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Meet the rabbi who is helping bring legal cannabis to New York
(New York Jewish Week) — As New York gears up for a new landscape of legal marijuana, one rabbi will bring his experience retailing weed to help others “squeeze more out of life.”
Rabbi James Kahn is part of a company, “Keep It A 100,” that is one of the first to be licensed to open a cannabis dispensary in the state. When he wasn’t teaching Jewish college students or running chaplaincy services for a Jewish social service agency, he helped run a family-run marijuana business in Washington, D.C. and is the executive director of Liberty Cannabis Cares, the social impact arm of Holistic Industries, a prominent dispensary business in Maryland.
“Suffering is not a mitzvah,” Kahn, who was ordained at Boston’s Hebrew College and has served as the senior Jewish educator at the University of Maryland Hillel, told the New York Jewish Week. “Giving people permission to use cannabis to enjoy and to take time for self care, for healing, for connecting with people, it’s just another tool that Hashem has given us to live better lives.”
Keep It A 100 is one of the 36 winners of the state’s Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (CAURD) program, which offered the licenses to sell weed to people and nonprofits who had previously been convicted of marijuana-related crimes. New York’s first dispensary, opening Thursday at 750 Broadway in Manhattan’s Astor Place neighborhood, is being run by Housing Works, the HIV/AIDS service organization.
“When done right, cannabis can be a force for good — for individuals and the communities they live in,” Kahn said. “That is my mission.”
Kahn has partnered with Marquis Hayes, a Bronx native and former drug dealer who got out of prison in 2007 and has since become a highly regarded professional chef. He will source the product for Keep It A 100, while Kahn will provide capital and expertise. Their first “retail experience” will be on Long Island.
Rabbi James Kahn, shown with a menorah-shaped bong, saw the benefits of cannabis when his grandfather sought relief from multiple sclerosis. (Courtesy)
“It’s focused on giving licenses to people who have been injured by the war on drugs, who have really worked to not let that injury define them, but have come out of that place and form businesses that were profitable,” Kahn said of the CAURD program. “I wanted to take what I know about how to run a successful and impactful cannabis retail store and share that knowledge with a partner who really deserves this opportunity. I want to make sure he is as successful as possible.”
Kahn does not have a set date for when the dispensary will open, but said that “it will be in a few months.”
Kahn also worked at the Washington, D.C.-area Jewish Social Service Agency. At Liberty Cannabis Care, he works “to make cannabis a force for good in every state we operate in, and in every neighborhood we’re lucky to be a part of,” according to its mission statement.
Other partners in Keep It A 100 include psychotherapist Kim Stetz and experienced Maryland cannabis business owner Christina Betancourt Johnson.
Kahn’s connection to cannabis goes back to his grandfather: When Kahn was a teenager, his mother’s father suffered from “severe” multiple sclerosis and asked Kahn to help him find marijuana.
“He was hesitant to try cannabis because of the stigma that surrounded it,” Kahn said. “He was not a fan of hippies or cannabis. An aide offered him cannabis and it worked. The first bong I ever saw was my grandfather’s.”
Kahn’s father, Rabbi Jeffrey Kahn, was a rabbi during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, where many people were “benefitting from cannabis around that time.”
“[My father] was thinking about it back then,” Kahn said. “There were a lot of folks who were concerned about the stigma and shame that was attached to cannabis. Was cannabis kosher? Not just from the technical standpoint — it is just a plant — but from a moral standpoint.”
In 2011, the family opened the capital’s first medical cannabis dispensary, the Takoma Wellness Center.
Kahn said that he sees his dispensaries as a gathering place for “folks of every kind and background who love cannabis.”
“It’s a place to be seen and to be valued and to get to talk about their favorite plan,” Kahn said. “Marquis is a world-renowned chef and knows how to create this unique experience.”
He added that the dispensary will also offer a delivery service, which will “probably open prior to the retail store.”
He added that while cannabis has not been “at the forefront of the modern Jewish age, the cannabis industry is full of Jews.” A current exhibit at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, “Am Yisrael High: The Story of Jews and Cannabis,” also explores the extensive Jewish presence in the weed industry, legal and not.
“Judaism is relevant because it helps us squeeze more out of life,” Kahn said. “It’s helped me use cannabis in a way that I would call sacred.”
Kahn said he is fascinated by the history of cannabis within Judaism, mentioning an archaeological dig site in Tel Arad in Israel, where traces of cannabis were found in the ancient remnants of a Jewish temple.
“This would have created a dense smoke that is responsible for creating a high from cannabis,” Kahn said.
