{"id":26754,"date":"2015-10-30T16:33:51","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T22:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=26754"},"modified":"2015-10-30T16:33:51","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T22:33:51","slug":"at-halloween-kosher-candy-rings-the-bell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/at-halloween-kosher-candy-rings-the-bell\/","title":{"rendered":"At Halloween, kosher candy rings the bell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By EDMON J. RODMAN<\/p>\n<p>LOS ANGELES (JTA) \u2014 This Saturday night, after waiting for three stars to become visible in the sky and observing Havdalah, the departing of Shabbat, with candle, wine and spice box, I will prepare to perform another ritual: I will pour gobs of candy into a large bowl to hand out to the sporadic stream of trick-or-treaters who will ring my doorbell.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_26756\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_4234-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-26756\" class=\"wp-image-26756 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_4234-2-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_4234 (2)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_4234-2-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_4234-2-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/225;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-26756\" class=\"wp-image-26756 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_4234-2-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_4234 (2)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_4234-2-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_4234-2-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-26756\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Creepy Peepers is among a slew of Halloween candies certified kosher. (Photo by Edmon J. Rodman)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Call me \u201corthodox\u201d in my observance of this not-so-Jewish day, but this Halloween, I wanted to make certain that the treats we were handing out to the assorted\u00a0ghosts, princesses and living dead who rang our bell were kosher.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Kosher creatures are we, and I didn\u2019t want anything unkosher \u2014 horror of horrors! \u2014 treifing up the house. I also wanted to show our undying (but not unhallowed) support for the companies that produce treats for the $2 billion Halloween candy\u00a0market that were taking that extra step of making their products accessible to kosher consumers like me.<\/p>\n<p>But during a late-night trip to the supermarket, I was surprised to find that there were almost too many hechshered treats from which to choose: M&amp;M\u2019s, Butterfingers, Dum Dums, Nestle Crunch, Baby Ruth and AirHeads all were kosher certified. Snickers, Three Musketeers, Twizzlers and even my favorite, Almond Joy (which my wife won\u2019t eat because her dietary laws don\u2019t include coconut. Pity; more for me.), were all deemed munchable by a higher source.<\/p>\n<p>Not that I was kvetching, but I wondered: Why was so much of the\u00a0Halloween\u00a0candy kosher? After all, most Orthodox Jews, who do keep kosher, don&#8217;t celebrate\u00a0Halloween. That&#8217;s because, according to an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jta.org\/wp-admin\/%20https:\/\/www.ou.org\/torah\/machshava\/machshava-from-ou\/halloween-thanksgiving-purim\/\" target=\"_blank\">essay<\/a> that appears on the Orthodox Union website, its origins are \u201ca combination of Celtic, Roman and Christian holidays. All three are distinctly non-Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For me, I see it more as an American holiday, one that I grew up with and enjoyed, and have chosen to integrate it into my Jewish life. But I was never sure if I was in the majority\u00a0for doing that.<\/p>\n<p>So why the kosher Halloween candy? Was there\u00a0some religious shift of traditional Jews afoot unknown even to Pew?\u00a0Were people who kept kosher quietly stocking up on low-priced\u00a0Halloween\u00a0candy for use on Hanukkah, or even Purim? Or was it an odd outcome of\u00a0Halloween\u00a0falling in the Jewish month of Cheshvan, sometimes called \u201cmar [bitter] Cheshvan\u201d because there are no Jewish holidays, and Jewish folks just needed something sweet to nosh on to keep up their spirits?<\/p>\n<p>Still pondering this imponderable while studying the ingredients printed on a giant bag of Hot Tamales, I felt something staring at me. Looking slowly left, I found the culprit: a bag of\u00a0candy called Creepy Peepers \u2014 round chocolates, each wrapped in a cartoonishly bloodshot eyeball foil wrapper. My own eyes widened as I realized they were kosher.<\/p>\n<p>As I was to discover, all of the Halloween offerings produced by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rmpalmer.com\/halloween\/\" target=\"_blank\">R.M. Palmer Company <\/a>of West Reading, Pennsylvania \u2014 from their fudge-filled \u201cMummy Munchies\u201d to my favorite, \u201cDr. Scab&#8217;s Monster Lab Chocolate Body Parts,\u201d a bag of fingers, ears, eyeballs and mouths \u2014 are kosher. (Better yet, the \u201cbody parts\u201d are dairy.) In fact, Palmer\u2019s entire line of chocolates, including Easter bunnies, are kosher.