Most religions have a concept of the battle between good and evil. An epic conflict between satan and god, doing the right thing versus being a schmuck. The good news, we’re promised, is that good will ultimately prevail; in this world or the next.
Islam has a word for it – jihad, holy war. Fundamentalists use it as an excuse to blow up buses. More liberal interpretations understand it as an “internal struggle”, your war between your good and your bad sides.
Attempts to liberalize Judaism have also required transforming commandments like “erasing the memory of amalek from under the sun” to not mean literal annihilation of a people, but to “destroy the evil that lives within us”.
This attitude is still fucked up, and leads to as much internal emotional damage as full-blown war leaves on a country. Turning a war from a literal one to a metaphorical one, is to transfer violence from one space to another.
The first problem with war, is that good guys die too, either in body or in soul. There is no such thing as waging a war against your “evil inclination” without fostering cold-heartedness or trauma. War gets glorified when it’s for “the right reasons”, but the fact remains that if you spend your time suppressing your “sexual urges” you’ll probably end up suppressing your creativity as well.
The bigger problem with war, is that no side is truly evil. Yes, yes, I know there’s that evil dictator at the top. But there’s also millions of civilians who have done nothing wrong and will lose lives and limbs from mines and carpet bombs. So too internally, all “evil” that lies within is can generally be traced back to unfulfilled core needs, reactions to trauma, and under-developed compassion.
I cannot tell you to end all wars. I know there’s some really important stuff going down in Iraq and you just need to invade. But I can invite you, unequivocally, to end the war inside yourself. That holy war is never holy, and you’re killing all parts of yourself in the process.
Enough kicking yourself in the face to get out of bed in the morning. Enough berating yourself for not having your shit together. Enough forcing yourself to do what you hate doing.
With all due respect to the Jewish Mussar movement (and I have none), I have never seen anyone change through brute force or “willpower”. I’ve seen people crush their psyche to try to be a certain way, with a huge amount of collateral damage.
The ever-present Jewish concept that we have a Yetzer Harah, an “Inclination of Evil”, is a terrible way to go through life. Being free from that alone is enough of a reason to leave religion.
Any change I have ever elicited in myself, or have facilitated in others in my hypnotherapy practice, has always been through peace, not war. Through internal dialogue, seeking to accept and to understand, to contain rather than fight against. Inevitably, unfailingly, the “enemy” was just a part that was trying its best to protect you, and knows no better way to do so.
Something amazing happens when you stop fighting. When you embrace instead of pushing away. When you approach this disconnected part with understanding and acceptance, it dissolves. Literally disappears, melting back into the larger you that is made up of many parts – some which serve you well, some which no longer serve you. It becomes another asset in your toolbox, instead of a gangrened limb that you try to wrap a tourniquet around and chop off.
Blessed art thou God, who gave the rooster knowledge to differentiate between day and night
Every morning, the wakeup ritual was the same. Someone would drag a boom box into the dormitory hallway, and crank out the same Miami Boys song as loudly as they could. “I am grateful to you, everlasting king, that you have restored my soul with much compassion.”
Every morning, with that musical masterpiece blaring, he’d wake up feeling anything but grateful.
Blessed art thou God, that you did not make me a woman
As far as he was concerned, it was much better to be a woman. Woman were not tempted by things like sex. They were not drawn to watching porn after everyone had gone to bed. They did not even need to study Torah day and night to earn their place in The World To Come. They did not need to wake up early to go and pray before The Time of Shema had passed. All they had to do was keep their elbows covered.
Blessed art thou God, that you did not make me a slave
The day would start at 7:30 am. If you were traveling from out of the neighborhood, you might have to wake up as early as 6:00 am to make it on time. He was lucky to live across the street, so he could wake up at 7:29. The day would end at 6, or at 9:30, or at 11, depending on the grade. They had one day off a year – Tisha B’av, when Jews are so sad that they can’t partake in joyous Torah learning. Personally, he didn’t find it particularly joyous the rest of the year, either.
Blessed art thou God, that you did not make me a non-Jew
In The World To Come, the most righteous of gentiles will have the merit of being the dust under are feet, taught the rabbis. Each fringe on your tzitzit will have a dozen non jews holding on to it, clamoring to be allowed to serve you. Every time the Filipino house cleaner would clean his room, she’d break his lego sets. He built himself a loft that was only accessible by a climbing rope, but they somehow still managed to mess up his stuff. One non Jewish servant was more than enough.
Blessed art thou God, who places the land above the water
The school bathrooms were typically flooded with about an inch of water. Assumingly it was urine, but it was usually black after mixing with the mud on people’s feet. Every morning the bathrooms would start out clean, and then be restored to their former pigsty glory in short order. He’d hold his breath and try to ignore the floor whenever he needed to pee. Pooping was best held in until he could go home every recess – he probably pooped in those school bathrooms maybe five times in 12 years.
Blessed art thou God, who strengthens the steps of man
He was always running. Running home to take advantage of every precious moment during which he could read books: Arthur Conan Doyle, C. S. Lewis, Mark Twain. National Geographic. They were portals into different worlds and different times. This was where the real education happened. He’d always overstay his recess, and end up running back to school, late as usual. There was someplace he’d rather be.
