I grew up celebrating Halloween. I spent the weeks before choosing the perfect costume, and spent months after enjoying the candy I got by trick-or-treating. I learned Halloween songs in school, and loved to carve pumpkins. When I got to college, I made friends with a group of very observant Jews. Halloween was just not on their radar. It wasn't something they did at all growing up. October 31st was just another day. While all of my friends didn't do anything for Halloween, my Hillel felt the need to do something Halloween related, since it fell on Shabbat. We attempted to have Halloween themed things, without actually doing anything blatantly Halloween-y. We put Jewish facts about superstitions, ghosts, and magic on Shabbat dinner tables. We had a haunted havdalah in the middle of the Nature Preserve- a wooded area on campus. While this was a Hillel event, it was specifically and intentionally co-sponsored by KESHER and KOACH, Hillel's Reform and Conservative communities on campus. Shammai, Hillel's Orthodox Community declined the invitation to be a co-sponsor. While almost none of the Orthodox Community took part in any of our activites that weekend last Halloween, they were angry. While it didn't last very long, me we (Hillel e-board members) received a lot of backlash for choosing to do any Halloween programming.
Here I am at AHA one year later. I kind of assumed that being part of a Pluralistic Jewish Community like AHA would mean that Halloween really wouldn't be an issue. We are a Jewish school, so why do anything about Halloween? It just so happens that one of the co-deans of Jewish Life LOVES Halloween. He has been talking about it for months. I have to admit, his ideas are pretty cool. He's shared a lot of crazy information with me about Judaism and the supernatural.
I was asked to compile a Haunted Havdalah Service. While I am not thrilled by the idea of helping to create Halloween programming on campus, I am fascinated by all of the creepy (and sometimes scary) aspects of Judaism that aren't so familiar.
The readings between the Havdalah blessings are:
(Taken from J. Trachtenberg’s Jewish Magic and Superstition)
To be said out loud at the beginning of Havdalah:
It has been said that magical charms were best recited during or immediately following the Havdalah ceremony. The Talmud specifies Tuesday and Friday nights (and later the end of Shabbat, Havdalah) was also added, as the time when the demons were most to be feared. Psalm 91 (the anti-demonic psalm), was used as a form of protection.
After first paragraph/Before the Wine Blessing:
On Saturday evening, wine was often offered to the spirits, as part of a larger ritual. Some of the wine was poured on the ground “as a good omen for the entire week, to symbolize good fortune and blessing.” The Geonim decided that this was not respectable when they included it among a list of superstitious practices.
After the Wine/Before the Fire:
There is a custom of looking at your nails during the blessing over the fire. It is suggested that this custom may be connected with the frequent evocation of the “princes of the nail.” The late practice of enclosing the thumb within the other fingers during this may have been influenced by the belief that the “princes” inhabit the thumbnail, since this nail was most often used in divination, so that finger should be hidden from view. It has also been suggested that the ritual of examining ones finger nails by the light of the Havdalah candle exists because the wise man can read in our hands the fate and the good fortune which is about to befall us.
After the Fire/Before the Spices:
When Shabbat is over the fires of Gehinnom are rekindled and give off a fearful stench. We smell the spices so that they may protect us from the foul odor of Hell. Another explanation of spices is that they strengthened the body against the departure of the “additional soul” which inhabited it on Shabbat.
Crazy stuff, right? While I will not choose to attend a minyan alternative text study about ghosts and witches in the book of Samuel, I am looking forward to Havdalah of Horror and making candy apples!
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