaism (if you’re not already reading Jay’s Both/And, you really should). Also, It was sponsored by Harvard’s Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law. But this just begs the question: Why is a program on Jewish law interested in psychedelics at all?

The answer, I came to understand, is that Jews are really into psychedelics.¹ I don’t know that this is the sort of thing that has yet shown up in any survey data (though if you’re Jewish you should take this Emory survey to help resolve that, even if you’ve never taken a psychedelic in your life), but it was glaringly obvious in the room. This came across not just in the number of Jewish voices, but in the unique way that those voices were engaging in the conversation. In fact, it quickly became clear that psychedelic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are in very different developmental places.

Muslim psychedelia is just emerging

Let’s start with Islam. In his introduction, Noah Feldman noted that Islamic writings on consciousness alteration are particularly advanced, both because of centuries of Sufi literature and because Muslims have been writing about wine and cannabis since the medieval period (as described in depth by the late Shahab Ahmed).

But—as was repeatedly proven throughout the conference—heritage isn’t destiny, and religions can be quite discontinuous with their own pasts. The sole Muslim panel painted a picture of a community that is only just coming to understand itself, and that has only come together to talk Muslim psychedelia a handful of times.

This doesn’t mean Muslims are averse to psychedelics; one panelist, Fayzan Rab, noted that Muslim attitudes to these substances are in line with America as a whole (though another speaker mentioned being shunned from a Muslim student association after revealing her psychedelic use). Muslims consume psychedelics in all sorts of non-Muslim settings; there are informal affinity groups for Muslim psychedelic users.

But as for how this fits into Islam itself? That’s underdeveloped. Muslim jurists (save for one ayatollah) have not said much one way or the other about the permissibility of these substances, leaving Muslim laity to sort out the religious significance of their journeys (and the possibility of explicitly Muslim ceremonies) all on their own.

I don’t know that I have a great theory for why this is the case. Perhaps it’s because American Muslims mostly came to this country more recently and still see religious authority as coming from overseas. Perhaps it’s because observant Muslims and observant Jews tend to have very different relationships with their respective legal systems. Maybe the ban on wine intoxication is an obstacle.

Whatever the reason, it’s clear that the conversation is at an early stage. As one panelist remarked, “There are a lot of rabbis here!” while wondering what it would take for Muslim leaders to show up in similar numbers.

Christian psychedelia is walking a tightrope

When it comes to psychedelics, America’s most popular religion is significantly more developed—and significantly more divided.

In terms of history, the field already has some heft. Rev. Jaime Clark-Soles noted that “non-ordinary states of consciousness” can be found in the Bible, and the book of Joel describes mass prophesying. Both Sharday Mosurinjohn and Christian Greer reviewed attempts to locate psychedelics in the Christian past, while ultimately criticizing these historical expeditions as misguided (as you’ll see below, I tend to agree).

What Christian psychedelic use looks like today was not entirely clear, but it is clearly developing. Organizations like Ligare exist to organize nascent Christian use, and many books on Christian and psychedelics have been published. Several speakers raised the possibility of introducing psychedelics into church services; one even suggested that the forty days of Lent could be a natural preparation period for an Easter psilocybin experience, followed by fifty days of integration, which would bring you to Pentecost.

But it was hard to escape the impression that Christian psychedelia, too, is quietly fighting for acceptance against fierce and well-ingrained anti-drug sentiment. Tim McMahan-King, a member of the Episcopal church, noted that many in his community see drugs as “intrinsically evil” and are opposed to acceptance of any sort, including supervised injection sites. (This perception, he noted, is very much tied to America’s opioid crisis.) Speaking with ash on his forehead, Bryan McCarthy acknowledged that Catholics and some Protestant denominations are explicitly opposed to drugs, and pondered whether some acceptance might nonetheless be shoehorned in, even at the level of toleration, perhaps as a medical exception.

