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Yoseph Ibn Madraycha

What’s an Elohim? Areyeh Kaplan says it is the perception of G-d, and that is why authorities, judges, idols and Rebbes are all called it. That is Tammuz and that’s Yosef Hatzaddik, right? The tradition of Yosef’s life has him born on the winter solstice and die on the summer one, much like any other traditional killed and ressurected solar deity. The twist on his story is that he is human, but a human with divine powers, that is, to feed people in times of famine, and divine understanding to interpret dreams.

Yosef is one of the few Biblical heroes who never talks to or hears G-d. “Are interpretations not to Elohim? So, let me interpret it” Instead of hearing G-d, he manifests G-d, and speaks his will for him. Grant Morrison talks about a bumper sticker he loved, “Instead of letting God do your thinking, let’s tell him what to think for a change!”

This is why, in Ishbitz cosmology, Rabbinic authority is associated with Yosef, because it has to do with decreeing The Law, instead of listening for The Truth. The crux of Rabbinic law is that it is not in heaven, and that, as far as legislation, the voice of G-d has no authority anymore. This is as opposed to David, who, in Ishbitz, symbolizes the heart of longing for divine Truth, that lives in the Law, and for that revelation which is beyond the law. After a law is broken, he will go back and take responsibility for it, but fear will not stop him from having crossed the boundary in the first place.

Obviously, everyone needs to have a little of both to be in the world and beyond the world. We need both the big G-d, to be beyond, and the little one, to stay alive. The flaw in both Yosef and Tammuz that gets them both killed is what all peak experience leads to: When you are really alive, and shining like the sun, you become oblivious to everybody else. This is the historical danger of the summertime, and why, right in the peak of it, we stop and hold back -- lest we burn ourselves out. Lest we forget to drink enough water, and make sure the kids are taken care of.

The story with Tammuz: His wife gets dragged down to Sheol, and is allowed out only on condition that she find someone else to take her place. Upon leaving the pit to find someone, she sees her husband, and behold! He is just sitting on his throne, oblivious! He did not even notice I was gone! So she drags him down to hell, and keeps him there until his sister talks her into trading places with him every six months, so that there can be life in the world sometimes.

How could she over power him? It must be that he felt so bad when he realized what he’d missed, that he let himself be dragged down. Yosef, is talking all this snap about his brothers, and their sins, and bragging almost about how great he’s gonna be... How could he not notice that his brothers were angry with him, and wanted to kill him?

One midrash claims he did it all on purpose, he knew that Israel was supposed to be enslaved in Egypt, and he wanted to try to take their place. But, maybe he was just oblivious, caught up in the divine rapture of the moment, and honestly couldn’t see anything but his own light. Happens sometimes, and we are all so afraid to be and express too much self in yiddishkite, because we are afraid of re-living that “mistake.” Rebbe’s are only allowed to be because they are so wholey devoted to their community. And Yosef’s re-union with his brothers can only happen once he’s really listening to Yehuda, to someone else’s experience. He comes to power when he starts interpreting other people’s dreams, becomes sensitive to other people’s realities.

It’s nice to be the G-d sometimes, and it’s even nicer to not be anything at all, listening and present, not just in your own fire, but hearing your brother. Which the main work of the three weeks and Ninth of Av1, right? The fixing of Av is hearing, the whole fasting and holding back from music and external joy-making things is to be able to hear, what’s really going on with each other. Because the only reason we ever get invaded or destroyed is because we refuse to hear our enemies, our brothers, our lovers ourselves. Please, do us all a favor... who ever you feel like is attacking you, who ever you feel is trying to take away everything from you, your enemy, who ever is attacking you... listen to them for a second. Fight back too, as needed, but also: listen to what they are really asking for. If Abel had done that to Kain, If Kamtza had done that to bar Kamtza, If Yaakov had done that for Eisav… maybe the war wouldn’t have gone on this long?

Basically, when some one is yelling at you to die, they’re really asking for attention for something else, and they don’t trust anyone to care about that, so they make noise instead. A girl in Brooklyn was telling me tonight, when someone’s running down the street away from someone yelling “rape!” everyone ignores her, but when she’s yelling “fire” people look to check it out. Please, listen to your enemies... do not obey them, but listen for what they are really trying to say. It might just save your life.

