MARIJUANA MITZVAH? SUPPORT GROWING FOR 'GURU OF GANJA'

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 7-9 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.