Blessed art thou God, who gives sight to the blind
Whenever he was goalie and the ball came his way, he would duck. Better to let in a goal then to have your glasses crushed against your face – permanently bent out of shape and leaving a glasses-shaped imprint on your nose and eye socket. Almost everyone in class had glasses. 95% of Orthodox Jewish men wear them, the highest percentage in the world. Every other store in Geula sold them. But somehow, he was even more blind than most.
Blessed art thou God, who gives strength to the tired
It was like magic. As soon as he’d sit down with his tutors, a wave of exhaustion would wash over him. He could barely keep his eyes open. He’d fight, blinking stupidly, swallowing yawns, doing whatever he could just to stay awake. It was as though he didn’t want to be there. It was as though he didn’t really care what happens when a bull gores a cow who is pregnant and she falls into a pit in the Public Domain. He’d return to his former chipper self as soon as the sessions were over. Maybe that was a clue?
Blessed art thou God, who girds Israel with strength
Yonatan Eitan was not particularly strong, but he’d somehow managed to pin him to the floor. He couldn’t remember how he got there. Chananya Kremer too, enjoyed grabbing him by the hair and dragging him around the school courtyard. If you didn’t see someone beating someone else up during recess, you didn’t live that day to the fullest. Sometimes they’d fight with other schools. Sometimes they’d fight with Arabs. Then Rabbis told them to stop beating up Arabs, so they went back to beating up each other.
Blessed art thou God, who adorns Israel with splendor
From the age of 13, they would wear their Tefillin all day long. They’d study with Tefillin. Pray with Teffillin, beat up Arabs with Tefillin. Even pee with Tefillin on. Your Tefillin are meant to be placed halfway down your bicep, but with a two finger’s space above your elbow. With his tiny arm and adult-sized Tefillin, this requirement defied the laws of physics and left him vexed and paranoid about not fulfilling the obligation properly.
I was young, and I become old, and I never saw a righteous man abandoned, or his children seeking bread
When you have 12 children in two bedroom apartment, the living room serves a dual purpose. They’d have plastic sliding doors that split the room in half, and couches that slid out into triple decker beds. Every Friday he’d go knocking on the neighbor’s doors, collecting funds for the neighborhood charity. There were dozens of families that needed help.
But it was when Passover arrived – the most expensive Jewish holiday – that things were most pronounced. He helped box hundreds of care packages for local families. Great pallets of potatoes would be placed in the streets, and families would come by to haul away sacks by the cartful. All sponsored by generous donors, he was told. Probably rich people from America.
Lord, the soul you have given me is a pure one. You puffed it in me, and you are destined to remove it from me, and to give it back to me in The Future That Will Arrive. And please, don’t bring me to sin or temptation, and force my desires to subjugate to you
If you studied enough, you could avoid death. You’d be righteous, you’d sit with God, and you’d come back during the resurrection of the dead.
But if you didn’t wipe your butt properly, all your study would be worse than naught – it would be a sin.
Play your cards right, and Judaism will allow you to live forever. To worry about your unclean anus for all of eternity.
In 1946, following the holocaust, a highly unusual event occurred, one that involved, for the first time in history, the unification of different sects of Judaism. Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis met together at Steglitz-Zehlendorf in West Berlin; the conference later became known as the Steglitz-Zehlendorf Conference.
The pressing topic at hand: solving The Jewish Problem. Not, as in the anti-Semitic Jewish problem of “how do we get rid of the Jews?” but as in, the problem faced by Jews of “how do we get the hell out of here?”
Jews had been suffering for millennia. It was their specialty. They had conveniently woven suffering into their core philosophy; the hallmark of being the chosen people is apparently being shat on by man and God on a regular basis.
But all, from sidelock festooned Orthodox Rabbi to boob endowed reform “Rabbi” could agree that God had most definitely gone too far with this holocaust thing.
“I mean, a pogrom? Certainly!” Rabbi Moses Feignkrautz famously exclaimed. “A few thousand here and there? By all means. But six million?”
So they joined minds. Brilliant minds, sharpened with years of Talmud study, endless theological debate, and loophole creation skills that could stretch time and space. They joined minds and came up with the ultimate solution.
Working title: The Final Final Solution.
(The 5th Avenue agency of Schwartz, Cohen & Eisenberg were commissioned to develop a catchy permanent name for the project. Most likely an acronym with a J at the beginning.)
The core message of the program went something like this: Fuck This Shit.
To elaborate: it was understood by all that God had created Jews as His Special People in order that they be a Light Unto The Nations. The nations, however, seemed not the least bit interested in Light. Not Germany, with its concentration camps and medical experiments. Not Japan with its atrocities and its medical experiments. Not America with its indifference and its internment camps. Everyone, and I mean everyone, seemed content to live in the Dark.
The core message of the program went something like this: Fuck This Shit.
The Jews had tried it all. They had tried allowing Christians to hyphenate themselves between the words Judeo and Values. They had tried controlling world media through an international conspiracy of old Rabbis. They had tried loving their neighbors as themselves, as long as their neighbors were Jews. All to no avail.
They were done. This world of sorrow and suffering from the moment of birth was showing zero signs of improvement, and God seemed reluctant to do any of the heavy lifting whatsoever. The Jews, at this point, had bigger gefilte fish to fry, and God was welcome assume the wheel of the Tikkun Olam Train Wreck on His own.
