In American Jewish Life, Don’t Take Halloween for Granted

I never thought I’d have two stories related to Halloween this week, but bear with me — there’s a lesson to be learned from this seemingly superfluous holiday.

Over 30 years ago, my overwhelmed mother and father were given a few weeks to decide where to enroll me (then age 7) and my sister (then age 10) immediately after we arrived in the United States. Our family visited a local Jewish school in West Los Angeles that assured us it was Orthodox. But we didn’t understand such terms because back in Iran, there were no Jewish denominations. “Why are they saying the school is ‘Orthodox’? It’s Jewish, isn’t it? There’s either Jewish or not-Jewish,” my father told my mother. The discussion about Jewish private schools proved moot—after my parents saw the tuition costs for the Jewish school, they enrolled their daughters in a lovely (and more importantly, free) public school in Beverly Hills.

Suddenly, the choice of being afraid was the best reassurance that we were in a safe, wonderful country. 

At the time, I wondered whether my parents had made the right decision. And then, one month after starting school, I witnessed how children in this country embraced a festive and magical night called Halloween. There were funny costumes. There was bountiful candy. But more than anything else, it seemed that in America, people voluntarily chose to be frightened; they actually sought out fear, whether by watching scary movies or wearing gory costumes. What a change. In Iran, no one chose to be scared; we were already terrified out of our wits by the regime and Iraqi missiles that fell out of the sky during the Iran-Iraq War. Suddenly, the choice of being afraid was the best reassurance that we were in a safe, wonderful country. 

Halloween was my first introduction into the world of the truly secular, and of American culture itself (however commercialized). After I watched the seductively fun festivities of that first Halloween, I begged my parents to never change their minds and enroll me in a Jewish school.

I’m no rabbi, but it’s my understanding that from a strictly Halachic perspective, Halloween is forbidden in Judaism. But I also believe that most of us would rather make that choice for ourselves. 

I’m not blaming Halloween on my total lack of Jewish education, or the fact that I didn’t learn the “Aleph Bets” until I was in my late twenties, or even that, for many years, I shunned Jews who were more religious than me. I’m simply stating that, as a child, Halloween served as the biggest reason why I hoped my parents wouldn’t become more observant Jews. 

For their part, my mother and father didn’t seem to care about the holiday one way or another; they had bigger fish to fry than whether their daughters donned witches’ hats and ate candy. As long as my sister and I were no longer in Iran, that was all that mattered. 

But this isn’t 1989; there is no influx of Jewish refugees from the Middle East (and the former Soviet Union) who are flocking to the United States and making important choices about their children’s Jewish upbringing (or lack thereof). The novelty of a “safe America” has worn off. For the most part, we’re comfortable.  But in terms of maintaining our Jewish identity, it is precisely that comfort that can be our biggest enemy. 

In that vein, I wanted to capture a moment in time in the life of Jewish L.A.: In 2021, in our state of comfort, do we embrace or reject Halloween? Is Halloween truly a metaphor for our American identities as well as our slow, gentle assimilation?

My own community of Iranian Jews has only been in this country for 40 years, but nearly all of the Iranian American Jewish families I know that are traditional, but not religious, celebrate Halloween with their kids. In just four decades, we’ve gone from dressing our children as Esther and Mordechai (Purim is the ultimate Persian Jewish holiday) and teaching them messages about Jewish survival and the power of community, to frantically searching for Spiderman and Disney princess costumes at the Rite-Aid in Beverly Hills to partake in a fun holiday that was nevertheless rooted in paganism and idolatry.  

Suffice it to say, my parents never again dressed me up in a Purim costume after we came to this country. Why bother with two holidays? Seeing all of those costumes and all that candy, they easily (and very mistakenly) conflated Halloween with Purim.

In asking local rabbis of various denominations one seemingly simple question (“Should Jews Celebrate Halloween?”) in a separate spread in this paper, I knew I was opening a can of [gummy] worms: Some rabbis responded with clear “No’s;” other rabbis basically said, “No, but;” still others were much more open to Halloween as an innocent experience not to be shunned by the American Jew (or Jewish American). I can imagine that nearly all of the rabbis were forced to think about their congregants in responding to the question. As the leader of a congregation, you can’t exactly disallow Halloween if half of your members have already bought their costumes (I hear Dr. Fauci masks are a big hit this season). 

I’m no rabbi, but it’s my understanding that from a strictly Halachic perspective, Halloween is forbidden in Judaism. But I also believe that most of us would rather make that choice for ourselves. 

A year or two after we resettled in the U.S., my mother had her own epiphany when she saw faux headstones on the lawn of a local Iranian Jewish family’s home. “There’s the mezuzah on the doorpost,” she pointed, seemingly horrified, “and here are fake graves in front of the house. What’s going on here? This is the least Jewish thing I’ve ever seen.”

But by then, it was too late. My sister and I had too much invested in our newly American identities (and all that candy) to let go of Halloween. So how did I maintain and grow my Jewish identity? Maybe it was the absence of real fear that I learned at Halloween that gave me the courage to become a proud Jew.

Tabby Refael is a Los Angeles-based writer, speaker, and civic action activist. Follow her on Twitter @RefaelTabby