The Catholic catechism says no to drugs, but how big is the “therapeutic” exception? (source)

Of course, most Christian leaders—like most Jewish and Muslim leaders—don’t have much to say about psychedelics at all. Ron Cole-Turner, author of a new book on Christianity and psychedelics, cautioned that this quiet disinterest could quickly turn into a backlash if people attempted to integrate psychedelics too directly into Christian worship, most especially into the sacraments. Maybe churches will host psychedelic ceremonies—but, to paraphrase him, they’d be better off doing it in a church basement on a Tuesday night than in the sanctuary on a Sunday (it sounds like this is already happening).

The rose window above the altar of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel, site of a famous experiment in religious psychedelia. (source)

Now, this clearly isn’t the whole story—and, as Christian Greer noted, it neatly ignores Christian-inflected Native American churches that have been using psychedelics for centuries. It’s hard for me to assess the entirety of Christian psychedelia on the basis of a single conference; American Christianity is huge and varied. My impression, however, is that psychedelic use in Christian contexts remains a marginal phenomenon that is vibrant and growing but will remain countercultural for the foreseeable future.

Jewish psychedelia is post-legal

Jews like talking about law. They like arguing about law. They like bemoaning the intractability of law. There are many Jews for whom discussions about halakhah (Jewish law) is the centerpiece of their religious existence.

Because of this, you’d think that the Jewish speakers at this convening would focus on Jewish law. The Muslims talked about Muslim jurists. The Christians talked about church policy. The panels on RFRA and indigenous churches talked about federal and state law. The conference was hosted by a law school. It was funded by a program on Jewish and Israeli law, and organized by two Jewish lawyers.

And yet: Jewish law was absent.

Profoundly. Deafeningly.

At first, I was confused by this. I work on Jewish responses to technology, and law is always quick to make an appearance. It’s a useful frame because it’s normative and because Jewish day school education is oriented towards legal texts, meaning it’s a familiar language. It’s so normal that you sometimes need to remind people that it’s only one lens for dealing with contemporary problems.

Jews could engage with psychedelics through the framework of law; they just don’t. Despite the fact that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, and other major Orthodox luminaries long ago condemned drug use, the Jewish psychedelic community does not appear all that interested in proving that it has a legal right to exist. It simply is—and it’s growing fast.

Why might this be? I have a few theories.

1. Psychedelic use is already a counter-cultural and sometimes illegal act; as a result, the community self-selects for people who don’t have hangups about law.

2. While rabbis in the 1960s and 1970s did condemn drug use, they mostly left enforcement and “say no to drugs” rhetoric to the state; as a result, aversion to drugs was never internalized as a Jewish value. When the state started changing its mind, Jewish culture didn’t stand in the way of increased use.

3. The widespread use of alcohol in recreational, quasi-ritual, and ritual² Jewish spaces made it much easier to accept both cannabis and other drug use.

I don’t know which of these theories is correct, but the bottom line is that the community of Jewish psychedelic users is growing and diversifying without the question of legality in front of mind.

(Of course, Jewish psychedelic users care about American law, and this will have important implications for how it organizes, as I’ll discuss at the end.)

So: if the Jewish psychedelic conversation isn’t about law, what’s it about?

Psychedelic Judaism has plenty of space to discover itself

The biggest benefit of being post-legal is that psychedelic Judaism has more freedom to discover itself.

When discussions of psychedelics are shaped by the threat that somebody will tell you you’re breaking the law, your primary goal becomes legitimizing your activities. Within the American legal system, this means arguing that your psychedelic use is part of your religion—and it’s even better if you can place it within a specific religious ritual.

Alternatively, you could argue that psychedelics have therapeutic value. This tactic was very important in spreading cannabis legalization; there have been (so far unsuccessful) attempts to get the FDA to permit MDMA as a PTSD treatment; and it’s rhetorically useful within religious legal systems (see the section on Christianity above).

Now, these arguments for religious or therapeutic use might be entirely sincere, but that doesn’t mean they’re descriptive of all the ways that a religion values psychedelics. Furthermore, the very need to make these arguments distorts the organic processes by which religious individuals decide that psychedelics have a place in their religion. The law doesn’t have patience for a religious community developing new practices. Either it has a relationship with mushrooms or it doesn’t.