The details of the Final Final Solution were genius in their simplicity. There would be no need for mass suicides, forceful extractions of souls before their time, or tearful goodbyes. No. This would be (mostly) painless. On the eighth day of life, during the sacred traditional ceremony when Jewish newborn boy gets his genitals mutilated, the Mohel would simply shift his focus a few inches lower.
Snip snip. More foreskin, less sperm.
More pleasurable sex, less painful reproduction.
The Mohels were sent to continuing education courses focused on newborn vasectomies.
The blessing was slightly modified. “Blessed are you, God, master of the universe, who was too preoccupied somewhere else when we really needed a hand, and who commanded us to mutilate babies. Amen.”
The world took offense, suddenly. Of course they did. So like the world to do that.
“This is exactly what Hitler tried to do!”
Indeed. The Jews realized this. But here were a few key distinctions, honed from centuries of making key distinctions.
Whereas Hitler just tried, we will succeed!
Whereas Hitler tried against our will, we actually will it (newborn baby opinions aside, we never cared for those anyway)
Whereas Hitler attempted our destruction us a ‘fuck you’ to us, we undertake this holy endeavor as a ‘fuck you’ to Hitler.
This last point was the real clincher. No Jew ever missed an opportunity for a good “fuck you”.
It took a few generations. There was no fanfare or smokestacks or mass graves. The Jews continued to amass wealth and control the media until the very end.
And at the very end they left it all to the nations. Knock yourself out, bubales. Buy yourself something nice.
“You know what Olam Habah is?” Explains the Slonimer Rebbe. “Olam Habah is the entire earth covered in dump trucks full of gold. And then stack them on top of each other until you reach the sky.”
That’s a fuckton of gold.
Go get some.
—
“Love me, daddy,” says Michael Friedberg, deftly plucking the strings of his guitar while explaining the finer points of the five levels of pleasure to the students of Intermediate II. “I have already made three kids shomer shabbos this month, another two have just broken up with their non-Jewish girlfriends.”
But Rabbi Weinstein is quick to remind him that it’s a holocaust out there. Has he not noticed that Yechezkel Lutzker’s numbers are way up this month? Maybe he should take up surfing? Secular people eat that shit up, when a rabbi surfs.
He’s said this a thousand times, but it’s worth repeating: “it’s not how much you’ve done, it’s how much you still have left to do.”
By all means, strum harder.
—
“Even in Olam Habah,” explains Rabbi Zilberstein, “you’re gonna look over the white picket fence of your Castle of Splendor and notice that your neighbor, Yankel, has a bigger one with longer towers, thicker moats, and a deeper connection to Hashem. You will be consumed with jealousy. That is what hell is.
By all means, study harder.
—
“Love me, daddy,” says Lisa Brilliant, wrapping up her video about the beauty of Judaism from the perspective of an Empowered Jewish Woman Who Is The Center of Her Home ™. Soccer moms dig empowered Jewish women.
It is no use; Rabbi Weinstein is quick to remind her that although she already had a million views on her videos, there were six million Jews who had died in the holocaust who hadn’t seen it yet.
—
“Oh father, our king, we have sinned before you!” The cantor’s voice cracks artisinally. He knows what he’s doing. He’s a pro. Highest paid and most sought-after cantor around. An hour after everyone else is already breaking their Yom Kippur fast, he’s still going strong. Chew on that, motherfuckers.
And the crowd responds. “Amen, may his great name be blessed, for now and for all the worlds!” Shuki screams with all his might, but still he’s no match for the 324 other boys packed into the room who have perfected their shrieking down to a science. They were born with bigger lungs.
The room smells of sweat and desperate resolutions. How in the hell was he supposed to grab God’s attention?
—
“Love me, daddy,” says Elyakim Blackstein, informing Rabbi Weinstein that he’d raised another four million dollars this week.
But Rabbi Weinstein has been gone for months, his chair vacant at the front of the study hall. Over time, the seat filled with discarded books, which students pulled off the shelves for reference but neglected to return.
Word is, Rabbi Weinstein is away fundraising.
—
Lightning flashes. Thunder booms. The heavens themselves shake, as God reveals himself on a throne comprised of a dark rolling storm clouds. Rain lashes down upon the miserable masses below, their heads craning upwards.
“God, what impressive soles you have,” they wonder in awe.
“The better to ignore you completely with, my dears.”
God passes on, looking forward instead of down.
—
“Love me, daddy,” says Elimelech Kopenschmaltz, waving a report indicating that enrollment at the yeshiva is at an all-time high. If the Nazis kept meticulous records for evil, we must keep meticulous records for good.
Alas, Rabbi Weinstein has been dead for over 10 years.
“On Rosh Hashanah, we pray to be inscribed in the book of life,” explains Rabbi Feigenkrantz. “On Yom Kippur, Hashem seals the deal.”
It was a very narrow window of opportunity that affected the rest of the year, so try to stay inspired. Don’t fuck this up, ok? Rabbi Feigenkrantz goes on to elaborate that those who were less fortunate due to absence of merit, overabundance of sins, not praying hard enough, or not bailing out said imbalanced Merit and Sin Sheet with an influx of charitable cash, might end up in the Book of Death instead.