And, it might let you see the bigger truth, the realer G-d too. And so, this was my personal challenge with the drugs, as opposed to most peoples challenge against the drugs. Most people, it appears to me, have the problem of being oblivious to the damage they cause by their work, their struggles, their misery. Oblivious because of the work, and oblivious to the impact of their work, until or unless someone brings it to their attention, at which point they often get angry or defensive. I was intentionally oblivious to the impact of my ecstasy, of my religious service, which was always joyous, even in the sadness and heartbreak parts of it, the renunciation and the physical discomforts of dancing longer than I would want to, or waking up earlier than was easy. Joy was the central pillar, and it took a different waking up in order to realize what Goddess my joy compelled me to ignore, and what new hell was waiting for me, once I would consider giving up what gave me my life’s meaning.

For Yosef and Tamuz to be willing to live and die and live again so strongly, their passion must have had to have been for something that seemed so worthwhile: not just for themselves, but for the world they were nursing from, beholden to, and ultimately so much in love with.

Did not R Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk say, after the Baal Shem tov died, when they asked him to be the rebbe, didn’t he say: Why can’t we all just be friends? Isn’t that what the Kotsker was so angry about? That people were depending on him for Torah, instead of just listening to what was being revealed by G-d?”

The only teachers I ever had who really were on the level were the ones who wanted not just to give something over as much as dig something out together... The ones desperate to hear what G-d is trying to tell us.

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Once I expressed a concern to the Rabbi of the Shul I had grown up at: “What if we’ve been using Torah, the way we’ve been learning it to avoid what G-d is trying to tell us?” He huffs and puffs angrily, declares his desire to hit me, and how much he can’t believe the uninhibited gall I have in telling him these things. I calmly insist that i’m still struggling with it all, and have to be honest about what questions and truths reveal themselves to me.

And then I ask: “What did I say or ask that was so objectionable?” I thought I was on potentially secure theological ground! The Talmud disparages getting benefit from Torah, paying people to learn or teach it. Only a certain kind of Gaonic loophole allows a community to do something as strange and ridiculous as “hire” a “Rabbi”!

Which is probably alot of what the Rabbi was reacting to, the implication that the way he makes his money inhibits Torah education instead of encourages it. This might be the crucial unspeakable issue. No one wants to hear that the way they are living is bad, unless they are looking for a way out of it themselves, which any of us living as religious people in this liberated epoch must not. Right?

“What am I saying that’s making you so angry?”

You’re saying that Charedim, religious people are wicked, that they do not do any good for anyone but themselves... Do you have any idea how much Chesed (kindness) is being done secretly by frum people throughout the world?

(It was odd to me that that was what he heard from everything I was saying, leading me to imagine that his internal defenses put a familiar, non-threatening criticism of the religious world in the place of a shtarker, stronger, less typical one.)

“Rabbi, that’s not what I’m saying at all! Of course Yidden (Jews) do so much chesed (kindness)... How else would the way we live be justified?”

“But tell me, do you remember what Rashi says, for why a Chasida isn’t kosher?”

To my surprise, he said, “What are you talking about?” I thought everybody knew this one? But I guess we only remember so much at a time.

“In the chumash, they’re listing the kosher birds and the treyfe ones, right? R Yehoshua ben levi says, what’s the pattern, what makes a bird kosher?
Good birds are kosher
Mean ones are treyfe.
Then what about the Chasida? Her name means kindness! Why isn’t she kosher?”

And R Yehoshua ben Levi answers:

“Why isn’t the Chasida kosher?
Because it only does good for it’s own.”


Yoseph’s’ new book Cannabis Chassidis: The Ancient and Emerging Torah of Drugs (A Memoir) will be in indie bookstores throughout the U.S this April.

1 The big Jewish mourning holiday, commemorating the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and all it symbolizes. Three weeks after the Seventeenth of Tamuz, in the hottest heart of the summer.

i Genesis 41:16