Opinion

Debates about Columbus’ Spanish Jewish ancestry are not new − the claim was once a bid for social acceptance

(The Conversation) — Claims about Columbus being Sephardic have bubbled up for decades. Early in the 20th century, some immigrant groups hoped proving ties to him would improve their own social standing.

Devin Naar
October 28, 2024

(The Conversation) — In connection to Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples Day, media from the BBC and Fox to Reuters and Haaretz reported on new DNA evidence about the holiday’s original namesake. According to research revealed in a recent Spanish documentary, Christopher Columbus was not Italian, as widely assumed, but Sephardic: of Spanish Jewish lineage.

About 1 in 5 people in Spain and Portugal today may indeed be of “converso” origin: descendants of Jews or Muslims who converted to Catholicism, often under threat of death or expulsion. Regardless of whether Columbus was genealogically Jewish, though, there is scant evidence that he considered himself to be Jewish in any meaningful way. After all, he wrote approvingly of the Spanish king and queen’s decision to expel Jews from Spain in 1492.

The claim that Columbus may have been of Spanish Jewish descent is by no means certain; the “new” research has not yet been published in any academic journals. What’s more, it’s far from new.


The debate over the origins of the New World’s “discoverer” stretch back more than a century, to a time when Columbus was more routinely hailed as a hero – whereas today, he is remembered as the man who initiated European settler colonialism in the Americas and the genocide of Indigenous peoples. For decades, some Spanish and American Jewish activists claimed that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew.
One of their own

At the turn of the 20th century, new immigrant groups in the U.S. were seeking acceptance as part of dominant white American society. Spaniards, Jews, Italians and Greeks seized claims that Columbus was one of their own, hoping to combat prejudice that they faced. By linking themselves to the progenitor of white “civilization” in the Americas, they sought to secure their own position on the white side of the color line, with the privileges and protections that status bestowed.

A poster for the Italian-American Exposition of 1892 in Genoa, Italy – often thought to be Columbus’ birthplace.
Twice25 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

U.S. President Benjamin Harrison instituted Columbus Day in 1892, initially as a one-time holiday. The event was meant to celebrate Italian American contributions to society – partly as an apology, following the lynching of 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans. Decades later, in 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt rendered Columbus Day a federal holiday, even as the U.S. government continued to impose a quota on Italian immigration.

Early claims about Columbus or members of his entourage being Sephardic Jews also emerged in 1892 – the 400th anniversary of the conquerer’s arrival. Oscar Straus, a Jewish American diplomat, commissioned Meyer Kayserling, a rabbi and scholar, to research Jews’ role in the age of conquest. While Kayserling’s book did not say Columbus himself was of Jewish origin, it claimed that many people connected to his voyages were, including an interpreter named Luis de Torres and funder Luis de Santagel. Straus hoped that highlighting Jewish contributions to American society would curtail rising antisemitism in the United States.
Spanish strategy

In contrast, Spanish claims about Columbus as a Sephardic Jew sought to elevate Spain’s own international image. After its 1898 defeat in the Spanish-American War, Spain lost its possessions in the Western Hemisphere and ceased to be a major European colonial power. A cohort of Spanish writers and artists, known loosely as the Generation of ’98, produced an outpouring of cultural creativity grappling with Spain’s new position.

Some politicians and intellectuals drew on economic and cultural arguments to court descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, whom they viewed as having preserved the Spanish language, and thus providing a new source of influence in the Mediterranean region. Ultimately, the Spanish government issued a decree in 1924 that rendered these descendants eligible for citizenship – an offer it renewed from 2015-2021.

Raquel Venitura and Moise Cohen were wed in Madrid in 1930, the first Hebrew marriage ceremony in Spain since the Inquisition.
Bettmann via Getty Images

Spanish intellectuals became the first to claim that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew, hoping to further elevate Spain’s status, in the wake of the losses of 1898, as the trailblazer of European civilization in the Americas. By World War I, scholar Celso Garcia de la Riega published a theory that not only some of Columbus’ crew had Spanish Jewish origins, but Columbus himself. Nobel Prize nominee Salvador de Madariaga endorsed the theory of Columbus’ Jewish origins in his 1940 book on Don Cristobal Colón.
Crucial moment

The rise of Nazism heightened discussion among American Jews about Columbus and brought Sephardic Jews themselves into the debate – hoping that a connection to the explorer would temper rising antisemitism.

