Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Is Marijuana Kosher for Pessach?

You never know what is out there in the blogosphere:-

Marijuana

...R. Yitzhak Ya'akov Weiss (1902-1989), in Shu't Minhat Yitzhak (vol. 3 no. 138(b)), discusses cannabis on Passover. Specifically, he is dealing with two foods, cannabis and cotton-seed oil, but we will focus on cannabis. Prior to engaging in this discussion we should note that the cannabis plant produces three things: (1) hemp which is fibrous and can be used to make clothing, and was commonly used to make strong rope; (2) hemp seed, which is used in food and in some homeopathic remedies; and (3) as a narcotic referred to as marijuana. [See also Y. Felix, Marot ha-Mishna, Jerusalem: 1977, p. 131; and Z. Amar, "Hashish and the Hashishim in Eretz Yisrael and Syria During the Medieval Period," in Ariel 120 (1997), pp. 277-282.]

R. Weiss first notes that cannabis shouldn't be questionable at all for Passover as Rambam, in the laws of prohibited mixing of seeds, labels cannabis as a vegetable and not kitniyot. However, R. Weiss points out that there is an internal problem with the Rambam, one that many of commentaries on Rambam have dealt with, but not to R. Weiss's satisfaction.

It should be noted that one commentary, Radbaz (1479-1589 or 1463-1573), in his discussion of this issue makes it apparent that he is aware of cannabis's narcotic use. He explains that "in Egypt they eat [smoke?] cannabis and become high and those who do report that it makes them very happy . . . in other places they use cannabis to make clothing like linen."


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3 comments:

Meir said...

Ironically, Aleh Yarok is being more machmir on this issue than anyone.

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=56106

Natan said...

Any word on whether there's a good kosher-for-pesach dairy brownie mix? Some people don't like to smoke...

Generic Cialis said...

I think the marijuana is good for everyone, in fact it has healing for cancer and some others diseases...