Was Moses High On Drugs

The following is my letter to the editor of the Jewish New of Phoenix, following publication of an article on Moses.

Dear Editor,

The article you printed in the March 7th edition under World Roundup, entitled “Was Moses High On Sinai?”, is a piece of complete fiction and totally flawed research. Why did you feel this article was worthy of your attention, let alone publication as “news”.

As my spiritual advisor, Rabbi Laibel Blotner (Chabad Mesa) asks the question, “Why not just say Moses did not exist?”

My PIT mentor, called his research flawed, the work of an ignoramus.

Rabbi Yuval Sherlow told Israel Radio: “The Bible is trying to convey a very profound event. We have to fear not for the fate of the biblical Moses, but for the fate of Science.”

Why not deny all the miracles HaShem demonstrated in Egypt and the 40 years in the desert, the parting of the sea, manna, and the miracle of the spring water? Why target the most significant leader in Jewish history?

Does this professor think all 611,000 witnesses present at Sinai were also on drugs? He paints a picture of some biblical Woodstock with every Hebrew man over 20 years old, stoned and seeing light after ingesting substances found in two plants in the Sinai Desert. After all, if Moses was on drugs all the males gathered would have to have been intoxicated as well, or they would have repudiated Moses accounts.

What you did not print was the following line from the article in “Time and Mind.” Shannon writes that he has, “partaken of the …brew about 160 times in various localities and contexts. On such occasions, one often feels that in seeing the light, one is encountering the ground of all Being….many identify this power as G_d, Shannon says.”

Do you know what you call a researcher who admits to taking hallucinogenic drugs 160 times? We call that person a drug addict. How nice that he’s teaching our children in Jerusalem. And how ignorant of you to give him the exposure he craves for his ridiculous “Research.”