Sephardic Jews also hoped that if Columbus were recognized as one of their own, Ashkenazi Jews, the dominant Jewish group in the United States, would be more likely to treat them with respect. Sephardic Jews coming from the Ottoman Empire – one of the primary places their ancestors sought refuge after Spain – were often maligned as “uncivilized” and “uncultured” due to their associations with the Muslim world.

As Spanish and Portuguese Jews were the first practicing Jews to come to the Americas, Sephardic Jews arriving from the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 20th century hoped to hitch their story to the grandeur of the country’s first Jewish communities.

In 1933, American Jewish writer Maurice David purported to offer Spanish archival evidence to demonstrate Columbus’ Spanish Jewish bona fides. While David was not Sephardic himself, the Sephardic Jewish community in New York advertised his book’s “sensational” claims in La Vara, a newspaper written in Ladino, the main Sephardic language, also called Judeo-Spanish.

Sephardic men in Seattle, around 1918.
University of Washington via Wikimedia Commons

The most prominent Sephardic exponent of the theory was the former editor of La Amerika, the first Ladino newspaper published in the U.S. During the Second World War, Moise Gadol published a booklet in English called “Christopher Columbus was a Spanish-Jew.”

Gadol sought to elevate the status of his own community of Jews from the Ottoman Empire. By demonstrating links to Columbus, he hoped that all Sephardic Jews – not only those early Spanish and Portuguese Jews who came to the Americas during the colonial period – would be associated with Europe rather than the “Orient,” and with being “white” rather than “brown.”

Gadol also sought to exert pressure on the American public and government to loosen the quotas preventing Jews fleeing Nazi persecution from entering the United States. Two years before, in 1939, the government had rejected all 900 passengers aboard the SS St. Louis, who were forced to return to Europe – an infamous manifestation of the policy.

Gadol’s dubious claims about Columbus, however, did not produce the desired results. Sephardic Jews continued to be marginalized within the broader American Jewish community. Meanwhile, immigration quotas based on nationality – in effect until 1965 – continued to prevent Jewish refugees from finding safe haven in the U.S.
Then … and now

A century ago, embracing Columbus – and the sweeping colonization he represents – was a way for marginalized immigrant groups to claim a sense of belonging as part of the dominant white caste in American society.

Today, it provokes uncomfortable questions. especially claims about Columbus as a Jew. Fixating on his ancestry reinforces the racial blood logic of the Spanish Inquisition, according to which a person was considered Jewish or Muslim based on descent alone – to say nothing of the racial logic of Nazi Germany or the Jim Crow South.

What’s more, the emphasis on Columbus’ personal genealogy distracts from the actual geopolitical forces at play, such as empire building and resource extraction, that propelled Europe’s conquest and mass violence.

As discussions about antisemitism intensify in the U.S. and across the world, perhaps the idea that Columbus was “Jewish” – a conquistador who initiated the destruction of Indigenous peoples – only aggravates the problem.

(Devin Naar, Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies and Chair of the Sephardic Studies Program, University of Washington. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Opinion

Unearthed skeletons are part of America's chilling apocalyptic story

(RNS) — There is an alternative narrative of the United States that challenges the vision of it as ‘God’s heavenly city.’

Autumn colors around the New Haven Green in New Haven, Conn. 

(Photo by Klaus Wagensonner/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Yii-Jan Lin
October 31, 2024

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (RNS) — Twelve years ago, just before Halloween, a skeleton rose out of the ground of the town green in New Haven. Hurricane Sandy had just whipped through the region, soaking the soil. The Lincoln Oak, planted on the green in 1909, swayed in the wind, then toppled over. Massive roots came up as the giant fell. Passersby saw a chilling sight caught in the roots: a long white bone; a ribcage; the back of a human skull. By nightfall of Halloween eve, the New Haven police and a forensic investigator had arrived on the scene.

Thankfully, these remains weren’t from a recent homicide; the unearthed skeleton was one of the estimated thousands of bodies still beneath the green from the time it had served as a burial ground, from the founding of the city in 1638 until 1821. The headstones were moved to nearby Grove Street Cemetery but the bodies remained.

