Sauloween

A Jewish Alternative to the Festival of Frights

Today, I’m going to do something unprecedented.

I’m going to present a counterculural Jewish adaptation of Halloween, rooted in Jewish Scripture and theology and responsive to the realities of the twenty-first century.

Scared yet?

Two months before the “December Dilemma,” Jews face what might be termed the “October Obstacle.” Of course, to some, Halloween is no obstacle at all; the majority of American Jews have been active participants in this night of fright and candy, taking it as the perfect opportunity to socialize with neighborhood families, load up on sweets, and get extra mileage out of an old Purim costume. Orthodox and traditional Jews largely grow up without observing this fall staple, poo-pooing participation in the once pagan rite as a clear violation of the biblical commandment: “nor shall you follow their customs (Lev. 18:3).”

The rabbinic responses to Halloween have largely centered on its permissibility —i.e. may a Jew participate in such a macabre (if secular) festival, especially knowing full well its pagan origins? Rabbi Michael Broyde’s recent book, Jewish Law and the American Thanksgiving Celebration (2024), addresses this issue from an orthodox perspective (p55-p64). Revisiting his twenty-five year old responsum on this frightful subject, Rabbi Broyde derives his position from the rulings of Rabbi Moshe Isserles on the Jewish observance of non-Jewish customs (Shulchan Aruch YD 178:1).¹ Based on this legal precedent, Rabbi Broyde posits that one would have to accept one of the following assertions as true in order to permit candy collection on Halloween:

1. Halloween celebrations have a secular origin.

2. The conduct of the individuals celebrating Halloween can be rationally explained independent of its pagan origins.

3. The pagan origins of Halloween, or the Catholic response to it, are so deeply hidden that they have disappeared, and the celebrations can be attributed to some secular source or reason.

4. The activities and practices of Halloween are consistent with the Jewish tradition.

Rabbi Broyde finds all four conditions to be false. And even if one were to be true, it would not address the question of prudence, for: “Should we encourage participation in celebrations that lack meaningful values simply because they contain no explicit violation?” Even in forbidding active participation in Halloween, Rabbi Broyde allows for circumstances in which one may give out candy at one’s home or in professional settings on the principle of darchei shalom (ways of peace).

Rabbi Jeremy Fine on the basketball court as “The Great Rabbino”

A recent, creative approach comes from the Conservative movement via my Chicago colleague, Rabbi Jeremy Fine. Rabbi Fine takes an active interest in the intersection of Jewish values and American public life, especially in the realm of sports as creator of The Great Rabbino, a speakers bureau for Jewish athletes and sports personalities.

But Rabbi Fine also has a lot to say about another major American pastime: Halloween.

In a legal opinion submitted to the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law & Standards, Rabbi Fine offers a nuanced series of Halloween permissions and prohibitions grounded in Jewish law.² He includes Broyde’s framework, but appeals beyond it to include the rulings of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (1895-1986) whose position on American Thanksgiving implies that secularization has opened up religiously-vacated festivals to Jewish participation. Rabbi Fine claims that this applies equally to Halloween. With the rupture of the holiday’s pagan past largely accomplished, the intentions of trick-or-treating Jews are upon candy and community, not ancient pagan metaphysics. Nevertheless, Rabbi Fine still emphasizes Jewish “participation” over “celebration.”³ Here is his ruling:

Photo by Jeremy McKnight on Unsplash

Permitted:

1. Passing out candy or other acceptable items to those trick-or-treating.

2. Trick-or-treating with no religious intent.

3. Carving pumpkins, ideally not in the shapes of ghosts or the undead, to celebrate the time of year.

4. Dressing up in already owned or reusable ordinary clothing.

5. Attending parties as a participant with no religious association to the holiday including prayer, meal, or Halloween specific celebrations.

