Recreational Marijuana Use in Judaism - Parashat Shemini

Now, we did a show about a year ago in New York about drugs, the drug addictions in the world. What is it what's allowed, what's not allowed? How there's a very big confusion uh amongst society today of what's good and what's bad for you. And how the the line is getting blurrier and blurrier. Well, just because let's say for example uh marijuana has medical benefits, people assume that it's allowed to do it for recreationally. No one is saying that the medical benefits is forbidden. If something has medical benefits and you need it cuz you are sick you have AIDS, you have cancer by me now, you have a back aches, you have I don't know you have some type of I understand. Listen, the Torah understands. Torah says Hashem gave us the rules for what? To live by them. To live. Why? Use these rules in order to live. Which means that if something is good for your health, do it. No problem. For people take Torah, they take one word from the Torah, they add a bunch of garbage to it and say, "Oh, this is from the Torah." No, no. This is from you. This is your venom. You used one the the Torah has one word, you used 5,000 words. You're saying, "No, but it says and. It says and in the Torah. It says and over here and there. It's the same thing." What same thing? Would you do the same thing if you were a in the stock market business? You were putting a prospectus together for a new initial public offering. For a new company coming out. Oh, we have a brand new product. What's the brand new product? And wait a minute. Hey, sir, sir, sir. Hey, hey, hold on a second. You just stole the patent from Coca-Cola. No, no, no. We have something different. What? Look at our paragraph. It's the same thing as Coca-Cola. Yeah, right. But we have the word and. We have the word and in ours, so it's different. Something wrong with you? You go to jail for such things. So, people manipulate and pervert the truth. So when it comes to the Torah there's only a single version of the truth. Of course, there's multiple opinions in certain things, but they're both true. If they follow the rules. The Torah says if we follow the yetzer hara we're bound to eventually worship an idol. Why? Because that's the furthest from the truth. That's the furthest from Hashem. It's the furthest place from Hashem. If you see the first verse in the Torah bereishit bara Elohim In the beginning Hashem created. The last letter of each one of those words bereishit tav bara alef Elohim mem If you take alef, mem and tav, what do you spell? emet What's emet? Emet is the signature of Hashem. The signature of Hashem. So now, rabotai yekarim Hashem says there's a single truth. If you follow the yetzer hara because of your anger, eventually you are going to become an idolater. Now, how do we connect it to drugs? Rav Moshe Feinstein alav hashalom said that a person that uses marijuana recreationally for fun i.e. for fun he likes it. He listened to Dr. Zuta. He listened to Dr. Zuta that said before you learn Torah, smoke some drugs. Smoke some marijuana, it makes you feel good. He listened to uh all of these people that uh use their venom to teach. And he says you could draw you could smoke drugs. You're doing it if you don't Again, if it's medical, you're a different story. We're talking about recreational. Rav Moshe Feinstein said even if you're using it for medical purposes even if you're using it for medical purposes, if the medicine alters your state of mind like marijuana does, you're only allowed to use it if it's the only option. If there's another option that does not alter your state of mind like an Advil pill or something like that then you have to use that. You cannot use marijuana. Yeah, but I like it better. That's too bad. Too bad you like it better. Of course, you like it better. You want to get high. But now if you use if you don't follow da Torah, you don't follow the opinion of the Torah and you go smoke marijuana recreationally. We're not even talking about cocaine and heroin. That's a cal vachomer. Needless to say. We're talking or or or painkillers if you have pain, you need painkillers, use painkillers. But if you don't have pain, you use painkillers, you're a drug addict. You're a junkie. So now, what does it mean to be a junkie in Torah? Junkie means according to Rav Moshe Feinstein, you have decided to remove your mind. You You have decided to intentionally make yourself a drunk, a shoteh. And a shoteh is a person that's pasul from mitzvot. He's not allowed He can't do mitzvot. Someone that's a shoteh someone that's a drunk is not allowed to pray to Hashem. Can't come to beis knesset and pray to Hashem. If you're drunk, not allowed to pray to Hashem when you're drunk. How do we know? Two of the holiest people in history the two sons of Aaron HaCohen Nadav and Avihu Moshe Rabbeinu himself said, "I think they're bigger than me and you, Aaron." I think they're bigger than you. Me and you together. Nadav and Avihu. They went to kodesh kodashim right after they had a little sip, a little l'chaim. What did Hashem do? He killed both of them. Two sons of Aaron HaCohen. Aaron HaCohen. They saw They saw the words of God. They heard God. They were prophets. They were kohanim. They had a little l'chaim, went to kodesh kodashim, Hashem killed them. Needless to say, we're not allowed to have a l'chaim shot of arak before we go do mincha. Like some people do this. I don't know why. I don't know why the rabbis don't say anything. In some of these battei knesset, they have liquor in the actual shul and people drink in the shul right before they