Rosenberg doesn’t understand what all the hype is about. Death didn’t seem so bad, especially if it spared him another round of Elul, Shofar, Slichot, checking your Etrog for spots, or Rabbi Feigenkrantz’s insufferable speeches.
“There are a lot of ways to go,” elaborates Rabbi Feigenkrantz. “Alot.”
God, in his Creative and Loving wisdom, had come up with fire, water, earthquakes, plagues, and The Disease That Shall Not Be Named, just to name a few. There’s a full review of the subject during a particularly inspiring part of davening, and the cantor traditionally cries at that point. The thinking here was that it was not enough for God to just remove you from this world for your inequities, He had to extract just a bit more atonement before you went.
“There are a lot of ways to go,” elaborates Rabbi Feigenkrantz. “Alot.”
Just as a pomegranate is full of seeds, Rabbi Feigenkrantz was full of metaphors and euphemisms. Bad things were “atonement”. Things you didn’t understand were “Kabbalistic”. Bathrooms were The Room That Did Not Have a Mezuza. Wanting things was The Evil Inclination.
Eskimos have 100 words for snow, Judaism has 613 words for things you want but can’t have. The only thing you can have in this life, even if you don’t want it, is Suffering.
In fact, as far as Rosenberg could tell, threatening someone with a grisly death at the tail end of a grisly life didn’t pack much of a punch. It was like telling a prisoner that at the end of their 80 year sentence they’d have to walk back home on foot.
“Now let’s talk about hell,” says Rabbi Feigenkrantz, making sure he exhausted the entire topic of reward and punishment. This was the time of year for whipping a dead chicken.
Judaism doesn’t believe in eternal damnation. Instead, it believes in 12 months of hell in a world that has no measurable time. It’s more of a spiritual washing machine. (Leading Kabbalist recommend mixing Psalms™ hell softener into your experience for better results and a subtle scent of scorched flesh.) After feeling like shit for a while, you’ll be clean, sparkly, and ready for an eternity spent on God’s benevolent lap.
Of course, if you really fuck up, clarifies Rabbi Feigenkrantz, you’re toast. If you do anything on The List of 48 Random Things That God Hates Extra, like sleeping with a menstruating woman or picking a flower on Saturday when there are no witnesses to get you executed, your soul ceases to exist.
Poof.
Rabbi Feigenkrantz scrunches up his nose and nearsightedly peruses the aforementioned list. It was a good list. Solid. Creative. Comprehensive. Leaving little room for success. By the looks of it, heaven wouldn’t be too overcrowded, which was his biggest fear. He’d get his penthouse overlooking hell, as he had prayed so fervently for.
Rosenberg wants a copy of that list, for his own purposes.
“What’s the point of being alive?” he asks pointedly.
Rabbi Feigenkrantz beams over his thicc plastic eyeglass frames. He was prepared for this question. He was prepared for all questions.
“Great question! The Rabbis asked the exact same thing!”
He opened up his Talmud, The Egg Tractate, and started leafing through it.
“And?” probes Rosenberg.
“And what?” Rabbi Feigenkrantz looks up, annoyed.
“And what did they conclude?”
“Who?”
“The Rabbis.”
“Ah, The Rabbis!” says Rabbi Feigenkrantz, instructing the class to turn to Daf 32b, three lines from the bottom.
“They actually disagreed on the matter. Some said it was worth being born, some said it was not. But both are the ever-living word of God.”
Psychedelics have played a key part in my growth and healing past traumas.
When I have spoken about them in the past, more people have asked me about my experiences, and I finally sat down to complied a rough overview of my own journey. Along the way, I tried to sprinkle in some insights which others might find helpful in their own experiments.
First, What Didn’t Work
Me and weed never got along well. First I thought it was my inability to smoke at all. Then I blamed the nicotine. I’d just get nauseous, which is exactly what weed is not supposed to do.
So I bypassed the whole thing and tried edibles, and it was on them that I had my worst trip of all – vomiting, fearing my impending death while feeling like I wasn’t ready to die yet (not sure why), and shitting myself to top it all off.
I moved on and don’t plan on looking back.
Update: I’ve actually healed my relationship with Cannabis through ironically, taking a shitton of it at once while under the supervision of a virtual trip sitter. At this point I really appreciate the effects of this substance, I find it relaxing and it deeply connects me to my body and sexuality.
Alcohol, that socially endorsed drug that Orthodox Judaism feels is totally fine to get 13 years olds blackout drunk on once a year, is highly overrated.
As a friend of mine aptly said, “Getting drunk is borrowing happiness from the future”.
The crowning jewel of that experience was getting way too drunk on a pub crawl of one during my last weeks in Israel. I woke up feeling terrible the next day, but refused to throw up, because I hate throwing up.
I vowed to never get that drunk again, and unlike most resolutions of this nature, I’ve actually stuck to it for the last four years.
The first shroom trip
For me, redemption has come through psychedelics and MDMA, which is not technically a psychedelic.
It started with Shrooms, Psylosybin. I was very anxious before my trip, I was worried about all those “bad trips” I had heard about. In my mind, a bad trip looked like a nightmare that you can’t wake up from.
But I had a skilled guide, who conveyed his own comfort and expertise in every moment leading up to, and during, the experience, and this made all the difference.
