This coming weekend marks the celebration of the religious holidays Good Friday, Passover, and Easter, as well as the cultural holiday, 4/20.
For those unfamiliar with 4/20, TIME reports the tradition behind the cannabis-themed holiday as dating back to 1971, when five high school students would gather around 4:20pm to smoke cannabis in Marin County, CA. The number “420” has since spread around many circles as a numerical expression symbolizing cannabis.
Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating the Jewish people’s liberation from slavery in ancient Egypt, begins on April 19th this year and end on April 27th. Many practicing Jews alter their diets and practices in observation of Passover as a way to honor the struggle of their enslaved Jewish ancestors.
The Times of Israel reported on cannabis and Passover back in 2016: “Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, widely considered the leading living ultra-Orthodox halachic authority, ruled that marijuana is kosher for Passover and can be either eaten or smoked over the eight-day Jewish festival.” Watch Rabbi Kanievsky bless a cannabis plant below:
The news of cannabis’s status as kosher for Passover was important to one particular family. The Jewish News of Northern California reported on Claire and Roy Kaufmann, a Jewish couple who hosted a cannabis seder in honor of the holiday. The couple did this as a means of discussion drug policy reform. Roy Kaufmann sees the potential to engage the Jewish community in discussions about cannabis legalization and ending mass incarceration. The article quotes Kauffman: “We are celebrating this Exodus from slavery and bondage to freedom, and at the same time, we’re commemorating the fact that millions of people all over the world are not living in freedom, not when it comes to the choice of what they consume or their own consciousness.”
M2&ME wishes you very happy holidays regardless of what you might be celebrating!
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