Halloween
is one of my favorite holidays. I know,
it’s a bit odd for me – a Rabbi, a Cantor – a Jewish leader, to admit from the
bema, no less, of a synagogue.
Halloween, historically, is not at all a Jewish custom. Our modern day celebration of scare, pumpkin,
and candy grew out of an ancient Celtic holiday (Samhein) that marked the transition between the fall
harvest season and winter. The ghoul
factor came into the picture due to the fact that in that period the transition
between seasons was viewed as liminal space, a bridge, if you will, between the
worlds of the living and the dead.
It
is perhaps the fascination with the spiritual world of the dead that makes
traditional Jews rally against the celebration of the holiday. It simply isn’t Jewish to be concerned with
such things. Arguably too, its adoption
by the Catholic Church as an erev precurser to All Saints Day hasn’t helped the
Jewish community’s interest or desire to embrace this Festival of Candy. Again, how dare Jews celebrate such a thing?
Perhaps
we need to get over ourselves. Let us
not forgot the origin of some of our own customs. The Hashkivenu prayer of our evening liturgy
came into being as a verbal amulet, of sorts, to protect us in our sleep from
what may lurk in the night. The use of
spices in our Havdalah ritual may have roots in the idea that sundown
on Shabbat was a scary time of transition (not unlike Samhein) where we needed
protection from the underworld. The
walking dead is not a new idea. The
ancient Celtics weren’t the only folks to fear such things.
Our
resistance against Halloween, I believe, stems more from a fear of giving into,
of assimilating too far into American culture as if this holiday marks a
boundary beyond which there is no redeeming us. We’ve given into the reality that Christmas will over take December, so here we want to draw a line: religious
schools insist on being open on the evening of October 31st when we educators know that few will attend;
day schools say “oh, okay” to kids wanting to dress up but only as long as you
stick to story book characters being studied. No
ghosts or goblins. There is a concerted effort
at controlling just how far we are going to cave into this pagan nonsense, as it is
termed.
It
is time that we just accept the reality that Halloween isn’t so bad for the
Jews. Accepting Halloween will not be
the singular factor that leads to the demise of the Jewish community in
America. If the demise happens, there will be plenty of things on which to hang the hat of responsibility. It won't be due to our celebration of Halloween. Our participation in it is, for
sure, a sign of acceptance and acculturation. Halloween is an American pastime
that is intimately tied to the passage of seasons in this country. But, Halloween may also have some very redeemable
Jewish value.
Halloween
is one of the few times during the year when we as a general rule actually
behave like Abraham in this week's Shabbat Torah reading. When else do we stop what we are doing and
rush to the door to great our neighbors and offer them food? When I first moved to a suburban
neighborhood, Halloween was when I met my neighbors face to face. In another neighborhood, it was a time for festive communal
gathering and sharing of goodies. Everyone was welcome and
included. All you had to do was show up.
In a world where there is discussion of
building walls between us and our neighbors, or where the rising Speaker of the
House has to formally denounce any and all support for immigration reform, we could
learn a lot from a holiday whose primary customs include going door to door to
greet each other and share some sweetness.
So let’s
talk about immigration. How many of us
can claim to be natives of this country?
I have roots on one side of my family that extend at least as far as the
civil war era, and may reach back to the period of the American Revolution,
still my ancestors were once foreigners.
The other side of my family is perhaps more like most of us with my dad
and his sister being first generation Americans. We were strangers here, so when did we forget
how to be more welcoming to those who follow in our footsteps? When did we forget how to open the door and
be hospitable?
An
article by Matthew Hutson in this month’s The
Atlantic ponders why Americans are so motivated by the idea, as he puts it,
of “keeping just ahead of the Joneses.” He
has taken note of studies that seem to indicate that it isn’t sheer advantage
that makes us tick but rather relative advantage. An example of this is that people making just
above the minimum wage are among those least supportive of a minimum wage hike. We seem to prefer to be a step ahead of at
least somebody. I had a professor of American
Jewish History hypothesize that the popularity of Chinese food restaurants
among Jews in the mid-20th century was because visiting those
new-immigrant owned establishments reinforced that sense of our having made it. There was someone else who hadn’t quite
gotten as far as we had.
I’m
not sure I agree with this professor’s hypothesis, but I do wonder if our good
fortune and success has caused us to become a bit callous towards others who
are seeking similar opportunities that we have had. Hard work isn’t the only ingredient to
success. Opportunity, luck, and arguably
a big dose of welcoming hospitality are critical ingredients as well.
Tonight,
many of us will model Abraham and Sarah as we celebrate Halloween.
We will open our doors, greet and give candy to any one who knocks on our door – young, old,
black, white, Hispanic, Asian, gay, straight, American, non-American. We don’t ask. It doesn’t matter. We will greet everyone with equal
hospitality. Too bad, we don’t do that a little more often.
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