Experienced trippers often talk about Set and Setting – you should be in a space that is calm and where you have control, with nature being a great choice; and you should be in a positive mindset. This sets the tone for your whole trip.
People tripping in a party, surrounded by strangers, are setting themselves up for a much risker situation with a myriad of variables they can’t control, a perfect place for paranoia to sneak in and take over.
My first trip was planned for me to a T. A series of curated playlists had been planned for weeks, for three stages of a trip – liftoff, the peak, and the comedown. The music you choose to listen to can have a big impact on the type of trip you have.
I mostly fasted that day, just eating some fruit and juice. The trip was planned for sunset, an inspiring time of day, overlooking a city park from a Jerusalem rooftop.
My guide carefully weighed my dose for me, calculated based off my experience level and body weight. He himself took a larger dose, consuming most of it immediately and leaving some to take later as a “boost” to keep his trip going longer.
We set an intention for the experience – I wanted to discover new things about myself. We ate the shrooms, which don’t taste that great and which can chew on for a long time. And then I meditated for a bit to get into a good mindset.
The whispering grass
The ensuing experience is one of the most memorable of my life. Music never sounded so good. It takes you on a journey, tells you a story. If you’re tripping with another person, you can feel like you’re on a shared journey with them, simultaneously riding with them while also adding your own personal flair.
At some point we went down to the park, carrying our speaker with us. I have never seen grass that green, a neon glow in the moonlight that whispered things to me – things I did not understand, and also understood perfectly.
At time, fears emerged as well. But I let those become part of the experience. I trusted the music to take me to the next stage. This is all part of the journey. This too shall pass. And indeed it does. The ups and downs are all just part of the experience.
I was hooked, but still afraid to trip on my own. It took several more trips, first with others, then by myself, to get comfortable and more casual with the experience. I used to designate 48 hours to a trip, going camping deep in nature or to some rural Airbnbn. Now I can do it with just a few hours to spare during a workweek.
I marvel at the experience you can get for $9 worth of shrooms and a pair of headphones – why fly to another country or buy tickets to a concert, when you can travel to another dimension without leaving your couch?
Recently, I have been experimenting with micro dosing, taking tiny amounts of shrooms every few days. It’s hard to pinpoint, but it does seem to be making a difference – taking the edge off my anxiety, and making the day just a bit brighter and more energized.
I limit myself to tripping about once a month, so as not to build too much of a psychological of physiological dependency. Instead of making it purely recreational, I try to include have a personal growth component as well – escape to a more creative place, or uncover subconscious motivations and patterns I wasn’t aware of. I invite the shrooms to show me something about myself I wasn’t aware of, to share an insight with me, and they generally deliver.
Acid
Next up, Acid. I marvel how such a tiny tiny piece of paper with a drop of LSD in it can take you that far into space.
To me acid is almost clinical. If shrooms are art, acid is science. If shrooms take you on an exciting jeep ride through space, twisting and turning and exploring, acid is like strapping yourself to a rocket and watching the trip unfold from the cockpit.
Whereas with shrooms there’s always the organic variance and concern over how much you took and how potent they are, acid offers a guarantee. You will trip for 10 hours, so no need to worry about that part. It makes for a more controlled experience, but also, in my experience, a more intense one.
My first trip on acid was great. The fucking music. I listened to a bunch of psychedelic rock, to fulfill the stereotype, and it was awesome. The visual hallucinations were amazing. I was looking out a window into a woods, but I was also staring through a space portal into fractals of a distant galaxy.
My second acid trip was my first “bad trip”, or as some prefer to call it, “difficult trip”. It wasn’t what I expected, and that took me by surprise. I expected nightmares, demons emerging from the walls and swallowing me whole. No. Instead, I just felt the worse I had ever felt, emotionally. I was beyond worthless. I was so flat I had no height whatsoever, no justification for existing. And the thing with trips is your sense of time is warped, so you as far as you’re concerned, you’re gonna keep feeling this way forever. Not fun.
It took me coming out of the trip to realize that that was just a bad trip, and now, moving forward, I hope to be better prepared for that flavor of “bad” as well, as unpleasant as it might still prove to be. I have no regrets about that experience, and am glad I had it. It still is a unique experience that pushed the envelope of my humanity and perception of self. It’s as if I emerged stronger and more resilient – I have been to hell and back, you cannot scare me.
That said, for now, I’ve taken a step back from acid. I prefer a more human, organic experience, which I find shrooms provide for me.
MDMA
I have kept the best for last.
I went into my first MDMA (aka M, Molly, Ecstasy, “Rolling”) experience knowing of its potential to heal trauma and the clinical research that had been done in that regard. I had the official playlist from the MAPS institute playing in my ears.
Holy shit. If there is anything close to a magic wand, a mirror to hold up to your life and see reality in its truest form, to me that would be M. The clouds part, and you get absolute clarity on exactly who you are and where you stand in the world.
To me that meant validating just how much shit I had been through in my life. How many difficult situations I was still coping with every day. And within that context, every part of my life made perfect sense. All my flaws were acceptable. All my mistakes, understandable. This, to me, is the foundation of compassion: understanding that it could not have been any other way. And by it I mean everything that ever happened to, or was done by, you or anyone else. Everything just is.
