By Laura Weisskopf Bleill
I don’t remember hearing anything about a conflict between being Jewish and celebrating Halloween as a child. But these days, we get an earful about how celebrating Halloween isn’t compatible with being Jewish. One rabbi who put this very succinctly wrote: “Halloween, unlike Thanksgiving, plainly has in its origins religious beliefs that are foreign to Judaism, and whose beliefs are prohibited to us as Jews.” I know there are other religions or sects that raise objections to Halloween celebrations as well.
But as someone who views Judaism through a more liberal lens, I don’t subscribe to this opinion. I enjoyed another rabbi’s take on the holiday, who believes that rather than abandoning the secular holiday, we “infuse it with some meaning of our own.” When it comes down to it, I can’t think of a good reason to prevent my children from taking part in the annual festivities. I mean, who doesn’t love dressing up and getting free stuff?
Earlier this year I wrote about Purim, a spring holiday which celebrates religious freedom. It also involves dressing up and getting sweets. Although Halloween has very little in common with Purim other than costumes, I think about it when I am faced with these sorts of “dilemmas.” Purim is all about how the Jews come to survive living, pardon the cliche, as strangers in a strange land. Consciously or unconsciously, we make decisions about how to instill meaningful Jewish values into our children’s lives that sometimes means going against the grain of what’s popular, traditional or socially acceptable.
Ironically, I believe that my daughter’s choice of a costume for this Halloween shows how she has absorbed some of the lessons she has learned from religious school and from home.
She will be Fire Girl, a superhero she “invented” who is her alter ego at school. (We believe she is actually a take off on Firestar, Spiderman’s girlfriend, but we’re not correcting her – she’s 4.) Fire Girl is not violent and doesn’t hurt people with her unique power. Rather, she helps anyone in need — literally putting out fires.
One of the highlights of my daughter’s religious school classroom is talking about mitzvot, or good deeds, that the children performed during the past week. That Fire Girl is all about being helpful and giving perhaps is no accident — or at least that’s what I would like to believe! As it turns out, many of the most ubiquitous superheroes were created by Jewish people (Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Spiderman among others).
On Sunday, Fire Girl will be waiting at home until the afternoon. There won’t be a costume parade, a “trunk or treat” event or (G-d forbid!) a haunted house at religious school. Halloween, we’re reminded, just isn’t Jewish. And you know what? That’s OK. For a few hours, we’re going to forget all about it while we go about our typical Sunday morning activities of art, music, stories, and giving tzedakah (charity).
But later in the evening, we will attend a Halloween party and go trick or treating with friends. The party host and many of the guests are Jewish.
So I guess we’ll have a “Jewish” Halloween after all. And you know what? That’s OK, too.
Laura Weisskopf Bleill, a co-founder of chambanamoms.com, will be dressing her as her favorite Jewish superhero — Golda Meir — for Halloween. She writes “Being a Jew in C-U,” a column about being a Jewish suburban girl in a cornfield, on Thursdays. You can reach her at laura@chambanamoms.com.