pray, during the prayer. Hashem yerachem. You don't realize you're bringing a death penalty to yourself. A death penalty. And then people get surprised, "Oh, I don't know why I got cancer." "Oh, I don't know why I got an accident on the way home." You're lucky you're alive, to say the story. So now when a person is a shoteh, when a person drinks alcohol or he smokes marijuana or he takes painkillers or whatever other drug recreationally Rav Moshe Feinstein says he is now a shoteh, which is pasul from mitzvot. He's not allowed to fulfill mitzvot at that point. Now, since he did it intentionally he is in the same madreiga, he's in the same level as a ben sorer u'moreh. What's a ben sorer u'moreh? Ben sorer u'moreh is the wayward son that wants to eat too much and drink too much and do all types of bad things to go against his parents. And the Torah says him, we kill him. We kill him. Well, he's only a kid though. He's not even 18. He's a little kid. He's 12 years old. Yeah, yeah, we kill him. What do you mean you kill him? Why? He says it's better to kill him while he's still a kid and his his sins are small because if he's already going against his own parents at this age he's drinking, he's doing drugs, he's doing all these things already at this age it's only a matter of time before he does it against Hashem. It's better to kill him now. Kill him while he still has some merit in shamayim, maybe he'll come back as a reincarnation and become a better person. Now, in practical in in reality, the chazal says this never actually happened. But it is a rule in our Torah, which means that it would have happened if the if the opportunity uh took place. The point being, rabotai, is the rule apparently was taught to us not for the kid 3,000 years ago, but to us. How? Rav Moshe Feinstein says, "If you smoke drugs, you are that kid." Yeah, but I'm 25. Exactly. Yeah, but I'm 50. Exactly. You are that kid that if the Sanhedrin were there, they'd kill you on the spot for smoking marijuana. They'd kill you on the spot for having a l'chaim right before you went to mincha. So now, how did this disconnect? That the ben sorer u'moreh, one of the main things they had certain character traits that were horrible. One of the main things is that the parents brought him to the to the rabbis. Why? Because he's an angry person. He doesn't want to listen to them. And the rabbi said, "If he's this angry at this age, we have to kill him. He's going to get much worse." He's going to go against Hashem. He's going to become an idol worshiper. Ah, that's why I understand. That's what the Gemara is talking about. If you get angry, eventually you're going to become an idol worshiper. If you get angry, you're going to become an idol worshiper. So, how do we connect it to marijuana today? I said to people, "Listen, look at what the Gemara is telling us 2,000 years ago." "If you start with something small, you're going to get to something much bigger." Marijuana, I don't have I don't need to tell anybody how marijuana is usually the first drug every crackhead started with. Every junkie started with marijuana. No one starts with crack, at least not typical. No junkie starts with it. Trust me, I know a bunch of them. I tried to help a lot of them. And many of them succeeded. I know I know a lot about this. It's not I'm not saying saying things out of opinion. I'm telling you actual reality. So now the Torah tells us it's going to become an idol worshiper. So how? Look at what's happening today. Every single person that goes into drugs and becomes addicted, unfortunately, he doesn't intend to to become addicted. No one intends to become addicted, but he falls into it. Miskin has a yetzer hara. You feel bad for him. You try to help him. But what happens? What does the Satan do? Satan tells him, "Listen, your addiction your addiction it's a disease. It's not your choice anymore. It's a disease. You're addicted. And addiction you can't get over it. That means you have to continuously get treatment forever." Where do you get treatment? Go to AA. Where is the AA? In a church. What do they do in a church? They worship idols. And that's how marijuana leads to idolatry. Because these AA meetings and being in churches, it's also the number one place of where missionaries hang out. It's their house. Missionaries hang out and steal souls day and night. And that's how the Torah already told us thousands of years ago of how doing something that you think is small eventually lead you to avodah zarah. And people didn't like this. Why didn't they like it? Because they're still crackheads. Because they don't like it. No, no, but AA is also good. I'm not saying it's it's not good. I'm saying the church is bad. If the AA meeting was held at some auditorium or it's held at a at a synagogue or it's held at an office, no problem at all. But that's the problem. It's not in an office. It's not in a synagogue. It's in a church. Where the missionaries hang out. So people don't like to hear this. They don't like to hear this. They want to to to pervert the truth because it doesn't fit their reality. But such is the yetzer hara where one day you agree to be his employee for the day. He says, "No, no, you're full time now. You're full Yeah, I didn't want a full time job." "Sorry, you signed a deal." "Where?" Over there. You don't see? Oh, we signed for you. Don't worry. There's a lot of really cool stuff on our websites, [music] uh new features, uh and uh a lot more projects that are on the way that Hashem will help get closer to Hashem to publicize Hashem's name. [music] And know that he is the one and only God.