It gives you the strength to power through your darkest experiences. It puts them within a context of a larger being that is you – you are so much bigger than even the worst thing that has ever happened to you.
So you power through it, and it melts away. It’s extremely painful, but you have what it takes, and on the other side you feel cleansed. You purge it, you process it, and you do it completely because for once, there is nothing to fear.
In this place, you can begin to forgive yourself. To understand and forgive others. You find the strength to deal with your darkest memories – one’s you’ve needed to completely suppress just to get through the day.So you can let it rise up and run its course. Instead of sitting there like an immobile impasse, it dissolves into the bigger you.
It’s not gone, it’s integrated.
This is why MDMA is so helpful for healing trauma.
It gives you a break from being in your problem to rising above it.
It shuts down the negative self-talk long enough for you to really accept yourself, shit and all.
I have always had crazy ideas on M, grandiose plans that are guaranteed to succeed, as far as my euphoric mind is concerned. I have since learned to distinguish between the actual ideas, which are often outlandish, and the theme that lies behind them, like an interpretation of a dream.
Do I actually have the ability to be more assertive? To drastically change my circumstances? To transform my life with a few key decisions? Great. Feel the core power of that realization and let that transform you. You don’t actually need to start your own non-profit just yet.
MDMA works by causing a major dopamine dump in your brain. So the next day you may feel hung-over, or extra down. If you’ve processed a ton of shit, you might feel drained for a few days. And research indicates that it is not healthy for your brain. There are several supplements you can take to help with side effects, like 5-HTP for brain health and mood, and Magnesium Citrate for the teeth grinding that often accompanies a trip.
Still, for health reasons, I limit my trips to once every six months, eagerly looking forward to them as turbo-charged leaps in my personal growth journey. In between, I suffice myself with shroom trips, although I always miss that feeling of traumas and limiting beliefs literally melting away.
Bringing it to others
Through my own personal experience of healing past traumas with MDMA, I have become extremely passionate about the efforts of organizations like MAPS to legalize MDMA or psilocybin for clinical applications. I cannot believe that people can easily drink themselves to death but aren’t allowed to experience the life-altering insights of a psychedelic trip.
Of course, much of this stems from the human tendency to take good things and ruin them. Partying on MDMA feels sacrilegious to me, compared to what they could accomplish in a more contemplative setting. It is a crime against humanity to ban it, and it was humanity’s crime to abuse it.
People frequently ask me how they can experience these experiences themselves. Unfortunately MAPS seems to only conducting trials with clinical PTSD cases, the usual trifling problems we face on a day to day don’t count for enough. So we’re forced to replicate these experiences alone. My general advice is to go slowly, maybe start with smaller doses of shrooms, surround yourself with supportive and more experience guides, and invest in yourself outside of the substance you’re consuming.
Also make sure you’re getting your supply from reputable sources. MDMA in particular can be mixed with all sorts of shit. You can buy testing kits to test a small sample of your batch, and if it passes, you can generally assume that the entire batch is ok.
This isn’t a magic bullet. To the degree that you have a meditation practice, for example, andare capable of experience unpleasant sensations in your body without reacting, you’ll be better able to cope with difficult emotions or memories that might arise during a trip. You’ll be able to observe them let them pass, instead of letting them consume you or take you over.
I try to approach these substances with the respect and gratitude that is becoming of gifts that have changed my life.
I have since also explored Ayahuasca, here is an article I have written about that experience.
If one man can kill six million Jews, then one man can save six million Jews.
That mantra, in a nutshell, summarizes the core mission of Aish Hatorah, quoted ad nauseum in conversation and propaganda posters. It also conveniently compares Noach Weinberg to Hitler, so that I don’t have to actually do so. I’m just following orders.
I was raised amidst a spiritual holocaust. Hitler had only killed people’s bodies. Assimilation was killing their souls. It was obvious then, what my purpose in life was. I was to save the Jewish people, under the guidance and leadership of Der Fuhrer.
Other causes are cute. You wanna save the whales? Sure. But, save a non-Jew and a non-Jew is saved. Save a Jew and you’ve saved the next Einstein. We’re here to be a light unto the nations. We thought the world humanity! Ethics! Morality! Abraham taught the world how to be a mensch; we’re an entire people devoted to be role models – we’re Ubermenches!
The metaphor was graphic, insidious, and constantly repeated during my years in the Aish-Jugend kiruv factory. Brainwashing children wasn’t their main focus; Aish never really got the whole child-raising thing down. But I was around for the endless speeches, talks, and articles espousing the dire need of those dying around me.
But what if that wasn’t me? What if I was shy, or didn’t share the vision, or didn’t feel I had what it took?
First of all, fuck you.
Do you, or do you not want to fight for the Vaterland? Have you heard of Meir Schuster? All debates about capability dies when you invoke the Meir Schuster trump card, the way all online debates go south the moment you mention Hitler. Because if shy, timid, can’t-make-eye-contact Meir Schuster made a career out of dragging people away from the Western wall to the nearest yeshiva, so can you.
If he managed to crush his own psyche beneath the weight of the enormity of this responsibility, you can too. And he did it by any means necessary, we recall with a chuckle. Remember that one time he told someone he’d take him to a bathroom, but really brought him to Reb Noach’s office for a 20 minute brainwashing session? What a cheeky bugger! What’s a little lie to save a person’s soul?
