JEWISH CONVERT TO CHRISTIANITY STARTS MARIJUANA SHUL

Reverend ready to defend pot use (Monterey Herald)
HOLLYWOOD - The Rev. Craig X Rubin read aloud a passage from 1 Kings as the sun set and his congregation prepared for the Sabbath. Flicking a lighter to the lone candle atop the podium, Rubin burned a bud of marijuana on the flame. He puffed it out, walked to each of the eight members sitting in the pews and waved the smoldering cannabis around them. This, Rubin proclaims, carries the prayers of Temple 420 to God. That's the God of Isaac and of Jesus, because members are Christians and Jews. That makes the congregation Rubin founded last summer unique.

But what really sets it apart -- and the reason Rubin will be in court Friday -- is the temple's use of marijuana as a religious sacrament. ''I am willing to preach the Bible and go to jail if it means getting my message out there,'' the 41-year-old Panorama City man said. And he knows how strange that sounds.

''I'm a Jewish kid from Beverly Hills who went to UCLA. I could have been a lawyer making $250 an hour like the rest of my friends, or a TV producer. Instead, I'm teaching the Bible, selling weed on Hollywood Boulevard, facing seven years in jail -- of course I'm crazy.''....

Temple 420's tenets stem from Rubin's Jewish childhood, conversion to Christianity and experience taking peyote in American-Indian sweat lodges.

A pro-pot Republican partial to dark suits and red ties, Rubin hangs the American flag behind his podium and gushes about Ronald Reagan. He has been a marijuana activist since his days at UCLA in the early '90s.