Halloween's not really celebrated in much of Israel, expect for maybe Tel-Aviv. The religious interestingly associate the holiday with Christianity, so it's of course disliked all around. It's an amusing connection to make, since I think most Christians would strongly disagree. Either way, way definitely don't talk about the day in the religious schools. The members of my program, however, felt the year would not be complete without having our own Halloween celebration (I know I'm not the only one who adores the holiday). So we threw a party.
Halloween fell on Shabbat this year, so we had the party the day after. This way, everyone was able to attend. We ended up taking over the 3rd floor lobby of our apartment complex, as we tend to do, and we decorated the place to within an inch of its life in Halloween things. I mean orange chains of construction paper (they call is Bristol here), toilet paper streamers hanging from the ceiling tiles, colorful and often-times graphic depictions of zombies, vampires, and severed body parts. Because they were drawings though, they leaned more toward cute than gruesome, if you can imagine such a thing. There was candy, VERY LOUD music, and quite a few celebratory beverages - and we invited just about everyone to come, but they had to follow our one rule: you must wear a costume to attend.
The American attendees (or Israeli Americans, as the case often was) had the best, most thought-out costumes. It was awesome to have so many people go all-out with creative ingenuity (we are in Israel, after all). Two of the Israelis dressed as Terrence and Phillip from South Park (Brian also represented South Park, but as Towelie), we also had Batman, Superman's girlfriend (me), a garden, Big Bird, and even Thor. Our celebration had absolutely nothing to do with Judaism, Israel, or religious observance of any kind, but it had everything to do with community. A few of us decided to go for a beverage and falafel run in costume before the party really started. We thought we'd need to explain ourselves, but as soon as people saw us they shouted, "Purim!" It made us laugh, of course, since Halloween has as much to do with Purim as it does with Christianity - so maybe we made it a "Jewish" thing, after all.
Some of us might've been a bit excessive with our fun (e.g. me), but it the event was just what we needed to feel like we were more at home. Even our Madrichim came in costume: our Madrich came as an angel and our Madricha came as the devil. Actually, those costumes were probably the most perfect. I think they represented semi-religious Israelis quite well.
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