Should you take an edible on Shabbat?

The pros and cons of an emergent practice, and what they say about how we think about this "day of rest."

A lot of people use weed on Shabbat and holidays. Some people smoke before shul, some take edibles on Friday night, and some take them on Saturday morning. I’ve heard the phrase “cannabis chulent” at least once.

These practices have emerged organically, across all denominations, and have become slightly easier to talk about now that so many states (plus Canada) have legalized cannabis. It’s really just one part of a larger trend towards the integration of psychoactive substances into religious practice.

(N.B. Why do I say “psychoactive?” Because (a) the term “psychedelics” is somewhat arbitrary and (b) “psychoactive” better matches Judaism’s longstanding interest in temporary and permanent consciousness alteration. More on this another time.)

Is this good or bad? Should you be dropping by the dispensary when you do your pre-Shabbat shopping—or should you put away your gummies for a different day? I’ve seen basically no attempts to settle the question, other than one official statement that I’ll get to below. What I want to do here is lay out the arguments on both sides.

Argument in favor: Cannabis enhances exactly the things you’re supposed to do on Shabbat

Shabbat is supposed to be a time of rest and relaxation. While spiritual devotion is certainly supposed to be a part of the experience, rabbinic Judaism takes physical enjoyment to be just as central to the experience of the day. You’re supposed to eat well on Shabbat, to spend time with family and friends, and to have sex on Friday night. We even sing, sometimes about how awesome it is to get intoxicated on Shabbat! While there are some differences between communities—should you play sports? Take a nap? Read the newspaper? Learn Torah?—it’s supposed to be an enjoyable day. Collectively, these are the experiences that are often called oneg shabbat—Shabbat’s delight.

Guess what? Cannabis is a good fit for these activities! Its ability to enhance physical pleasure and serve as a social lubricant seem to make it a natural addition to age-old practices. It can also serve to intensify the experience of praying with others: the energy of a loud room during kabbalat shabbat, or the stillness of a Shabbat morning. While it’s probably hard for most people to learn much Torah on anything but very low doses of cannabis, it can allow for lively Torah-centered conversations that certainly have value.

I’ll add that edibles seem particularly well-suited to Shabbat because of their intensity and long-lasting effects. For many people, Shabbat is the only time of the week that they can safely take an edible and know that it will have run its course by the time they need to work (or drive a car). Again, Shabbat’s 25-hour span seems to invite this: the length of the day of rest is integral to the slowing of time that for so many people is what they love best about the day.

I won’t pretend that cannabis was “meant” for Shabbat, or that Judaism’s real-but-minor historical relationship with cannabis should dictate anything. I certainly won’t say that you’re not living your best Shabbat if you don’t try it. But for many people cannabis and Shabbat do seem to jive, and I’m glad that there’s a growing community that is finding that one fits well inside the other.

Argument against: Cannabis is pro-boredom

There are plenty of bad arguments against cannabis—but there are some very strong ones, too. The most important one, weirdly, was best articulated in an episode of South Park. Here’s the quote:

[T]he truth is marijuana probably isn’t gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn’t gonna fund terrorism, but—well, son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored, and it’s when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything.

This resonates strongly with me, because Shabbat is designed to give you space to feel bored, too! And, yes, cannabis can enhance physical experiences, but it can also make you want to have no experiences. Yes, it can enhance a good shul—but it can also make you avoid dealing with a bad shul by bringing it up to “tolerable” (and maybe discouraging you from being more active in changing it). Yes, it can enrich your singing—but it may mean you just spend hours on the couch, doing little or nothing to grow as a person. Rather than making your Shabbat better, it can make you satisfied with an okay time—and when you look up in a few years, will you feel good about that?

This danger is enhanced because Shabbat is weekly and cannabis can be psychologically addictive and tolerance builds fairly quickly. (Ironically, the fact that cannabis has fewer health risks that alcohol means that it’s harder to see this path’s dangers clearly.) This is something that a lot of Americans, now a decade into the liberalization era, are suddenly discovering.

