in memory of Bob and with all the love in the world for Bud and both of their families
I've seen many treatments recently of whether Jews should celebrate Halloween. On a simple halakhic level, the practice of participating in rituals for another religion is forbidden. Halakhah was not a big concern to me growing up, and still isn't. The following is not an argument for why Jews should participate in American Halloween customs, but rather an outline of the benefits and Jewish values I received in my own life through having a rich experience of Halloween as a child.
My partner lives in Boystown, and gay men take Halloween quite seriously. But the parades and costumes and frivolity of Halloween in the gayborhood doesn't compare to Halloween the way I remember it. The Halloween I remember had no religious overtones, even in South Bend, where most folks are Catholic. It wasn't until I studied French culture that I learned Halloween started as a religious holiday.
I lived in a neighborhood in South Bend that was the envy of other neighborhoods when it came to Halloween. Kids would come to my neighborhood for the king size candy bars those in the mansions would hand out, and, of course, there was the haunted house my "behind" neighbors put together. The best friends, Bob and Bud, who lived next door to each other, used their front yards as a spooky playground, and, I found out when I was older, their homes for the adult party.
As a small child, there was nothing so exciting as the fear that grips you when a hand grabs you in a candy bowl with false bottom. Usually, my parents let my brother and I go trick-or-treating in a modest fashion. The highlight was always the haunted house, whether the candy haul was great or sub-standard.
The haunted house brought the community together, and remains one of my best experiences of maintaining a yearly ritual that has the right intention and right actions - the haunted house captured both keva and kavanah of Halloween. As I became an older child and knew that the hand in the cauldron was attached to a person, and even when I knew who it was under the table, it was still a frightful experience. As I entered my years of being too cool to go trick-or-treating, as a neighborhood kid, I was put to work under that table with my hand in the candy cauldron or spraying silly string at kids from inside a coffin. Becoming the man behind the curtain didn't take away the mystery or specialness of the haunted house experience; it added to it. I was able to pass on the Halloween experience to those younger than me, and be responsible for helping my community. And helping make Halloween happen helped me stay engaged with the tradition when otherwise it would have been uncool to participate.
When I was in high school, tragedy struck, and Bob was killed in a workplace shooting. Bud, a fire chief, was one of the first responders at the scene. After Bob died, Bud didn't feel much like throwing a haunted house and party without his best friends. Bud put up a plaque explaining the absence of the community event. The first year without the haunted house seemed empty. The next year, the neighborhood community organization organized a day-time Halloween gathering in the park in the North Shore Triangle. Halloween, after all, was a time that our neighborhood coalesced around, and we mourned Bob's absence but came together as a community to have Halloween without Bob, but for Bob and Bud. Bud couldn't bear to celebrate by himself, and he didn't have to.
In college, my dorm organized a haunted house and brought people in to trick-or-treat, and as I became involved in the queer scene, many people my age do the costume thing and have celebrations, but there's not a proper ruach Halloween outside of my neighborhood in South Bend.
For me, Halloween is not about who has the cleverest, coolest, or sexiest costume. It is not about how drunk one gets or who has the best drag act. It is not about how much candy you collect or how scary you are or how scared you get. It's not about the decorations or even about great death and ghost puns. Halloween is about community, it's about support, it's about building things together. It's about letting other people enjoy themselves and doing the work to make it happen. It's about hospitality - having way more Halloween candy ready than necessary because you never know who will come to your door. It's about remembering the amazing antics from last year or five years ago, and telling and retelling those stories. And most of all, it's about the power of emanating kindness from the fast friendship of two men.
From Halloween, I learned values of tradition, kindness, what it means to be a part of a community, how to be there for those grieving, how to pass on my love for something to the next generation. And I learned it better and clearer from a haunted house than from my synagogue.
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