Challahween? How Jewish families navigate Halloween

This week, many Jewish schools will be participating in a hallowed end of October tradition: sending out letters discouraging families from celebrating Halloween.

The prominence of Halloween in public has ballooned in recent decades, evolving into a full-blown seasonal phenomenon. But despite the celebratory spiders and inflatable pumpkins, Jews tend to have a mixed relationship to the festival. Many see it as a bit of harmless, secular fun—a time for neighbours of all faiths to welcome and be welcomed into each other’s homes, share sweets, and indulge in playful kitsch, costumes and parties.

Others see it as a festival born of paganism and idolatry, later mired in antisemitic violence before ultimately becoming a modern-day sexualized glorification of the macabre. Regardless of where they fall on this spectrum, our rabbinic podcast hosts have a whole set of important questions for Halloween: Can a cultural phenomenon shed its religious origins and become fully secular? How much should Jews try to join their neighbours in shared cultural space? And how much should they cultivate their own individuality?

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

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