For Jews, this means that it is possible to fall into a ritualistic habit of consuming ever-larger doses of cannabis on Shabbat that continues indefinitely because the Shabbat experiences underneath it actually wasn’t all that satisfying. You end up with a day that feels fine in the moment, but in retrospect is kind of a bummer. Is that really what Israel’s glorious Shabbat is supposed to be?

Where does delight end and dissociation begin?

This is where things get very tricky, because it’s very hard to externally determine a hard-and-fast line between cannabis-as-enhancement and cannabis-as-avoidance-mechanism. It’s especially hard because the point of Shabbat is rest, and telling people that they’re “resting wrong” doesn’t typically get good responses. If a person has an incredibly stressful job and wants to spend most of Saturday afternoon on the couch, who’s supposed to tell them that they’re wrong? What if cannabis is a relatively harmless way to cope with an imperfect environment that for family/economic reasons can’t easily be changed? And why should this ritualistic practice be called out for become a force of habit when the same (for many people) can be said of prayer itself?

Perhaps the strain of cannabis should matter. You may know that there are two major botanical varieties of cannabis: sativa and indica. Sativa, any dispensary employee will tell you, is more of a “day high.” It’s more stimulating. Indicas, on the other hand, are for chilling on the couch. The botanical distinction was created by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a Frenchman, in 1783. Maybe Shabbat is a day for sativas?

The problem is that the distinction was never merely botanical. A recent book convincingly argues that Lamarck’s decision to bifurcate European/sativa strains from Indian/indica strains emerged from a desire to paint non-white cannabis use as part and parcel of an imagined culture of laziness and brutality. We Europeans, he was implying, use weed for good. Asians just want to get stoned.

Because of all this, I highly discourage people from criticizing the Shabbat cannabis use of others; better to ask questions about what their practice, what is does for them, and how regular it is. In my experience researching this piece you end up learning a lot about what people like and don’t like about their communities.

So, what should you do?

A few months ago, the Conservative Movement’s law committee put out a sensible opinion on cannabis consumption. It bans smoked marijuana as a health risk (it had previously banned smoking nicotine products), and it places a tentative ban on recreational cannabis use “in an official Jewish communal context (such as a synagogue, JCC, or school),” noting that this position may be visited as we learn more about long-term cannabis use.

Personally, this seems like a bad place to land because it means that the experimentation with cannabis that needs to happen to find best practices is just going to happen without any rabbinic approval. It’s a decision to not guide a community that needs guidance, effectively telling people, “we don’t want to know that you’re coming to shul high—yet.” Better to tentatively allow recreational use and engage with it now, understanding that there will be a process of trial and error ahead.

In the meantime, here’s the practical advice I’d give you:

• Cannabis can indeed be a lovely addition to Shabbat, but be cautious about turning it into a standard weekly practice. If it has already become a standard practice, contemplate the feelings that come up when you consider making it more occasional.

• If the thought of stopping gives you anxiety, you may want to consider that you’ve lost some control over your relationship with the substance.

• Be aware of the ways that cannabis use is drawing you closer to your community or separating you from it.

• I believe that learning (Jewish or secular, head or heart) should be part of the Shabbat experience. If cannabis is crowding out Shabbat’s status as a day of growth, consider cutting back.

• Be proactive in talking about your cannabis use, to your comfort level. Weed’s slow socialization means that there are still pockets of acceptability and taboo, which can make its use more isolating.

• Experimentation with one’s Jewish practices is important. If you’ve never tried it before and can do so legally, consider that Shabbat with friends really can be a gentle/lovely/safe way to have new experiences.

• As the Conservative Movement recommends: if you consume, remember to say a blessing.

I hope this is helpful! I’ve never seen this subject covered anywhere so I’m especially keen to hear any thoughts you might have.

P.S. I want to thank the many, many people who spoke to me anonymously about their experiences for this story.

P.P.S. I you haven’t listened to my podcast, Belief in the Future—we’re now six amazing episodes in! Take a listen today—and subscribe for some truly mind-blowing High Holidays related episodes coming up.