Prohibited:

1. Dressing up in immodest clothing due to Tzniut (modesty).

2. Wearing costumes of ghost, zombies, etc. which transfer one from participating to celebrating.

3. Hosting of parties that include any prayers, celebration of the religious nature of the holiday, or meals. Not hosting parties at all.

4. Decorating one’s home in celebration of Halloween.

5. Vandalizing of any kind including, but not limited to, the common use of toilet paper and eggs to ruin property.

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Both of these approaches — Rabbi Broyde’s restrictive standard and Rabbi Fine’s guidelines for participation — are sensitive and faithful. More importantly, both engage with important values, including Jewish distinctiveness, avoidance of pagan worship (both in practice and appearance), preserving moral conduct, and pursuing ways of communal peace.

Allow me, however, to raise the stakes (don’t worry vampires, not for you).

I have written previously about my aversion to Halloween on both philosophical and biblical grounds. In our current culture of horror, the once cartoon-like celebration of Halloween now has evolved into a increasingly grisly street march, as we invite a season of horror, costumes, and death-obsession, embodying our age which has become numb to suffering and hungry for images of violence. No one has capitalized on this more than the terrorist organization Hamas, who with more glee than the Nazis themselves has exploited this weakness in the Western heart by livestreaming their atrocities worldwide.⁴

The Hebrew Bible stands opposed to this twisted worldview in a thousand different ways, rooted in the core teaching of human beings as created in the image of God. As Shai Held (and recently Tomer Perisco) have taught, idolatry is deemed a sin because the human being itself carries the stamp of God’s own form.

What does this have to do with Halloween? Firstly, this view is in diametric opposition to Halloween’s obsession with the undead. A rotting corpse is considered an embarassment to God’s own honor, which is one of the reasons that Jews bury their dead as fast as possible. The Torah itself rules that even when a body is hung for a capital offense, it must be taken down that same day: “For an impaled body is an affront to God: you shall not defile the land that your the Lord your God is giving you to possess (Deut. 21:23).” Tzara’at, leprosy, is considered impure in part because it makes a person look undead (as with Miriam’s leprosy). Eschewing mummification or the exploitative parading of the dead, the biblical way lies instead in honoring a human body as God’s own.

Blood, too, is on the metaphorical chopping block. For blood, in the Bible, is thought to contain the life force of a creature and thus belongs to God as its Creator. On these grounds the Torah forbids the consumption of blood: “for the blood is the life; and thou mayst not eat the life with the meat.”¹ Contrast this with the blood-drinking habits of many a vampire or other horror movie villains. They too share this same biblical understanding that blood contains the life force of the dead. The Torah respects that such powers of life and death are not ours, but God’s alone, and therefore conceives blood as a sacred substance to be “poured out upon the earth,” rather than consumed.

The Hebrew Bible is, at its core, a celebration of life as good and a rejection of death-fetishes and blood games — not only of our pagan past, but of our repaganizing present. Any Jewish engagement with Halloween, to my mind, must meet this ethical challenge head on.

How to do it? Let us attempt a Jewish adaptation, an optional festival, which takes the values embraced by Rabbi Broyde and Rabbi Fine of participation and peace, but which actually attempts a counter-cultural practice against the Halloween culture of death.

To get to the heart of this Jewish remix to Halloween, one must conjure up the Bible’s own spooky ghost story: the tale of King Saul and the Witch of En-Dor (1 Samuel 28).

Throughout his rule, the biblical King Saul garnered a reputation as a determined defender against spooky stuff. He enforced the biblical prohibiion against consulting spirits of the dead (Lev. 19:31) and against eating blood (1 Sam 14:31-35). But late in his career, Saul found himself in a tight spot: the Philistines were encamped at Shunem, preparing for a great battle with the Israelites. Saul was frightened and unable to consult his professional coach: the recently-departed prophet, Samuel. Unable to settle his heart through dreams, prophets ,and even Urim and Thummim, the fearful Saul returned to those very forbidden methods that he once purged from the land:

(7) Then Saul said to his courtiers, “Find me a woman who consults ghosts, so that I can go to her and inquire through her.” And his courtiers told him that there was a woman in En-dor who consulted ghosts.

