Walking to synagogue during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot (Festival of Booths), my children and I counted the number of sukkot erected in our neighbors' backyards. Coming home, we noted the number of neighbors who displayed Halloween decorations. For our family, the emergence of inflatable ghosts and goblins, haunted homes, and the speckling of front yards with skeletons and tombstones is also the launch of our annual conversations about Halloween, what it is (and isn't) about and how we do or do not celebrate it.
These conversations aren't limited to my home. When you talk to parents in the hallways, be it at a Jewish supplementary school or a day school, they are no less passionate about whether or not their children dress up and go "trick or treating" than they are about whether to serve cupcakes or carrots at nursery school birthday parties.
The diatribes against Halloween trick-or-treating concern celebrating a pagan holiday, thus participating in a form of idol worship. These arguments fall within the realm of halakhah, of Jewish law, relevant for a particularistic segment of our Jewish community. The arguments in favor of celebrating Halloween are equally particularistic, stating that "it's a great chance to be an American and a part of a community, and after all, why should the kids be deprived of (1) dressing up and (2) getting candy?"
As a Jewish educator, I fall into neither camp. I think that there is a great innocence and fun in dressing up, and I do believe that an occasional indulgence in candy is okay. I also understand those parents for whom Jewish law prescribes behavior. What I want to emphasize, to parents and educators, is an awareness of the message of Halloween that contradicts other Jewish beliefs and practices, which I think transcend both the halakhic ambiguity of Halloween as idol worship, and the fun. I am speaking of our communal beliefs and responsibilities about the dignity of death, kvod hamet.
The notion of respecting the dead, the practices of the Hevre Kaddisha (the special society whose responsibility it is to prepare the dead for burial), not leaving a dead body unattended until its moment of death; these are some of the most tender and embracing rituals in Jewish practice. As Jews we are not fearful of death, nor of the dead themselves. Jewish religion, Jewish people, are respectful of the dead body and carefully respectful of all rituals relating to death.
How then can a people who care for their dead in such a gentle and personal manner possibly endorse the hanging of skeletons from trees or setting up a mock graveyard in the front yard? Whether one is religiously observant of halakhah or is a proud cultural Jew, the moral Jewish behaviors towards death and the religious prescriptive on treating the dead are at great odds with the decorations, not to mention the fear and gore, associated with death in this Halloween season.
What then might I, as a Jewish educator, not to mention a parent, suggest we do with the question: to trick or treat, or not to trick or treat? My solution--my "if I could change the world" fantasy of the moment--would be to say "dressing up as a pumpkin, cute and ‘kosher,'dressing up as a skeleton, no."
Could we, as a confident member of the culture that surrounds us, begin to offer pushback to Halloween? Are we prepared to celebrate the fun of dressing up, while rejecting the celebration of gore, or glorification of evil? What might it mean for a vocal minority in the United States to stand up and deplore the celebration of superstitions of death which are becoming embedded in the cultural celebration of Halloween? Is it possible to rally against Hallmark and Hollywood, not to mention deep rooted practices which are "all American"? What would it mean for us to suggest that Americans transform the meaning and roots of Halloween?
I think it would mean that the time has come for Halloween to become an interfaith issue around which minority faiths could rally together. From the Catholic Church to Buddhists, there are certainly other faith partners who are prepared to denounce the glorification of evil and celebration of gore in favor of a transformed Halloween. It is time, my fellow Jewish educators, parents and forward thinkers, to take pride in our Jewish beliefs about death, allow them to color our behaviors and beliefs about Halloween, and yes, even share them with other faiths and open a dialogue about how Halloween might indeed begin to be reframed or reshaped in the diverse America of today.
--Karen Reiss Medwed
Rabbi Karen G. Reiss Medwed, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Jewish Education at Hebrew College, where she is Dean of Faculty of Prozdor, Director of the EdD in Jewish Education Leadership and Coordinator for the Pardes Educators Program. She and her family reside in Sharon, where this year they will walk over to the local Halloween parade as spectators.