Menorah bongs and Talmudic toking: The secret history of Judaism and cannabis – Gothamist

For Eddy Portnoy, it started with a bong. Not just any old bong you can pick up in a local smoke shop, though.

"I saw a photograph online of a really beautiful glass bong in the shape of a menorah," Portnoy told Gothamist. "And I thought to myself, wow, this is really an amazing artifact."

Like many people, Portnoy got into smoking marijuana during college, but his interest in the drug faded away over the years.

"I may still have THC in my system from that time, but it's something that I really only use occasionally now," he said.

But in his current role as the academic advisor and exhibitions curator at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Manhattan, he's always on the lookout for artifacts connected to Jewish material culture.

Something about this menorah bong, made by the company GRAV, lit up his imagination. And since that acquisition, he has spent the last two years researching the somewhat unexplored history of Judaism and cannabis, from Talmudic mentions to religious rituals, from pioneering scientific research to the legalization movement and modern counterculture.

"Through my research, I discovered that Jews have been using cannabis for centuries, and there's a pretty significant history that I think most people are not familiar with at all," he said. "And had I known that in Hebrew school, I might have been a little bit more interested in what was going on."

That research and those artifacts are now the subject of Am Yisrael High: The Story of Jews and Cannabis, a new exhibit at YIVO, located in the Center for Jewish History building near Union Square. It is the institute's first on-site exhibition since COVID began, and it explores the contributions Jews have made in "the field of cannabis" alongside dozens of relics and photos.

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Menorah bongs and Talmudic toking: The secret history of Judaism and cannabis - Gothamist