The four meanings of “psychedelic Jewish history”

Judaism, if we’re being honest, doesn’t have a relationship with mushrooms. There are, however, a lot of Jews who have taken mushrooms (and LSD, and Syrian rue, and MDMA, and and and) and they understand that experience to carry meaning for their Jewish selves.

This, finally, is the core of psychedelic Judaism. Its development is centered around a single question: are psychedelic experiences Jewish—and if not, can we expand Judaism to include them?

There have been times when Jews have attempted to respond to this question by turning to historical evidence. An altar at Tel Arad was recently discovered to contain cannabis. Perhaps, if we squint, we can recover an ancient Israelite tradition of psychoactive use.

This is ancient Israeli cannabis. Should we care?

I really dislike this approach. The desire to catch your dead ancestors tripping has always struck me as a defensive tactic that projects a lack of confidence in the living. Hinging the validity of an emergent Jewish movement on questionable ancient evidence seems wrong; ultimately, psychedelic Judaism is meaningful because Jews are doing psychedelics Jewishly, ancient evidence or no.

But history has another use. 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).

I like the second and third mode. Neither offends my historian’s brain because they’re ultimately not about psychedelics, but instead about the states which psychedelics induce. Focusing on the states seems like a healthier move, especially given that psychedelics aren’t for everyone. It also makes for an easier bridge between psychedelics and contemplative practices.

Lastly, I’d add that there is a fourth mode: the modern history of Jewish psychedelic use, from the 1950s to the present. Unfortunately, this history is still largely stuck in the minds of the people who lived it, and it represents a major missing piece of modern Jewish history. I’m worried about it getting lost. If you know something about this time and want to tell me, I’m all ears.

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ram Dass. Both psychedelic leaders, both Jewish. Part of a story not fully told. (source)

There is a clear path towards a Jewish psychedelic future

There is a contagious energy around communities that are in the process of discovering their own power.

The Jewish psychedelic community feels like it’s right there, in that sweet spot, and it’s exciting to witness. At a time in Jewish and American history when the subtext of so many communal conversations is the inevitability of decay, psychedelic Judaism stands out like a shining fractal multicolored sun.

I think this is great news. Psychedelics have real benefits for mental health. They help people develop their spiritual lives. They help people confront personal and intergenerational trauma. They can increase openness and empathy. They can make people interested in Torah again. They’re not wonder drugs—don’t trust anyone who believes in psychedelics as a savior—but they’re really powerful. And Judaism is expanding to absorb them, in the process becoming a psychedelic religion. It didn’t need to go this way, but that’s where we’re taking it.

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

I’m probably missing something important, but this is basically it. It’s hard work, but it’s straightforward. Many pieces of this work are already underway; Shefa is very important here. But there’s so much more to do. (If you want to collaborate on any piece of this, or fund any piece of this, get in touch!)

What if psychedelic Judaism isn’t counter-cultural?

Towards the end of the convening, I had an epiphany. Jews, like everyone else, treat psychedelics as a kind of counterculture. It’s hard not to, given the state of American law.

But what if psychedelic Judaism keeps growing and it simply doesn’t meet internal resistance? What if the excitement isn’t tempered by anything? What if psychedelic Judaism stops being counter-culture and simply becomes…culture?

The truth is: that’s what I want. I don’t want psychedelic Judaism to become its own denomination; I want it to simply be an accepted part of Jewish practice, available to those who want it but with appropriate safety protocols and strong rhetoric around the dangers of addiction and solipsism. From everything I have seen, I think Judaism can get there. For once, the wind is at our backs.

There is so much more to say; I haven’t spent much time explaining what psychedelic Judaism looks like, or what makes it valuable. I’ll save that for another post. In the meantime: tell me what I got wrong and tell me what I missed. I’ll address it next time.

1. The advanced state of psychedelic Judaism is particularly notable given that there aren’t so many Jews. Religious innovations are more likely to succeed in larger religious populations; if only 1% of followers are going to try something radically new, you really benefit by starting with a larger population. You’re more likely to reach critical mass that way. That psychedelic Judaism has reached critical mass speaks to its popularity.

2. Quasi-ritual = kiddush club, ritual = kiddush.