Growing up, my father used to make Halloween costumes for my brother and me from scratch. While my friends at school would be wearing store-bought outfits from our favorite TV shows and movies, my father would spend countless hours sewing, gluing, and crafting elaborate designs to bring our characters to life. He made a custom broomstick made out of sticks he collected from the woods when I wanted to dress up as Harry Potter. He made tailored Jedi robes for the Star Wars years (in full transparency, the Star Wars years never ended…). His crowning achievement was my brother’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shell, made from cardboard and Dixie cups. He put in countless hours to make us feel like he was invested in what we cared about, and the love he showed us lasted far longer than the candy we collected.
At the same time that this was happening in suburban Chicago, I have a friend who grew up in Florida who had a different experience. The daughter of two Jewish professionals, she was forbidden from participating in the Halloween festivities. No, her parents weren’t black-and-orange-striped Grinches who refused to let their child have fun. But from their perspective, Halloween wasn’t “OUR” holiday; we had Purim for dressing up in costume, Sukkot for celebrating fall, and, well, no excuse needed for indulging our sweet tooth. Years later, when my friend would tell me about her experience, I listened with bewilderment; why would you let your child sit out from the fun?
Of course, the roots of Halloween do come from another religious tradition. The pagan backstory and history are interesting, but far removed from the pumpkin carving and candy sorting of our modern day. But now, looking back, I have a deeper appreciation for the distance that my friend’s parents created from this American rip-off of a holiday that held deep spiritual significance to many at one point in time.
As Jews, we are no strangers to the erosive quality of American consumerism on our holidays. Anyone who has ever seen matzah displayed to celebrate Rosh Hashanah or Chanukah knows exactly what I’m talking about. From the elevation of Chanukah into a Jewish parallel for Christmas to the fetishization of Passover Seders as “proto-Christianity,” Jews have had to confront how practicing our religion in modern secular space impacts our experience of our tradition. While it might feel extreme for us to be overly sensitive about Halloween in a similar vein, it is hard not to imagine a future in which our own holidays are treated with the same commercial disinterest as those of the ancient Druids. The central values of compassion and education that have bound our people throughout the centuries demand that we be particularly thoughtful about how we experience pumpkin-spiced lattes and the prevalence of skeletons around town.
In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides warns the Jewish community against the perils of assimilating into the cultures around us. As he puts it, “we should not follow in the customs of the Gentiles, nor imitate them in dress or in their way of trimming their hair…The Israelites shall, on the contrary, be distinguished from them and be recognizable by the way they dress and, in their activities, just as they are distinguished from them by their knowledge and their principles.” These are words from a very different time, a period in which full assimilation was unimaginable. In today’s world, though, it is far more complicated to explore what it means to have a distinct identity as a Jew, even as we participate in the intricacies of secular life.
This is not, by any means, a moral indictment of participation in the fun and community of October 31st. But, as my friend’s parents reminded her all those years ago, a Jew is a person who thinks about how their culture reflects their identity, and this is no exception. We have an ethical obligation to interpret how our behavior impacts the way we see our own religion and the religion of others. “Because everyone else is doing it” has never been a compelling answer in Jewish space. Instead, we have the opportunity to explore the values of Halloween that we can lift up within our own families and imagine how we can use Judaism to make our experience more intentional, more meaningful, and more holistic with the other holidays we celebrate during our year.
Austin Zoot is the Rabbi Educator at Valley Temple in Wyoming, Ohio.
I reserve the right to drink pumpkin spice lattes from August to January! Shabbat shalom 🎃