The Jewishness of Halloween

With Halloween approaching, we can expect the same debates about tradition vs. assimilation that we often hear in the Jewish community to be trotted out. While every Jewish kid I knew growing up in what was a very tight-knit Jewish community in Winnipeg went trick or treating, and the vast majority of Jews I now know also celebrate the holiday, the question of whether Jewish kids should be trick-or-treating still rears its head in Jewish circles.

“Do Jews celebrate Halloween?” asks Rabbi Tzvi Freeman in an article on chabad.org. (Rabbi Freeman was my seventh grade Judaics teacher at Vancouver Vancouver Talmud Torah in 1985. Our class had some good debates then, and it is partly in that spirit of nostalgia that I seek to take on some of his ideas here.)

Contrasting Halloween with Purim, Rabbi Freeman writes, “Flip it over (October instead of March, demanding instead of giving, scaring instead of rejoicing, demons instead of sages, etc.) and you have Halloween. There you have it: a choice of one of two messages you can give to your children. I call that a choice, because one of the beautiful things about kids is that, unlike adults, they don't do too well receiving two conflicting messages at once.”

If you’ll forgive the metaphor, like a piece of Halloween candy, Rabbi Freeman’s statement is rife for unwrapping. One of the most memorable parts of Rabbi Daniel Gordis’s book How to be a Jewish Parent is precisely his attempt to scale back the automatic attempt by Jews to present their holidays as alternatives to ones in the dominant culture. Purim is Purim, not a Jewish Halloween, Gordis wisely stresses.

There are a host of other problematic assumptions in Rabbi Freeman’s statement. “Trick or treat” may be about demanding, but trick-or-treaters instinctively know that, as they are knocking on their neighbour’s door, their own family is home giving out candy to others. Scaring instead of rejoicing? Hmm...sorting through Halloween loot is a pretty joyful experience, I’d say. And let’s take Purim: discussing a story of threatened genocide capped by a public execution ranks pretty high on the horror and gore scale.

I have heard one Jewish parent say that she and her husband don’t let their kids go trick or treating because “Judaism is about the celebration of life rather than death.” But that’s not how I see the meaning of Halloween. Sure, there are ghosts, goblins and zombies. But are trick-or-treaters celebrating death? Or are they challenging the innate fear of our own mortality?

And what of Freeman’s claim that kids can’t digest multiple ideas, especially if they are in tension with one another? Two diametrically opposed messages are certainly problematic. But I see the idea of Jewish kids celebrating Halloween as a nested idea. When I send my Jewish kids out for Halloween, I am sending them as kids who happen to be Jewish, just as one happens to be a girl, and the other a boy. (The one group that is officially excluded from trick-or-treating is, of course, grownups!) 

My kids celebrate Halloween neither because they are Jewish nor in spite of being Jewish. For one chilly Ottawa night per year, they get to share a memory-making slice of childhood with the rest of the kids across the city -- whoever they are, and whatever masks they are parading behind this year.

Freeman concludes by suggesting that our kids “belong to a people who have been entrusted with the mission to be a light to the nations -- not an ominous light inside a pumpkin, but a light that stands out and above and shows everyone where to go.”

But being a light unto the nations means leading by example. Unless one has an intrinsic concern with Halloween as a holiday -- and I’ve already suggested that Jewish holidays can be just as macabre, that Halloween isn’t so much glorifying death as it is making fun of our intrinsic mortality -- then standing apart for its own sake isn’t actually leading by example. 

Canada sadly has a dearth of inclusive, non-religious holidays. With the exception of Canada Day and possibly Thanksgiving, Halloween is the only holiday that brings children of all backgrounds together. Most importantly, Halloween is the only holiday that is specifically about that most precious of urban commodities. “It’s very neighbourly,” is how my eight-year-old daughter describes Halloween. It’s an apt summary, for a girl whose Hebrew name comes from the Biblical word for neighbour.

Any holiday that encourages the residents of cities and towns to walk the streets and interact -- even if fueled by a little too much sugar -- is a way of invoking the best of everyday, community life. And that is very Jewish.

**A version of this article appeared in The Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

Daniel Gordis, Peter Beinart, and Ameinu's Israel Trip

Last spring, I was fortunate to teach a course with a dynamic group of adult learners at the Soloway JCC in Ottawa on the topic of Israeli-Palestinian relations and Diaspora Jewish identity. What I did not realize then was that two of the “main characters” that figured in the Zionist debates which we parsed and debated would be coming to our community this fall. 