(8) Saul disguised himself; he put on different clothes and set out with two men. They came to the woman by night, and he said, “Please divine for me by a ghost. Bring up for me the one I shall name to you.”

(9) But the woman answered him, “You know what Saul has done, how he has banned [the use of] ghosts and familiar spirits in the land. So why are you laying a trap for me, to get me killed?”

(10) Saul swore to her by GOD: “As GOD lives, you won’t get into trouble over this.”

(11) At that, the woman asked, “Whom shall I bring up for you?” He answered, “Bring up Samuel for me.”

The witch’s séance at En-Dor is ultimately successful, but its outcome is a failure for Saul. The disturbed ghost of Samuel arises and condemns the king for his sinful summoning of the dead. He affirms that Saul will not only have the kingship taken from him, but that he will also lose the upcoming battle with the Philistines. Full with fear and weak from fasting, Saul falls paralyzed to the ground. Surprisingly, it is the witch herself who takes pity on him, encouraging him to rise, feeding him, and tending to him and his men.

This biblical ghost story captures both the essential Jewish approach to the dead — once gone, they are meant to be left alone other than prayers and good deeds in their honor. Spiritualism and séances are the norm across pagan cultures, yet to the Israelites they distracted from God, the only worthy power in the universe. Summoning the dead, whether to augur the future or to muster their powers, both denied God’s agency and authority and submitted one to the whims of local sorcerors and witches.

And yet the story of the Witch of En-Dor also seems oddly familiar: the tale of a man dressing up in costume going to see a witch, who welcomes him into her home and feeds him. Strikingly, it is the witch herself who is the most sympathetic character of the story — sensitive to Saul and caring for his needs at great peril to her own life.⁵

This combination of the bibilcal denial of spiritualism and necromancy, combined with the universal value of hospitality, which yields a Jewish counterimage of Halloween.

And so I present you with, after many years of thought, the first draft of יום שאול – Sauloween.

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

Sauloween Customs:

1. Passing out candy or festive gifts to household visitors.

2. Decoration: Joyful harvest decorations, pumpkins, and lights are permitted. All depictions of impure substance (the undead, blood, and horror) are forbidden.

3. Dressing up in joyful or humorous costume, as in Purim. All undead, scary, or bloody costumes are forbidden.

4. Joyful Singing — religious poetry and songs emphasizing joy and life, including:

   1. Yom Sha’ul (Traditional Piyyut, described below)

   2. Gesher Tzar M’od

   3. Amar Rabbi Nachman

   4. Ivdu et Hashem B’Simcha

   5. Am Yisrael Chai

5. Shabbat Modifications — going door to door (analgous to trick-or-treating) should be done before sundown on Fridays or after sundown (Havdalah) on Saturdays. Traditional Sauloween songs are moved to the Shabbat table instead of door-to-door visits.

As opposed to Jewish holidays, and the Jewish calendar in general, in which days start in the evening and continue to the next morning, Halloween begins in the morning of October 31 and the culminating event is the evening. Though absolutely unheard of, the celebration of Sauloween then must begin in the morning of October 31 with the special rituals outlined below. The lectionary readings are as follows:

Torah Reading:

1. Deut 18:9-13

2. Deut. 18:14-17

3. Deut. 18:18-22

This reading comprises the Deuteronomic laws against occult practices and to guard against false prophecy. When Sauloween falls out on Shabbat, the full reading (Deut 18: 9-22) is included as a special maftir with an additional scroll. The Haftarah for Yom Sha’ul is the story of Saul and the Witch of En-Dor, as described above (1 Samuel 28: 3-25).

As above, joyful songs are sung while going door-to-door (in parallel with Halloween’s trick-or-treating). This piyyut (liturgical poem), Yom Sha’ul (Sauloween) is replete with biblical allusions, particularly to the Samuel story from End-or.

