Halloween: A Jewish Spiritual Approach

Rabbi Melanie Aron

October 25, 2002

I wondered if there was anything of Jewish significance to say about Halloween this year.

Most of the Halloween battles have already been fought, many times over. Jewish schools and Jewish parents have reached an accommodation. Jewish schools don't celebrate Halloween but they don't denounce it either. Jewish Pre-schools and Day Schools have learned to have "Picture Day" on Halloween. In this way they get a discount, as school photographers aren't used at public schools on Halloween, and also insure that the students don't come to school that morning inappropriately dressed in costumes.

Meanwhile, most Jewish parents allow their children to go trick or treating, feeling that the pagan and Christian roots of these festivities are so deeply buried as to be irrelevant. I have found even Christians to be moderately surprised, caught off guard, by the mention of the Christian aspects of Halloween, All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day. Halloween's earliest history as a Celtic end of summer day of revelry, a day between last year and next on which no rules apply, has also largely been lost. Clearly neither paganism nor Christianity are on peoples' minds when they decorate their homes with bats and ghosts, skeletons and orange and black cats.

Years ago, when the United Nations voted in the "Zionism = Racism" resolution, there were active campaigns to prevent Jewish children from collecting for Unicef. Eventually Unicef decoupled itself from the United Nations in some ways and prominent Jewish leaders rejoined their board. Things had been peaceful on that front until the current intifada when UNICEF officials have made various statements that some see as one sided in their sympathy to the Palestinians. While many Jewish children still collect money for UNICEF, it is not with the uncomplicated certainly of my childhood, that UNICEF was on the side of the angels.

Halloween has been a boom for those who write Jewish children's books about imps and witches, dybicks and other element of the Jewish supernatural. As much as rabbis can argue that everything the non-Jewish world has in Halloween, we have even better in Purim, I have found stories like "The rabbi and the 29 witches" pretty popular in October.

This year, it seems that Halloween is experiencing a boom. In my neighborhood, where some of the older couples have sold their homes to young families with children, a group of the stay at home moms have organized house decorating competitions, block festivities, and secret midnight "boo" bag drop offs.

But perhaps Halloween's popularity this year, is more than a coincidence of my neighborhood. I was thinking about Halloween and Bruno Bettelheim's old book The Uses of Enchantment, in which he argues that the frightening aspects of fairy tales are used by children to deal with their fears and conflicts. Fairy tales, like Halloween festivities, allow children to be fearful in a controlled and safe way. Bettelheim has been discredited in various ways as an individual and as a researcher, but I wonder if the popularity of Halloween in such a fearful year doesn't speak to there being some truth in his basic premise.

Between the sniper in Washington and the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the nuclear arms revelation from North Korea and the continued potential for terrorist attacks in the United States, there has been a lot for us to fear. Halloween, by allowing us to admit to small amounts of fright, offers us some help in our predicament. Surviving a small fright, gives us a feeling of control in facing large ones.

Reason is another aide in overcoming fear, as is community. We comfort ourselves with reassuring numbers about the unlikelihood of the worst scenarios, and find reassurance in talking to our friends.

Spirituality offers another way of coping with fears. Psalms and Proverbs speak often about overcoming fears, and in the stories of the Torah, God often urges our patriarchs and matriarchs not to be afraid. In the past Jews have overcome fear by having a sense of strong connection to something greater than themselves, so that they had confidence that they might transcend their own deaths. " Lo ira ki ani imadah," Do not fear," God says to Abraham, "for I am with thee. "

In this season of pretend goblins and real fears, we pray that we might find a way of connecting with the confidence of our ancestors.