Growing up in Iran, I did not have any of the electronic gadgets my children enjoy today. Instead, what I loved was my neighborhood.
On weekends, and during long summer days after school, we would run in the streets, unsupervised. We would randomly join a local soccer match played with a plastic ball that cost all of 10 cents. The goal posts were made of trash cans, or rocks, or other kids. No one was worried. We exchanged bikes, and went for long rides, got lost, and was escorted back home by those who acted as surrogate parents for that last hour of the day, before a warm dinner was served by mother.
“Ghashogh Zani” was a custom we had similar to trick or treat. We dressed up, some under the guise of a chador, and we knocked on doors, where we were greeted by a friendly face. Coins were dropped in the metal pot against which a metal spoon would sound, ring and beg for a gift.
Halloween is a day when we put on masks, but when our hearts and doors open to each other.
Halloween is the gift of neighborhood and of innocence.
For years, Jews have resisted celebrating Halloween, in the fear of conversion to Christianity and celebration of paganism. We tell our children not to worry as we have Purim, where we get to dress up, as if there is a makeup holiday, a tit for tat.
Having grown up in the embrace of a safe neighborhood, I feel that we rob our children of the sense of a community by denying them trick or treating.
The role of religion should be to place within our hearts a sense of comfort, that there is some order to this madness, and that there is a place we can call home. We follow customs and traditions to feel closer to God’s order and to one another.
Religion should seek closeness and not distance, love and not fear.
Don’t celebrate paganism. Don’t celebrate death. Don’t celebrate nudity and pornography. But, in the midst of resistance, don’t teach children fear. Take them out and teach them that they live in a safe world, where when you knock on your neighbor’s door, you are greeted by a gift.
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