Halloween is the originally holy evening before All Saints Day, a day of Catholic obligation. Today, young people beg for candy and threaten with jocular jest, trick or treat. Orthodox Jews avoid the practice because of its origins, most non-Orthodox Jews do not share this scruple. What is the Jewish law regarding the day? If the day is holy, the rite of begging for treats under the threat of trick is forbidden; if the play is innocent, the act would not be forbidden, even if it violates the accepted, expected practice of Orthodox Jewish usage.

According to Leviticus 18:3, we do not follow the ways of the Egyptians and Canaanites. Safra Ahare Mot 9:9 argues that these practices are official recorded religious practices. In the Maimonidean commandment count, n. 30, Jews are to avoid pagan culture. This reading of Maimonides is consistent with the oral Torah doctrine.

Tosafot toAvodah Zara 11a , s.v. ve’ei seems to suggest that the prohibition refers to adopting idolatrous usages and irrational practices. Rabbi Joseph Colon, the most famous advocate of custom, only disallows what the statute disallows, idolatrous customs. Mahari”q 58.

Rabbi Moses Isserles, living in Catholic Poland, argues that pagan origins is sufficient to outlaw the practice. YD 178:1. I suspect that this ruling underlies Orthodox antipathy to the practice. In my previous community, two Orthodox congregants, AB and SK confronted me with the Halloween question. For those who take R. Isserles to be de facto normative, like SK, Halloween is forbidden to be observed. But for AB, a practicing modern Orthodox lawyer, the practice as practiced today does not violate any Oral Torah statute.

The pagan origins of Halloween are for the most part forgotten. The great R. Isserles reflects the policy of avoiding pagan and Christian practice. The claim that pagan origins , even if those origins are forgotten, suffices to outlaw the practice. This judgment call does not follow from canonical documents, but must be respected as a serious policy option. I am uncomfortable with the ethic, treat me ore be tricked by me, because even if it is playful, it carries an air of extortion.

We are allowed to give candy to trick and treaters. Rabbi Abraham Pam happily gave candy and sanctified God’s name by being seen as a pious Jew and a good neighbor.

Rather than sanctifying holy evenings, we obey commandments and sanctify holy lives.

Abraham had two wives, Hagar the baby machine and Sarah the princess. Following the approach of Martin Buber, who distinguishes between I-It relations and I-Thou relations, the two wife relations can be understood.

I-It relations are between objects; relations are entered for an end, a purpose, or a goal. The person views the other as an instrument, not as a shared love ultimate concern of a spiritually committed equal. Abraham married Hagar to bear an heir. She agreed to this relationship. But this is not the ideal Hebrew bond. Abraham’s love for Sarah was an I-Thou bond, a love between equals, an egalitarian love, with mutuality.

Before there was a thinker called Buber, there was a Mishnah, Abot 16:2, that distinguishes between disinterested love, and interested love, between a love that is I-It and a love that is I-Thou.

Most loves are instrumental, as selfish means to personal ends. Ideal love is between soul mates. The love of Abraham for Sarah is unconditional love. This is the love of God for Israel, which unconditional, eternal, and innocent. May we merit the insight and kindness to grow from I–It love to I-Thou love, because I-Thou love outlives our lives because it brings us into the world to come.