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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Hutzpah, Real Life Lived Better, where each week we apply Jewish tradition and 18th C-3Bit of C-3PO to talk about something that is live in our lives.

I'm Rabbi Shira Stutman, and I'm Hannah Rosen. And Shira, I have a question for you.

Halloween. So when my kids went to Hebrew preschool, it was like a Shonda. Did I use that

correctly? Okay. Well, it was like- They don't call a Hebrew preschool. They call it Jewish preschool.

But okay, fine. No, I meant Shonda. Is that the right word? You use Shonda. Yeah. Okay, thank you. But it was a sin to, you know, dress your kids. The kids had to pretend that it wasn't Halloween. And so I've always been curious about that. Like, if children knock on a rabbi's door on Halloween, does the rabbi lecture them about paganism? Or what is the,

what is the way we roll through this American holiday properly? Like, what did your kids do?

Well, the way you phrase that question is actually a great opportunity for me to talk about

how Judaism continues to evolve. Because when Halloween first

became like a thing in America, I don't know when it was, 50 years ago, 60 years ago,

and people started dressing up at first, Jews did not participate. Traditional Jews did not

participate in Halloween. As you said, it was pagan. It was goyish. When I was growing up even,

most years we were allowed to participate, but some years we were not allowed to participate. But you can see how Judaism, and this happens in every single culture that we live in, in every era, Judaism starts to evolve the longer we stay in a certain culture. So, you know, at first it was close the doors, pretend you're not home.

Then it was give out the candies to the goyish kids, but you don't go out. And now over the last,

I would say this is very recently, even in modern Orthodox communities, you will see kids going

out on Halloween because the rabbis have sort of revalued Halloween as a community celebration.

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