<\/p>\n<p>From corresponding with the company\u2019s marketing director, John Kerr, I learned that kosher certification is very common in the candy business. Palmer\u2019s O.U. certification, which \u201crequires additional inspections and standards for product quality,\u201d\u00a0provided \u201cindependent reassurance to consumers and retailers\u201d that their \u201cconfections are high quality,\u201d an email read.<\/p>\n<p>I bought a bag, and after sampling a few eyeballs, I had to agree.<\/p>\n<p>Another manufacturer, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madelainechocolate.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Madelaine Chocolate Company<\/a>, whose\u00a0Halloween\u00a0candy I found online, also offered crunchy chocolate eyeballs as well as\u00a0caramel-filled ghouls \u2014 all kosher. Madelaine also makes chocolate coins for Hanukkah, chocolate turkeys for Thanksgiving and chocolate eggs for Easter \u2014 again, all kosher.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking with Jorge Farber, the president and CEO of the company, I learned that Madelaine, based in Far Rockaway in the Queens borough of New York City, was established in 1949 by Holocaust survivors. Though gearing up for the busy holiday season, Madelaine was still recovering from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jta.org\/2012\/11\/20\/news-opinion\/united-states\/weeks-after-sandy-enormity-of-human-and-economic-costs-are-becoming-clearer\" target=\"_blank\">Hurricane Sandy <\/a>in 2012, which reportedly had destroyed its equipment and inventory.<\/p>\n<p>After nearly closing in 2014, the company received $13.2 million in government recovery funds in January. At that time, only about a quarter of its peak season workforce of about 450 had been hired back. Today, as Madelaine brings its new equipment online, Farber said the chocolate maker is hiring\u00a0more employees.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jta.org\/2012\/11\/01\/arts-entertainment\/six-degrees-no-bacon\/what-were-the-jewish-celebrities-for-halloween\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>READ: What were the Jewish celebrities for Halloween?\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When I asked why their products were kosher, Farber \u2014 whose products are available at &#8220;higher quality&#8221; candy stores \u2014 explained: \u201cThere\u2019s sort of a cache about being kosher.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My basket of kosher candy was quickly filling up, but like a kid out trick or treating, I wondered if I should dare knock on one more door.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/equalexchange.coop\/\" target=\"_blank\">Equal Exchange<\/a> fair-trade organization sells a\u00a0Halloween kit that consists of 150 individually wrapped, bite-size milk or dark chocolate bars\u00a0and an equal number of illustrated information cards. Headlined \u201cChocolate Can Be Scary,\u201d the cards presented the reasons for choosing fair-trade products: We \u201cpay farmers a fair price for their cacao,\u201d as well as \u201cmake improvements in their communities, and help protect the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFaith-based groups get our message,\u201d Susan Sklar, Equal Exchange\u2019s interfaith manager, told me.<\/p>\n<p>With \u201ca Jewish audience in mind, many of our products are kosher,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>Sklar noted that some of what Equal Exchange sells is also distributed additionally through two Jewish organizations:<a href=\"http:\/\/fairtradejudaica.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Fair Trade Judaica<\/a>\u00a0and<a href=\"http:\/\/www.truah.org\/%20\" target=\"_blank\"> T\u2019rua<\/a>,\u00a0a human rights organization whose members are rabbis and cantors of all denominations.<\/p>\n<p>Pointing out that most of the chocolate sold in the U.S. is the product of West African \u201cyoung boys who are used as slave labor,\u201d Sklar, who is Jewish, thought it was important for \u201cJews to support fair trade,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>As for me, at this last stop for kosher trick-or-treating trail, I had found a\u00a0Halloween\u00a0candy that reached a different level of kashrut: It was not only pure in production, but in spirit as well.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Edmon J. Rodman is a JTA columnist who writes on Jewish life from Los Angeles. Contact him at\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"mailto:edmojace@gmail.com\" target=\"_blank\"><em><span class=\"clickable ClickableEmail inactive\">edmojace@gmail.com<\/span><\/em><\/a><em>.)<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"At%20Halloween%2C%20kosher%20candy%20rings%20the%20bell\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6242,8790,8795,7332,8788],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26754"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26757,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26754\/revisions\/26757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}