While not evidence of a crime, the bodies under the green pointed to something mysterious, even mystical. The New Haven Green has long been haunted by the rumor that it was meant to fit 144,000 bodies that would rise from the dead on the Day of Judgment, in the last days of the world. This prophecy is based on a passage from the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible.

In fact, historic city plans show that its Puritan founder, John Davenport, likely built New Haven to be a replica of an apocalyptic holy city of God. The measurements for his original square city plan match those of the temple in the vision of Ezekiel in the Bible. The nine-square city grid also mimics the walls and gates of the heavenly New Jerusalem of Revelation (three gates on each side of the square, making 12 gates total, representing the 12 tribes of Israel).


New Haven Colony around 1640 by Erik Vogt. (Image courtesy of Creative Commons)

Like other Puritan leaders arriving in the American Colonies, Davenport believed communities in New England to embody God’s heavenly city, metaphorically and literally, as we can see from his apocalyptic urban planning.

This understanding of America and the United States as God’s city, the New Jerusalem, has only grown through the centuries. It is part of the American origin myth of “pilgrims” arriving in a promised land, a holy place. It continued through western expansion, which, when the United States reached the West Coast, marked the U.S. as the place where the New Jerusalem was to rise.

In an echo of the New Jerusalem description in Revelation, Ronald Reagan described the U.S. as a “proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace.” Donald Trump shared his vision of the U.S.-Mexico border being delineated with a “beautiful wall” that is “see-through,” with a “big, beautiful door,” defending the country against invaders, mimicking — intentionally or not — the vocabulary in Revelation describing the clear-as-crystal walls and pearly gates of the New Jerusalem.

Likening the U.S. to the heavenly city gives the country a golden glow of righteousness and paints it as a paradise. But God’s heavenly city also has its enemies, described in Revelation as “dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” These are the ugly terms also used by leaders throughout American history against immigrants they have wanted to keep out, calling them “animals,” claiming they are violent, godless and especially diseased.

Skeletons buried beyond the perimeter of the New Haven Green tell a different story than the Puritan vision of the “chosen” living in God’s city. In 2011, the year before the skeleton popped up on the green, construction workers found four skeletons while digging the site of a Yale-New Haven Hospital project, just southwest of the green. These came from burials from the 1830s until the 1850s, when the site was a graveyard for a Catholic church.

The skeletons appear to belong to an Irish immigrant and three others of eastern or southern European descent, all bearing the marks of a hard life. Catholic Irish immigrants had been ostracized in the 19th century as following the anti-Christ (the pope) and bearing the mark of the Beast, also a figure from Revelation. Long-standing prejudice against eastern and southern Europeans was reflected in the Immigration Act of 1924, greatly restricting immigrants from those regions, as versus immigrants from northern Europe.

The corpses of other immigrants were not buried but shipped back to where they came from. In 1870, the Elko Independent, a Nevada newspaper, reported on shipments of dead Chinese railroad workers: “We understand that the Chinese companies pay the Railroad Company ten dollars for carrying to San Francisco each dead Chinaman. Six cars, well stuffed with this kind of freight, will be a good day’s work. The remains of the females are left to rot in shallow graves.”

By 1875, the first anti-Chinese immigration law was passed, followed by a series of others until all Chinese (and other Asians) were barred from immigrating to the U.S.

Since the mid-1990s, more than 4,000 bodies have been found in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. A record of their deaths can be found in the display of orange and yellow corpse toe-tags, pinned to a map that is part of the traveling exhibition “Hostile Terrain 94.” Along with the bodies in the desert were found children’s toothbrushes, shoes and toys, all belonging to travelers hoping to cross the border.

These are currently the human beings unable to enter and live in what was envisioned as God’s heavenly city. It is time to reenvision the U.S., not as a city with walls and invading enemies, but part of a world together facing climate change and conflicts that must be resolved.

(Yii-Jan Lin is associate professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School and a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project. She is the author of the forthcoming book “Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration.”

 The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

A new book helps to answer: Do animals go to heaven?

THEY GO TO SUMMERLAND

(RNS) — The Rev. Terry Martin wrote his book after his own suffering in silence connected him, he says, to the suffering of animals.