What follows in this column is a brief reflection on Daniel Gordis’s recent appearance at Jewish Federation of Ottawa’s campaign kickoff event last month, some discussion of Peter Beinart’s upcoming talk in Ottawa and Montreal (co-sponsored by Ameinu) on October 23, and a mention of yet another way community members may wish to have these nuances come to life: via Ameinu’s “multiple narratives” trip to Israel in January.

Those who attended Daniel Gordis’s talk last month were treated to a superb orator who kept the audience captivated with his passion for Israel and the Jewish experience. Senior Vice-President of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and author of multiple books on Israel, Gordis relayed a breathtaking anecdote about attending the Israeli opera at Masada with a group of olim from the Former Soviet Union. Alongside all that, though, was a message about Israel and its neighbors sorely lacking in nuance. He decried Palestinian “resistance,” demanding instead that the Palestinians seek to emulate Israel. We would all like to snap our fingers and have our adversaries lie down passively. But would we, if we were under military occupation of a foreign government? His utter lack of empathy for the experience of the Other left me cold. You can’t make peace in a vacuum, after all.

Having squared off in public debates at Temple Holy Blossom in Toronto, and at Columbia University in New York, Daniel Gordis and Peter Beinart represent two different strands of Zionism. These two contemporary strands hinge on the question of agency. Does Israel have the ability to do more to advance peace then it is currently doing? Gordis paints a picture of Israel being mostly at the mercy of its many enemies. He draws out a familiar story of besiegement, implicitly advancing the “no partner” for peace thesis. (Concluding his remarks in Ottawa with the image of Masada, the site of ultimate besiegement, was a calculated choice.)

While not denying the real threats Israel faces from a region in turmoil, Beinart, editor of the Open Zion blog at Newsweek/Daily Beast (one of the most dynamic and exciting forums for Zionist debates today) and author of The Crisis of Zionism, presents a view that is more critical of Israeli policies and the American Establishment that supports those policies. At the same time, Beinart’s is a view that advances the possibility of change.

Co-sponsored by Canadian Friends of Peace Now, the New Israel Fund of Canada, as well as Ameinu, Peter Beinart will give a talk in Ottawa at Temple Israel on October 23, on what he sees as a “crisis” in Zionism today. If the Israeli government doesn’t get serious about the peace process soon, Israel’s democratic and Jewish nature will be compromised. What’s more, the next generation of Jews may be lost to Zionism as the “establishment” has forced young Jews to “check their liberalism at the door” when it comes to engaging with Israel. (Beinart will also appear in Montreal on October 24.)

Of course there’s yet another way to engage with these various Zionist nuances, specifically by visiting Israel. To that end,  Ameinu is sponsoring a six-day study trip to Israel called “Multiple Narratives - Israel’s Realities”. From January 1-6, participants will join “freedom riders” on a de facto (but no longer legal) gender-segregated bus; meet with members of an urban kibbutz that focuses on education; meet with Stav Shafir, one of the leaders of the country’s “social protests;” meet with settlers at Kfar Etzion along with members of Breaking the Silence (an organization of IDF soldiers committed to exposing the military deeds done in the name of occupation), explore co-existence in Haifa and the warrens of South Tel Aviv, meet with a member of Knesset, and even engage in text study with BINA (Centre for Jewish Identity and Hebrew Culture). 

As Ameinu president Ken Bob describes it, “Leveraging our political and social activist contacts in Israel, Ameinu's Journey to Israel will challenge participants to think deeply about the choices facing Israel while introducing them to fascinating personalities who will impact the country's future."

To help and support Israel in a meaningful way one must understand its many narratives. Engaging the next generation will require less us-and-them thinking and more nuance about what is possible. And a Jewish community that is exposed to a range of voices about the political and social situations near to our heart is a stronger, more thoughtful and more effective community. 

Peter Beinart will speak in Ottawa at Temple Israel, 1301 Prince of Wales Drive on Tuesday, October 23 at 7:30 pm. 

He will appear in Montreal on Wednesday, October 24, at 8 p.m. at Knox Hall, 6225 Godfrey, a short street off Grand Blvd. between Sherbrooke and Monkland.

And for more information on the Ameinu Israel trip, visit www.ameinu.net

**A version of this article appeared in this week's Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**