He added that he has had “interesting experiences reading sacred texts while consuming cannabis.”
“All cannabis is medicine,” Kahn said. “The word ‘recreational’ is often seen as less than. We Jews have long known the value of rest, of stopping. That’s at the heart of Shabbat. In order to have holiness, we need to give ourselves the space to experience it.”
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The post Meet the rabbi who is helping bring legal cannabis to New York appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen
(JTA) — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has called on Israel to rein in its attacks on Iranian oil infrastructure, marking a rare note of caution from a Republican lawmaker who has said he helped push the United States to join Israel in waging war against Iran.
In a post on X on Sunday, Graham praised Israel for its role in the war before adding that “there will be a day soon that the Iranian people will be in charge of their own fate, not the murderous ayatollah’s regime.”
“In that regard, please be cautious about what targets you select,” continued Graham. “Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor.”
Graham’s post linked to an Axios article that reported that the United States was alarmed by Israeli strikes over the weekend that targeted 30 Iranian fuel depots. On Monday, U.S. gas prices rose to their highest levels since 2024.
The warning from Graham, an ally of President Donald Trump and staunch supporter of Israel, comes days after the Republican hawk told the Wall Street Journal that he had played a key role in urging Trump to strike Iran.
Prior to the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, Graham made several trips to Israel where he met with members of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom he said he coached on how to lobby Trump to strike Iran.
“They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” Graham told the newspaper.
On Monday, Graham also directed his criticism at Saudi Arabia’s decision to stay on the sidelines of the campaign against Iran.
“It is my understanding the Kingdom refuses to use their capable military as a part of an effort to end the barbaric and terrorist Iranian regime who has terrorized the region and killed 7 Americans,” wrote Graham in a post on X Monday. “Question – why should America do a defense agreement with a country like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is unwilling to join a fight of mutual interest?”
The post Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen appeared first on The Forward.
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Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism
(JTA) — Belgian officials are investigating an explosion in front of a synagogue in Liège early Monday as a possible act of terrorism.
The explosion, which took place at 4 a.m., damaged the door of the historic neo-Romanesque synagogue and blew out the windows of multiple buildings across the street. No injuries were reported.
A range of Belgian politicians, including the prime minister and the mayor of Liège, characterized the explosion as act of antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is an attack on our values and our society, and we must fight it unequivocally,” Prime Minister Bart de Wever said in a statement. “We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in Liege and across the country.”
The explosion comes amid a surge of concern about possible attacks by agents associated with the Iranian regime, against which the United States and Israel launched a war last week. Iran has a long record of supporting attacks on Jewish targets abroad, including two bombings in the 1990s in Argentina that killed more than 100 people at the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center. Now, with Iran being pummeled at home, watchdogs are warning that it might lash out through its Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, responsible for attacks abroad.
Azerbaijan said Friday that it had foiled multiple terror attacks planned by Iranian agents on Jewish sites. In London, four men were arrested last week for allegedly spying on the Jewish community for Iran, with the intent of planning attacks against the community. And a string of shootings at synagogues in Toronto has ignited concern in Canada, too.
Iranian agents have taken aim at non-Jewish targets, too. On Friday, a Pakistani man who prosecutors said had been directed by Iran’s IRGC was convicted of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump.
The attack in Liège, in the primarily French-speaking Wallonia province, comes amid a range of recent developments that have unsettled Belgian Jews, who number approximately 30,000. They include antisemitic carnival caricatures in the city of Aalst; a ban on ritual slaughter preventing the local production of kosher meat; and an ongoing row between U.S. and Belgian officials over Jewish circumcision practices. The attack also follows a 2014 shooting in which a gunman associated with the Islamic State, a rival to Iran’s Islamic Republic, shot four people to death at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
A spokesperson for the Liège police described the effects to the area as “only material damage” to the 1899 building. Rabbi Joshua Nejman told local media that he was hoping that security footage would reveal the perpetrator.
“I’m going to try to calm my heart, because it is beating faster and faster this morning,” said Nejman, who said he had been at the synagogue for 25 years.
“Liege is home to a very small but vibrant Jewish community where I personally grew up,” Eitan Bergman, vice president of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organisations in Belgium, told Reuters. “Today, the feelings among our community members are a mixture of sadness, worry and profound shock.”
Liege’s mayor, Willy Demeyer, praised the synagogue community to RBTF, Belgium’s French-language national broadcaster. He added, “We cannot allow foreign conflicts to be imported into our city.”
The post Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism appeared first on The Forward.
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The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2025
In honor of The Algemeiner‘s 12th annual gala, we are proud to present our “J100” list — 100 individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life over the past year.