Second, you don’t necessarily have to do “front line kiruv”, teaching classes or maneuvering on campuses in your suave polo shirt. We also need people to organize the tape library. Everyone can be part of the mission. An army also needs cooks! Even though, yeah, the real heroes are the guitar playing, tear jerking, charismatic superstars who are coming soon to an event near you.
Don’t even think of just living a simple life. Finding happiness in the day to day, putting one foot in front of the other. Reb Noach would pound his fist on the table during one of his many fiery speeches and call those people zombies. The walking dead. Question your beliefs! And then adopt ours!
Aish Hatorah appropriated meaning itself, setting the standard so high that everything else became bland and colorless. If you weren’t a medic bandaging spiritual wounds, why were you even alive, you fucking fuck? I hope you’re at least having some Shabbos guests over on the weekends!
We had the secret of happiness and meaning in the Torah, and by God we’d either spread that fire through the entire world, or die trying. We were creating a revolution. We were ushering a new era. Mashiach would come and rebuild the 3rd temple and his Reich would last for 1,000 years, or until the world ended, whichever was sooner.
Charedi society never held much threat. They are so backwards, so primitive, that it’s positively quaint. Walk down Meah Shearim and you’ve stepped back into 1880s Poland. You’ve got that old Jewish handwriting. Bare, antiquated walls. Flickering fluorescent bulbs and weird clothes and Yiddish. People who’ve never seen a TV before freaking out about stupid shit. Cool stuff bro, let me take a photo and post it to Instagram in black and white.
Aish was far more insidious. To use a hypnosis term, it fractionated, bringing you back and forth repeatedly between modern western life and “ancient Jewish wisdom”. It blurred the lines, making you feel like it was possible use the internet (aish.com, anyone?) and be a good Jew all at the same time.
It whitewashed all the parts that needed whitewashing – sexism (women have a role, it’s just different!), genocide (it’s an internal struggle against your evil inclination!), homophobia (there’s no prohibition against being gay, you’re just not allowed to act on it!). Ideas were simplified and enumerated into tasty self-help morsels to rival the click-baitiest Buzzfeed article: “48 Ways to Wisdom”, “7 Principles of Intellectual Clarity”, “6 Tips for a Better Marriage (That Don’t Actually Work)” were yours to be savored and shared.
Most importantly, it sold you on an idea that promised to solve the most basic human anxieties with a flick of a switch. They had the secrets to happiness, to meaning, to ethics and morality. And if only you stuck around to make it from Essentials to Intermediate I, you’d see the light.
They made things beautiful.
Metaphorically: ancient parables were repackaged, pop psychology was appropriated (have you made your gratitude list yet?), eloquent English was used to fuck with your mind.
Physically: knowing that a Meah Shearim ghetto would never fly with the western sensibilities of their victims, they built beautiful buildings, served good food, took people on trips (we gotta get people out of their normal headspace!).
They got a testimonial from Bill Clinton. They installed a fucking glass Chihuly sculpture in the mezzanine of their world center. But did you know it’s a metaphor? Just like water can carve away at rock, so too, the fire of Aish Hatorah can sear your soul until there’s nothing left but charred ash and smoldering guilt.
When Reb Noach died, he left a gaping vacuum where his single-minded obsessiveness and personality-crushing fists had been that none of his children could fill; and his cult-leading figure was no longer there to prop up the myriads of dysfunctions that plagued an institution that was built on guilt, brute force, and the illusion of happiness.
If one man can kill six million Jews, then one man can save six million Jews. And if Orthodox Judaism can be compared to a pogrom, chaotically rampaging through the world and crushing souls of small Cheder boys at random, then Aish is fucking Auschwitz, “saving lives” with all the meticulous methodologies that western technology and resources have to offer.
It’s hard to be compassionate when you’re afraid. And charedim are afraid of everything. Of God, of change, of novelty. Growing up, a healthy dose of compassion would have gone a long way, but there was none to be found. Yiras Shomayim, fear of God, is what it was all about.
Sure, there are also words like Rachamim and Chemla, but those words are devoid of depth, and I have negative associations with their connotation. They imply pity, a sustenance of our pathetic selves by an almighty God who has chosen, with a flick of his benevolent wrist, to grant us another day on earth.
The “I vs. Thou” sentiment was everywhere. It wasn’t about who you were, it was about who you weren’t. You weren’t a goy, you weren’t an arab, you weren’t sfardi, you weren’t dati leumi, you weren’t chassidish, you weren’t chabad. Thank you God, for not making a non-Jew, or a woman.
Aish wasn’t much better. I don’t think it’s possible to truly shove your own religion down someone else’s throat if you have compassion – to others, and more importantly, to yourself. To force gay people to be straight. To push people to cut their hair, wear white shirts, dump their non-Jewish girlfriends. I see how hard Aish rabbis worked themselves, how dissatisfied they were with their progress and successes, and I see no compassion.
The bible itself, at least the Old Testament, which is all I can speak for, is full of brutality. Page 2 starts with a murder, and it’s all downhill from there. What’s the value of reading such things, especially as a seven year old? You’re either horrified, or if, as in my case, you’re made to read those verses over 40 times, desensitized.
