Marijuana Mitzvah? Support Growing for 'Guru of Ganja'

<http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.02.14/news6.html>http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.02.14/news6.html


Marijuana Mitzvah? Support Growing for 'Guru of Ganja'

By Josh Richman
Forward Correspondent

OAKLAND, Calif. — To the federal government, Ed Rosenthal is simply a drug pusher, an enemy combatant in the war on drugs.

To folks like Jane Marcus, however, the Bronx-born Rosenthal is a hero — a Jewish hero, in fact, whose cultivation of marijuana for medicinal purposes qualifies as a life-saving "mitzvah."

Which explains why delegates to last weekend's regional convention here of Reform Judaism's national synagogue body were seen sporting buttons, distributed by Marcus, in support of Rosenthal, who was found guilty on January 31 of felony charges of cultivating marijuana.

The case made national headlines when jurors complained after the trial that they had never been informed that Rosenthal was acting within city and state laws protecting medicinal use of the drug. Jurors said they were duped by a judge's ruling that barred testimony concerning Rosenthal's motivation for cultivating marijuana.

Like those jurors, some members of the Jewish community are urging a retrial for Rosenthal, who described himself to the Forward as an ordinary guy, a child of civil servants who led "a traditional middle-class Jewish life."

"The vast majority of the people we talked to were positive, supportive, shocked, incensed.... We engaged people and they were willing to listen, willing to talk, willing to help," said Jane Marcus of Palo Alto, Calif., who handed out the "Ed Rosenthal — Hero" buttons at the 23rd biennial convention of the Pacific Central West Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, held February 7ñ9 at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, Calif.

In 1999, Marcus and others at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, Calif., launched a "Medical Marijuana as Mitzvah" project to convince faith communities that compassion for the sick and social justice make medicinal marijuana an important issue for all Jews.

"Isn't that what Judaism teaches us?" Marcus asked. "It's all our core values, and it's unfortunate that this issue over the last 30 years has become so politically charged.... It doesn't have the weight of some other issues like the Holocaust, it doesn't have the weight of saving lives like Schindler did, but it is about saving lives."

The Beth Am effort went national. Delegates to the 1999 Women of Reform Judaism national meeting approved a resolution urging sisterhoods nationwide to become informed about and call for more research on medicinal marijuana use, and to urge Congress to reclassify marijuana so it can be prescribed for critically ill patients.

A mutual friend put Marcus in touch with Rosenthal's wife, Jane Klein, earlier this year as his trial approached; along with the buttons and informational fliers, Marcus handed out Klein's open letter to the Jewish community at last weekend's meeting. The letter asks people to urge elected officials to reconcile the conflict between state and federal marijuana laws, and to donate to Rosenthal's legal defense fund.

Klein, whose niece was a bat mitzvah last weekend, notes in her letter that the girl would read the weekly biblical portion titled Terumah (Exodus 25:1-27:19). In that portion, she writes, is a basic tenet of Judaism: the giving of something that is valuable in order to support something else that is valuable. "Please give your time, your donation, your voice in support of what Ed and so many others value: the pursuit of justice and the rights of people in need," Klein wrote.

Rosenthal and Klein are members of Temple Sinai in Oakland, where Rabbi Steven Chester said the federal government's prosecution, while legal, was clearly "immoral."

"Whether or not one agrees with medical marijuana, the way the whole case was tried was just a travesty," he said, adding that he would be meeting privately with Rosenthal and Klein to strategize how he and the congregation could show their support.

When California's medical marijuana law was put to voters as a ballot initiative in 1996, Rosenthal, author of numerous books on marijuana cultivation and a longtime columnist for the pro-marijuana magazine High Times, convinced the East Bay Council of Rabbis to unanimously support it. Now, as his lawyers prepare post-trial motions in advance of his June 4 sentencing, he hopes the Jewish community at large will support him.

Rosenthal, who dropped out of college in 1967, had a brief stint as a stock broker before becoming interested in marijuana cultivation and helping launch High Times. His books on growing marijuana have sold at least a million copies, and he and Klein — married for 15 years — now operate Quick Trading, a home-based publishing business offering Rosenthal titles such as "The Big Book of Buds" and "Marijuana Law: Don't Get Busted."

Rosenthal was out in the open long before California voters, in 1996, approved Proposition 215, which permits marijuana use by seriously ill people. So he and his family were surprised when Drug Enforcement Administration agents wearing riot gear stormed their Victorian home a year ago this past week, seizing evidence and arresting him.

Rosenthal had been growing marijuana in a commercial building he owned in Oakland. He said he had been "deputized" by the director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, which in turn had received the blessing of the Oakland City Council to cultivate and distribute marijuana to patients with physicians' prescriptions; a city councilman and city employees had visited his operation.

But none of that mattered to the federal government. Rosenthal doesn't believe it was a coincidence — as the DEA claimed — that he was arrested the same day DEA chief Asa Hutchinson was in San Francisco to speak about the importance of continuing the war on drugs.

Rosenthal says he has no regrets and believes his trial — which has cost more than $200,000 so far, much of it paid by charitable donations — will be a "tipping point," focusing so much scrutiny on federal law that there will be no alternative but to change it to allow medicinal marijuana use.

"When you think of it as a trial for an individual, it's a lot of money. But if you think of it as a way of changing the law, it's much cheaper than going through organizations and lobbying — it's policy change at a discount," he said.

Rosenthal, who faces a prison term of at least five years under federal law, remains free on $200,000 bail pending his sentencing in June. He will ask for a new trial in mid-March and appeal his conviction if he loses.