Few Tricks, Mostly Treats

Folks,

Nothing brings out a good geschrei like Halloween on Shabbat, and this year, the soul-rending shriek is particularly loud. After Gaza, after Epstein, the masks have come off, revealing the antisemitic culture on our college campuses, in our cultural institutions, and progressive organizations. Having grown up in conservative Orange County, I know that antisemitism has always been covered by the thinnest of masks by many on the Right. At a PTA meeting, someone once demanded that my Bronx-born mother show her papers. Today, that mask has come off too with the president declaring some of us “good Jews,” and some of us “bad Jews.” On the Right, examples of “Nazi” misspeaks, and positive “Hitler,” references regularly appear on social media. It is all frightening, and hard to take. For decades, American Jews have dropped their melting pot costumes, and let their Jewishness show, and now many are wondering if it’s time to return to wearing cultural camouflage. To stop publicly wearing kippas. To take down the mezuzah by their door. To keep quiet when someone is calling Jews “colonizers,” or perpetrators of “Genocide.” Or, ignore Jewish students being discriminated against because of their support of Israel. Almost from LA’s earliest years, Jews have given much to make the words “I love LA” ring true, including writing the song. We have helped to create educational and economic opportunities, worked for social justice, made art and music and contributed to a sense of what it means to live here. Mostly, its been treats, and very few tricks. To counter much in the negative headlines, we need to remind our neighbors of this too.
…Let me also remind you to become a paid subscriber. I need your support to continue publishing MegilLA for another year. If you read regularly, or resend to friends, please support with your dollars this kind of creative, committed Jewish Journalism. I need you to pitch in.

Shabbat shalom.
Edmon J. Rodman

Edmon J. Rodman

Every Halloween, since the fake headstone became a common staple of October 31 front lawn décor, I have searched in vain for a Jewish version. It’s not that I want to buy one, but more of an annual check on how the American market perceives what Jews are ready and willing to buy.

This year, since Halloween falls on Shabbat, I looked with particular interest.

Currently for sale are Christmas tree toppers shaped like Stars of David, kippot and tallitot for a dog’s bark mitzvah, and a World War II Evacuee Girl Costume which looks identical to an Anne Frank Halloween that was written-up in a 2017 Time magazine article.

If you haven’t seen a Halloween graveyard on a neighbor’s lawn, they are often the final resting place of some truly awful humor. Disturbing the dead of night, the foam tombstones are engraved with such non mots as “Rest in Peace Ima Ghost,” “Dee Capitated…Finally, She’s Ahead,” and R.I.P. Colin Sick.”

So, I wondered, why not a Hebrew headstone? Surely, in today’s atmosphere where Jews are accused of genocide and starvation in Gaza, and generally held responsible for all the world’s ills, even by some Jews, there could be space for some relatively mild Jewish-themed prop tombstones.

You would think that a headstone inscribed with something like “Here Lies Cohen With Most of His Colon,” or, “Poor Levi, His Jeans Lasted Longer,” would be slithering off the shelves at Spirit Halloween.

Why not?

Even in this anti-Jewish marketplace (some would say “antisemitic”) the producers and marketers may be worried about blowback, as a Nazi death camp costume received a few years ago.

Or, as I suspect, many Jewish consumers are just not interested, and even less enthusiastic about seeing a Jewish graveyard on their neighbor’s front lawn.

Could it be that the over $11 billion Halloween industry has come to fill our eyes with too much death?

Jewish eyes, this year in particular, filled with returned dead Israeli hostages, and the human and physical destruction in Gaza, have seen enough of the dead.

The Season of Our Joy, Sukkot, is not that far behind us when the death imagery begins. Only a few weeks have passed since we invited into our temporary shelters the ushpizin, the spiritual guests like King David and Queen Esther, when Fredy Krueger, Chucky, Pennywise, and too many grim reapers come knocking.

Yet, not all objects made for this time of year, are out of the realm of Jewish sensibilities, or observance.

Surprisingly, adding a little light to the web of October gloom is Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. On November 1-2, in homes in Mexico, and LA, the holiday is observed by family and friends gathering to honor and remember those close to them who have died.

During the weeks leading up to the holiday, shops, restaurants, and public spaces fill with vibrantly colorful takes on human skulls. Part of the observance is the building, or composing of ofrendas, or home altars to honor the dead, and the skeletal imagery often figures prominently in them.

Though intended as a joyful reminder of the vibrancy of human life, I sometimes find all the orbital cavities staring back at me too much to take; even a reminder of my own future in the boneyard.

However, within the observance of Día de los Muertos, I have noticed reminders of Shabbat observance and joy too. Candles are a part of the ofrendas, and pan de muerto, bread of the dead, which is placed in the ofrendas, and also eaten, looks a lot like round challah.

Vibrant and strong-scented marigolds, are often placed in the ofrenda as well, and are seen as a guide for departing souls seeking a way back to their family. Flowers, an important part of Shabbat, can represent our way back to beauty and joy.

With these connections in mind, my wife and I have adopted an object from the observance of Day of the Dead to our own ethnic needs. Hanging in our living room is a hand-hammered metal ofrenda box, that we use to keep our Jewish ritual objects for the observance of Havdalah: a spice box, wine cup, and candle holder.

Both The Day of the Dead and Havdalah mark and honor important passages, and distinctions. Each involves the kindling of light, the taste of wine, and the sweet smells of life.

Seeking the imaginative, on one of those trips in the early 1960s, he sourced a line of ceramic bobblehead bottle stoppers including those in the above photo: a clown, a beatnik, a winking Irishman, and a Cossack, as well as several other slightly bizarre designs.

As you raise a bottle corked by one of the figures, it nods its wholehearted approval.