יום שאול ,יום שאול
מלא אמתחתי בבול
השקיני כעץ שתול
ואפתח פי בהילול

דורש אוב או ידעני
מות יומת אמר אלי
אך בליל שאול מלכי
בכפיו אשים נפשי

התחפש וגם לבש
בגד זר וגם חדש
לילה בא אל אשת דרש
אך ממלכה לא יירש

ברחבות הולכים ברון
לפני מנהג שגעון
רק לדעת שלום שכון  
חי ה׳ יקרך עון

ואם איש זקן עולה
והוא במעיל עטה
פניו הדרת יפה
מוסר ללב דבר הזה

בביתי כאשר באוך
ואשימה לפניך
מתוקים ופת לחמך
ויהי בך כוחך

Translation:

CHORUS:
Sauloween, Sauloween
Fill my bag this month of bul
Let me drink like a tree's roots
And I shall open my mouth with praise

"One who seeks out ghosts or spirits
He shall die" my God doth say
But on the night of Saul -- my king,
In His hands, I place my soul. 

He disguised himself and wore
a garment strange and new before
a medium he approached at night 
hoping for a future bright.

In this street, we joyful walk
before a custom full of shock
our neighbor's peace is our desire
which shall not fuel our Maker's ire.

And if you see a graybeard rise
a robe enwraps him as his guise,
brighten his face for your part
for this is wisdom of the heart.

At my home, when you shall come
I shall place before you some
sweet things and your bread as well
thereby you shall find your strength.

This is a first draft, and certainly shows its stray threads. But I hope that it points to the opportunity of the “October obstacle” to demonstrate the particularistic Jewish value of human life alongside the universal value of goodwill and hospitality. For even as the witch of En-Dor knows that Saul disapproves of her choices and has power over her very life, she neverthelesss welcomes him in, reviving his spirit from fear, depression and paralysis.

So too, bringing joy into the streets and partaking of the positive aspects of the Halloween season, we should be reminded of our role as beacons of light and hospitality, even in the face of darkness.

1. Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Dei’ah 178:1, ReMA ad loc.

Rather, one should be distinct from them in one’s manner of dress and in all of one’s actions. But all of this applies only to things that non-Jews do for the sake of licentiousness. For example, they are accustomed to wearing red clothing, which is official/princely clothing, and other clothing that is similarly immodest. [These restrictions also apply] to things that they are accustomed to doing because of a custom or rule that does not have a[ny underlying] reason, out of concern that [a Jew who does such things will follow the] “ways of the Amorites,” and that it has the blemish of idol worship inherited from their ancestors.

But things that they are accustomed to doing for a useful purpose—such as their custom for expert doctors to wear particular clothing so that the doctors will be recognized as specialists—one is permitted to wear [such clothing]. (Maharik Shoresh 88) Similarly, things that are done out of respect or another reason, it is permitted [for one to do such things]. And therefore they said one may burn [the items of deceased] kings, and there is not in this “the ways of the Amorites.” (R”an).

2. For an early version of this responsum, read here: https://tcjewfolk.com/2013/11/12/jewish-exploration-halloween/

3. Rabbi Fine roots many of his conclusions as a parallel case to Rabbi Broyde’s own ruling on Valentine’s Day. See Broyde, Jewish Law and the American Thanksgiving Celebration, 65-70.

4. For those who have watched the Sci-Fi series Firefly, the Reavers are an unfortunatley fitting parallel.

5. My rabbi and teacher, Hillel I. Millgram, has observed that the women of the Book of Samuel are the unique bearers of the moral message of the entire work. The plot of the rise and fall of Samuel, Saul, and David could easily be told without them, yet their parts of the narrative comprise an incredible critique of male power and suggest a contrasting theology of divine care. In his two-volume critical reading of Samuel, The Invention of Monotheist Ethics, Millgram further makes the case that the Book of Samuel was mostly likely written by a female author.