Shifting mindsets: a meditation workshop at the Psychedelic Science Conference in Denver, Colorado last month. (Photo: MAPS)[Missing Credit]
If there is something distinctly Jewish about questioning one’s purpose in the grand scheme of life – and searching with Woody Allen-esque neuroticism for its deeper meaning – then the profusion of Jews in the field of psychedelic research, which is driven by a similar preoccupation with the metaphysical, is unsurprising.
Last month’s line-up for Psychedelic Science Conference, a week-long expo of panels, workshops and presentations on the latest in psychedelic research, certainly confirms the intersectionality between Judaism and psychedelics. Hosted by MAPS, this year’s event emphasised the role psychedelics can play in social change and collective healing, especially in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“All over the world, people are, one hopes, getting weary of war and are looking for something, some other way,” Doblin says.
The conference, which took place in Denver, presented a few such other ways. It included a presentation by Israeli researchers studying MDMA-assisted therapy as a treatment for PTSD, as well as emerging research from practitioners in Ukraine, Israel, Palestine and Bosnia about psychedelic interventions in crisis zones. Researchers from the US-based Arab Psychedelic Society led a panel on psychedelic therapy in conflict-affected Arab communities, and a panel of scientists from Jewish, Muslim and Christian backgrounds presented on new psychedelic initiatives emerging from their respective religious communities.
Rick Doblin, the Jewish founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), speaks at the 2025 Psychedelic Science Conference in Denver, Colorado. (Photo: Psychedelic Science via X)[Missing Credit]
Leor Roseman, an Israeli psychedelic researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Exeter, led the first workshop of the conference with his non-profit initiative Ripples, which brings together Jewish Israeli and Muslim Palestinian activists and artists for peace-building talks through the lens of psychedelics. He is among a number of Jewish researchers exploring whether the proven benefits of individual psychedelic therapy can be applied to groups, especially those in conflict.
“I wanted to move from self-centred ideas of healing to relational and communal ideas of healing,” says Roseman. “I asked myself, ‘What is my communal, my political, my social wound?’ And as an Israeli, it was obvious that it relates to the politics of the land. If I want to study psychedelics for relational purposes, that is the relational political issue that I would like to address.”
In 2021, Roseman and Natalie Ginsberg, Global Impact Officer of MAPS and co-founder of the Jewish Psychedelic Summit, co-authored a study on the experiences of Israelis and Palestinians who drank the psychedelic drug ayahuasca together.
Their inquiry, inspired by the discovery of an “underground ayahuasca scene” in Israel and the West Bank, was guided by questions of how the drug might contribute to processes of peace-building, and how in the context of the protracted conflict it might affect relations within the group.
Both Israelis and Palestinians described sensations of “unity” and “oneness”. Music originating from both cultures played a significant role in the ritual, with participants saying the music of “the other” prompted deeply spiritual moments of open-heartedness.
It was this study’s findings that compelled Roseman to start Ripples. At the beginning of the conference in Denver, the collective hosted its day-long workshop with some 50 participants – Jewish, Palestinian and otherwise – who engaged in storytelling through music, a “grief ceremony” for Israelis and Gazans, and conversations about “sacred activism and spiritual psychedelic journeys”.
Roseman is currently in the process of expanding the initiative to include a revolutionary year-long programme. The idea is that Israeli and Palestinian volunteers will spend the first six months of the programme coming together as a community before embarking on a two-week, guided psychedelic immersion in Spain, where ayahuasca is decriminalised. The psychedelic ceremonies will be structured so that participants focus specifically on the processes of peace-building in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The following six months – a period Roseman refers to as “integration” – will be crucial to maintaining the impact of the psychedelic experience, he says.
In his words: “Too much dissonance between the empowering ayahuasca trip and the polarising political reality that participants return to afterwards could bring confusion or even denial.
“In the moment, this unity and understanding feels like the most truthful thing ever, but months later, you’re like, ‘it was just a dream’.”
In other words, the drug is not an elixir for peace on its own.
“We’re not just relying on the medicines to create the bond,” Roseman says. “This is why we build a strong community beforehand and we return to it after – this way, the collective is already holding each other.”
It feels necessary to point out to both Roseman and Doblin that those who are willing to take part in the experiment are, arguably, far more susceptible to the psychedelic message of unity than the majority of those entrenched in one or the other side of the conflict. How can the potential benefits be expanded beyond this fraction of society that has already taken the leap towards cooperation?
“Yes, these are the progressives on both sides, they’re not the hardcore haters,” Doblin agrees. “But it could spread out that way. The thing is that you have to want to do the work – it’s not like you take a pill and automatically love everybody.”
Leor Roseman (far left) pictured with fellow Israeli and Palestinian activists involved in the Ripples Collective. (Photo: Ripples Collective)[Missing Credit]
Roseman uses the analogy of couples therapy to describe how Israeli and Palestinian participants choose to engage in the bold new psychedelic initiatives.
“Just having the intention of doing work to heal relations doesn’t mean that relations are already healthy. You can come wishing to meet Palestinians, but still as Israelis, we might have a lot of prejudice, a lot of racism that is part of the system and is engrained in us,” he says.
The thing is you have to want to do the work – it’s not like you take a pill and automatically love everybody
Ginsberg, who spoke on a panel about ancient psychedelic sacraments in the Middle East, says the timing of the conference – just a few weeks after the attack on a pro-Israel Jewish group in nearby Boulder – brings another layer of complexity to discussions about unity. And then there was the exchange of missiles between Israel and Iran, which prevented numerous Israeli and Palestinian researchers from attending the conference.
“Things have become more heightened, more inflamed,” says Ginsberg. “But at this time of really frightening polarisation and fear and disconnection and disinformation, being together in person with people with different experiences, different perspectives, but with a shared passion for healing, spirituality, and social change in some form, well, these are powerful connective tissues.”
On behalf of MAPS, Doblin recently visited the Middle East to discuss starting research projects on MDMA-assisted therapy at universities in Lebanon and the UAE, countries which currently prohibit psychedelic drugs even in clinical research settings. He stresses that MAPS will advocate for the decriminalisation of psychedelic drugs for clinical research in any and every nation.
Rick Doblin, pictured on the day of his bar mitzvah in 1966. (Photo: Rick Doblin)[Missing Credit]
“We need to be helping people from all sides of these conflicts,” Doblin says.
Roseman and Ginsberg are aware that nothing can solve the Israel-Palestine conflict by itself, and psychedelic unity projects like Ripples are often dismissed for playing into “utopian ideas” of peace and harmony. But these initiatives are part of an ecosystem, Roseman explains, where people are working to bring about much-needed change with the tools and capabilities at their disposal. For the psychedelic community, the toolkit in question just looks a little different – maybe a little more colourful and, sure, a little more utopian – than others.
Doblin’s first exposure to psychedelics at 17 provided a kind of spiritual introduction to the world. It was the feeling he’d been searching for since his bar mitzvah: a profound sense of connection to something much larger than himself. Nowadays, his trips to synagogue are complemented by trips to higher planes of consciousness, but that initial, heart-opening rite of passage he experienced as a teen is just the sort of shift he and others in the psychedelic community believe might provide a path forward.
“What we need to do, I think, is to have people realise that we are not the ego; the self is not the centre of the universe, and I think there needs to be this really widespread consciousness shift about where we fit in,” he says.
“In a world where technology is getting stronger and stronger, which means weapons are getting more powerful too, we need to accelerate our emotional and spiritual development.”
