Ask the Rabbis // Halloween
Should Jewish children celebrate Halloween?
26
Oct
28
Oct
A Very Jewish Halloween
by Sala Levin
Halloween approacheth, and with it the opportunity to impress your friends with the wittiness and originality of your costume. Or--if you're like this blogger--the opportunity to take a look in your closet, decide you're not nearly clever enough for this particular holiday, and celebrate instead with reruns of Hocus Pocus and a pumpkin beer.
But don't despair yet, costume-less readers, because, when it comes to Halloween, we take our cues from Theodor Herzl: If you will it, it is no dream. So with that determination in mind, here are some last-minute costume ideas inspired by news about Jews. (Because, really, what is Halloween if not secular Purim?)
The Bluth Family: Pop-culture snobs rejoiced when Mitchell Hurwitz, creator of the late, much-lauded Arrested Development, announced earlier this month that the television show would likely return...
26
Oct
Kosher for Halloween
By Daniel Kieval
It's Halloween in the suburbs. For a couple of weeks, already, the neighborhood decorations have been out in full force: pumpkins, black cats, spiders, ghosts. Then there are the houses that hold nothing back, turning lawns into graveyards complete with tombstones, skeletons, and back-from-the-dead monsters, such as mummies and zombies.
With kids and parents across the country designing costumes, planning parties, and fortifying candy supplies, Halloween may seem an unlikely time to start pondering Judaism. After all, the chaos of the fall holidays has passed, and Jews are supposed to be enjoying a well-deserved break, not starting in on more holidays. Yet, surrounded as we are by the Halloween culture, it may be worthwhile to ask the question: Does Halloween's glorification of blood and gore, of demons and the living dead have any relation...