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38
March 12 • 2015
DI
laskan Jews take note:
The Orthodox Union
has begun "preliminary
discussions" with medical marijuana
companies interested in receiving the
organization's kosher seal.
Medicinal marijuana is a big busi-
ness in the United States, generating
over a billion dollars in 2013, accord-
ing to the research group Arcview
Market Research. Included in that are
the dozens of state-level and national
companies that produce and sell "edi-
bles," foods that have been infused
with marijuana.
With marijuana already legalized
for medicinal use in 23 U.S. states,
for recreational use in three (Alaska
joined Colorado and Washington last
week) and more states expected to
pass similar legislation, the pot busi-
ness is only expected to grow.
Some cannabis companies are
apparently looking to reach out
to an untapped market — kosher
medicinal marijuana users. This is
critical for purveyors hoping to enter
the medical cannabis market in New
York, as the state senate only allows
patients to receive marijuana in a
non-smokeable form.
As marijuana is a plant, it requires
no real kosher supervision when it
is sold by itself in dispensaries, but
if companies want to sell kosher edi-
bles, they will need to go through the
same process to which all food com-
panies must submit to get certified.
In the past, the Orthodox Union,
one of the main certifiers of kashrut
in America, was loath to give kosher
certification to companies that man-
ufacture tobacco products because
of the deleterious health effects. But,
the Jewish Daily Forward reported
last week, as the health benefits
of cannabis are now understood,
the Orthodox Union has no such
qualms about certifying medical
marijuana.
In Israel, despite the fact that foods
infused with medical marijuana
are sold (including in one interest-
ing case to an inmate who was not
allowed to smoke his medicinal pot
during his prison sentence and thus
had to resort to pot-infused cookies),
the Chief Rabbinate of Israel has not
weighed in on the kashrut of edibles.
"We don't deal with it," said Daniel
Bar, spokesman for the rabbinate.
"We have not even looked into it:'
❑
Teachers may now need to reconsider
reprimanding daydreaming students in
class as a new Israeli study found that
mind-wandering actually enhances
brain performance and prepares the
mind for complex tasks.
In a study published last month in the
American scientific journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences,
researchers at Bar-Ilan University were
able to show that, contrary to common
belief, a wandering mind does not ham-
per the ability to accomplish a task, but
actually improves it.
This surprising result may occur due
to the convergence of both "thought-
freeing" activity and "thought-control-
ling" mechanisms in a single region
of the brain, according to Professor
Moshe Bar, director of Bar-Ilan's Gonda
Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center.
"Over the last 15 or 20 years, sci-
entists have shown that — unlike the
localized neural activity associated
with specific tasks — mind-wandering
involves the activation of a gigantic
default network [of] many parts of the
brain," Bar said.
"This cross-brain involvement may
be involved in behavioral outcomes
such as creativity and mood, and may
also contribute to the ability to stay suc-
cessfully on task while the mind goes off
on its merry mental way"
The researchers were also able to
show that an external stimulus can sub-
stantially increase the rate at which day-
dreaming occurs, which in turn offers a
positive effect on task performance.
According to Bar, the study shows
people do not necessarily have a finite
cognitive attention span.
"Rather than reducing the subjects'
ability to complete the task, it caused
task performance to become slightly
improved," Bar said. "The external stim-
ulation actually enhanced the subjects'
cognitive capacity"
During the experiment, participants
were treated with transcranial direct
current stimulation (tDCS), a painless
procedure that uses low-level electricity
to stimulate specific brain regions.
They were asked to track and respond
to numbers flashing on a computer, and
periodically report the extent to which
they were experiencing spontaneous
thoughts unrelated to the task given.
According to Bar, the results go far
beyond what was previously achieved
using studies based on fMRI (functional
magnetic resonance imaging), and
demonstrate the role the frontal lobes
play in the production of mind-wander-
ing behavior.
❑