Leading haredi rabbi declares marijuana kosher for Passover, just months after Orthodox Union certifies cannabis as kosher.

Federal authorities still consider cannabis a schedule one drug. But orthodox Jews answer to a Higher authority.

Orthodox Jewish authorities have declared cannabis and Marijuana Kosher (Parve) for Passover and all year, reports the Israel National News.

After sniffing the leaves, Rabbi Kanievksy and Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein said that the Cannabis plant has a "healing smell," according to the Times of Israel, and blessed the leaves.

For the eight-days of Passover, Jews avoid leavened bread and any food made with wheat, barley, rye, spelt or oats.

It was mid-2015, and the Orthodox Union was in a quandary. New York State was in the process of launching its medical marijuana program, and the OU, one of the world’s largest and most respected kosher certification agencies, had been approached by more than one company eager to get its certification. But could the organization’s rabbis give their stamp of approval to a drug illegal in much of the world? 

Medical marijuana is about to become a whole lot more accessible in Israel with pharmacies across the country expected to soon start providing the substance. Israel’s largest pharmacy chain, Super-Pharm, which has 225 branches across the country, has been meeting with health ministry officials over recent weeks to allow prescription dispensation of cannabis, Israeli newspaper Haaretz Thursday.

Cannabis’… The name sends shivers down the spine of Daily Mail readers. While not every Brit foams at the mouth at its very mention, most avoid the ‘c’ word in polite conversation. Not so in Israel. There, cannabis is a wonderful thing. To Israelis, it means a market, industry, innovation, opportunity. They know this plant could transform medicine and recreation in the 21st century, once governments get over themselves and legalise it. And they’re proud to be leading the revolution.

A marijuana chemical known as cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) helps cracks recuperate quicker and even make the bones more grounded than they were some time recently, as indicated by a study led by analysts from Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University and distributed in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

CBD has no psychotropic impacts.

“We observed that CBD alone makes bones more grounded amid recuperating, improving the development of the collagenous framework, which gives the premise to new mineralization of bone tissue,” analyst Yankel Gabet said. “In the wake of being treated with CBD, the mended bone will be harder to soften up what’s to come.”

BONES CONTAIN CANNABINOID RECEPTORS

U.S. News Updates

Alaska

Alaska’s first commercial cannabis harvests are underway. The first official legal crop comes from Greatland Ganja, a small cultivator on the Kenai Peninsula. Greatland has harvested about 75 pounds of cannabis so far, of an expected total of about 100 pounds consisting of 10 different strains. Unfortunately, however, the first harvest may not have anywhere to go. Distribution and sales are stalled until state-licensed testing laboratories are up and running. At the moment two labs are nearing completion in Anchorage: CannTest hopes to open by mid-October and AK Green Labs aims to be online by early November.

Arkansas

The U.S. cannabis market is very promising. It's so exciting that thousands of industry movers and observers descended upon theCannabis World Congress and Business Exposition on Sept. 7 in Los Angeles, to share their ideas and developments in the cannabis space.

Agrinnovation puts money into Cannabi-Tech, developer of an analysis device for medical marijuana flowers.

Hebrew University’s Agrinnovation investment fund has agreed to invest in the Rehovot-based medical cannabis firm Cannabi-Tech Ltd, which is developing a device for the automated sorting and analysis of medical cannabis flowers.

Agrinnovation, set up in 2015 to focus on agricultural innovation, is the agritech investment fund of the Yissum research and development company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the university’s technology transfer company.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes Israeli entrepreneurs succeed because they challenge authority, question everything and don’t play by the rules.

“The impact of the Israelis on science and technology is immense, so that’s why I’m here and why I’m investing here,” he told a large crowd at Israel’s Weizman Institute in 2015.

Schmidt’s statements not only apply to Israel’s high tech businesses and start-up companies, but also to its budding medical marijuana industry. From organic chemists to entrepreneurs, nearly everyone in Israel’s field of medical marijuana attributes at least a part of their success to Israel’s culture of rule-bending and not taking “no” for an answer.

Nearly a decade ago, Yohai Gild Golan, an experienced cannabis pioneer and founder of the medical-grade cannabis company Better, moved from California to Israel for the opportunity to do more for the medicinal marijuana industry. You read that correctly. Although many people perceive the West Coast of the United States as the center of cannabis progressivism, the Israeli government is among the most supportive of medicinal marijuana use in the world.