Where, amongst all the death and destruction and the parlaying of good behaviors in exchange for less gruesome death, can one find some compassion? The Mishna would like to remind you that if you fuck up when you’re 80, you can undo an lifetime of good deeds – so “don’t believe in yourself until the day you die.”
Do not confuse empathy with compassion. The empathy I experienced most of the time felt like someone had read about it in a book, which they probably had. All about active listening: “I’m sorry you feel that way”, “how does that make you feel?” and “Uh huh”’s galore. You know who else sorry? Canada. And they don’t really give a fuck.
To me empathy is what you say. Compassion is what you don’t. With real compassion, more often than not, you’re lost for words. You are in awe of the human experience manifesting before you, and you acknowledge it with your eyes. Silence is usually your best contribution.
I’ve only discovered compassion recently. I was ambivalent towards the word itself and disparaging of the weakness that those who practice it supposedly displayed. Why the fuck would you possibly accept anything that is not The Right Way To Be, TM? And of course, pointing it towards myself was the hardest. MDMA and processing a shitload of trauma have been huge contributing factors to my progress.
I am grateful to those who have modeled it for me; demonstrating it through personal example and having compassion towards me when I had none for myself.
Because I sure as shit had no clue what it looked like.
“There are no atheists in a foxhole,” Noah Weinberg used to love to say, swiftly eradicating all actual atheists who undoubtedly have existed in foxholes.
That statement further disregards all the individuals who became atheists in foxholes, like the blaspheming Rabbi in Elie Wiesel’s Night.
From the moment I lost my religion, and truthfully, even beforehand, I was jealous of the theists all around me.
In moments of debate, I have conceded that the world is complex enough to imply the possibility of a higher intelligence that Created All The Things.
However, this very argument makes the assumption that there is a humanly comprehensible Plan for Creation that much more absurd.
More laughable still is the presumption that the plan revolves around us, that we could possibly know what it is, or that it involves the order in which we put on our shoes.
I watch as the world goes to shit, and all around me are promises of salvation. Pledge $18 to charity. Pray harder. Write a letter in a scroll. Stop speaking in synagogue, fool. Download an app that practically prays for you.
I have no such comforts at my disposal. Armed with just a Buddhist worldview and meditation, I get to sit for an hour with immeasurable pain, over and over again. I get to stand daily at the edge of the universe and stare intently into the sheer pointlessness of it all. Inviting myself to feel it all as deeply as possible.
Yay, even more pain.
This too shall pass. Not just a nice ring for seminary girls on the way to the Kotel. Everything you ever loved, your children, your parents, toilet paper, will disappear someday. We all die, at some point in our lives. Observing the transient nature of all things might be the antidote to suffering, but it comes by diving headfirst into the pain of existence.
I know that this too shall pass, but goddamit it feels like it will last forever.
I have been accused of becoming an atheist out of a place of comfort-seeking. “You’re just doing it to get laid with a guilt-free conscience”.
I assure you, with social distancing in place, I am getting laid even less than I usually don’t.
Theists get to revel in this being a sign of the End of Days, an indication that the Messiah is parking his donkey in the driveway as we speak (just as he has done during both Gulf wars and a thousand other times before).
Theists bid loved ones farewell, knowing that they are going on to a better place, will be looking down at you from above while advocating to God on your behalf, and will very shortly resurrect again so that we can all eat more cholent by the pool.
Which takes more courage? Constructing meaning out of the meaningless, dismissing death itself as just an illusion? Or letting the pointlessness of all things wash over you and getting out of bed in the morning anyway?
The world is a beautiful place. It’s also downright fucking terrible. I believe no one misses pleasure they never experienced, but we all know what suffering feels like the moment we have to squeeze through a vagina that is a lot smaller than our head. And it’s all downhill from there.
To never exist is to miss out on something you don’t know you’re missing, alongside a boatload of pain. I think I could not-live with that.
The logical, unpopular conclusion to this line of reasoning is, stop having kids. Once they are born, they will quickly get attached enough that they never want to leave this Godforsaken place. Life is an addiction, and you get hooked with your first breath.
But if you asked your unborn child if they’d like to get dragged cruelly out of blissful non-existence, they’d probably reply with the ubiquitous sass that is so common of unborn children, the original generation X: “Nah bro, I’m cool.”
It takes great strength to resist our biological urge to perpetuate the pointless circle of life. A lot of self-control to not succumb to the selfish urge to see more little versions of yourself bumble around on this planet, or worse, take care of you when you’re old.
I made that mistake twice.
Then I put my dick where my mouth is and got a vasectomy.
I had more fun making this than I did in a long time. Something about drawing attention to individual nuances of the bullshit, framed in the context of how interchangeable any of the responses can be with any of the prompts.
Scroll through the options below to create your own pairs, or refresh the page to generate some random combinations. You can download the entire set of cards here for free.
This idea turned into a real life print edition as a result of a successful crowdfunding campaign, which was also featured in Zman Eretz Yisroel and the Yerushalaim Post. This game is in no way affiliated with that other card game, their legal team could not impress this upon me strongly enough, and I am passing that information on to you.
After successfully shipping 150 cards to the original Indigogo backers, we’ll be doing additional print runs in smaller batches. Sign up below to be notified about flash print runs.
What are your favorites? Got any card suggestions of your own?