“Animals in Heaven?: A Catholic Pastoral Response to Questions about Animals” and its author, the Rev. Terry Martin. (Courtesy images)

Charles C. Camosy
October 29, 2024

(RNS) — The Rev. Terry Martin had served large, busy Catholic parishes in the United Kingdom for 25 years before sensing that he had reached burnout. “I was frankly running on empty,” he said when he and I talked recently. Granted a year’s sabbatical from his diocesan bishop, Martin lived for 12 months on the edge of the Sussex Downs, southeastern England’s grasslands set on rolling chalk hills. He took to walking his dogs daily, covering miles and miles, often, he said, in the pouring rain. The timeout gave him opportunities, he said, to pray, think and write.

Born out of that experience was “Animals in Heaven?: A Catholic Pastoral Response to Questions About Animals,” a book that examines Christianity’s concept of creation and how animals fit into it. I talked with Father Martin about his book, factory farming and whether indeed we can expect to meet animals in heaven.
Some may find it strange for a Catholic priest to write about animals. How did this come to be?

I have had my own experiences of suffering in silence for years, and I have come to understand that that has given me a real heart for noticing, and empathizing with, the billions of animals across the face of the planet who, too, are voiceless and treated so cruelly by humans. I decided that I needed to be a louder, clearer, more outspoken advocate for them.

RELATED: In a new ‘Animal Liberation,’ Peter Singer consolidates advances in animal rights


OK, let’s cut to the chase: Do animals go to heaven?

The church does not provide clear guidance about whether animals do — or don’t — go to heaven. I gently suggest in the book that since the time of the great medieval philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas the conversation around animals and their purpose on earth has been heavily biased by his firmly scholastic view. I would never wish to reject that teaching, revered as it is, but I do reflect on whether there are other good ways of looking at the question.

I conclude, faithful to the teaching of the church, that we cannot say for sure whether there are animals in heaven, but that it is surely a very real possibility. The God who created the animals creates all that is and loves all that he has created. Maybe that love could extend to granting animals a place in heaven. I do not see that as a bald impossibility.

But my book is strictly pastoral in tone: I am not an academic theologian and I place all of these questions within the context of my pastoral ministry as a parish priest. The many true anecdotes and memories I shared help to root the suggestions I raise within the reality of ordinary people’s lives.
I’ve argued that factory farming of animals, not least due to the myriad evils it produces, is one of the most serious structures of sin we can confront. Do I go too far in saying this?

I wholeheartedly agree with your comment and would further suggest that more Catholics and Christians should be saying exactly this — and saying it loudly and often. Christians still, pretty universally, fail to see animals for the God-created, sentient beings that they are and blindly, instead, see them for what humans can get from them. I suggest that we can’t view animals as beings with divine favor and yet still eat them! If they are loved into being by God, how can we act so callously towards them? I strongly believe too that God is deeply offended by our lack of compassion in this respect, and that the lone voices need to speak out often, confronting that thoughtless and unfeeling attitude.

Among the evils associated with factory farms is the role they play in climate change. Yet it gets little attention compared to other sources and causes. Why would that be?

This truth probably gets so little attention and thought because we human beings focus, more than anything else, on our stomachs! I have observed that it is extremely hard for folk to change either their diet or their other habits — around clothing and leisure, for example — and that they will give massive bias to what they like rather than to what they could more ethically achieve.

Animal agriculture is contributing massively to the destruction of the planet, all because folk, many of them Christians, will not consider something as simple and straightforward as reflecting in a new way on their dietary practice. A meat-free, dairy-free diet is healthy and nourishing and is obviously kinder too — both to the animals and to the planet.

RELATED: William Wilberforce would be scandalized by the pro-factory farming EATS Act

The Catholic catechism teaches that “we owe animals kindness.” What does that mean, practically speaking, for how Catholics should live their lives?

For me, that passage speaks clearly to our Christian responsibility as stewards, entrusted with dominion, to care for the planet and for all other beings with whom we are privileged to share God’s beautiful, extraordinary creation. I suggest in the book that the very existence of animals is a sign of God’s continuing love and care for the world. If we humans, made in his image, become our best selves when we model the Son of God, we must show kindness to animals, to each other, and to the planet. This is not merely a nice idea, but a fundamental Christian imperative!

Practically speaking, Christians could think more carefully about reducing the suffering of animals by becoming vegan and by sparing a thought for the horrific conditions and extreme harm that so many animals endure for human pleasure.

Colorado.eduspot.colorado.edu/~norcross/Wh1.pdf

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Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Peter Singer. Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1972), pp. 229-243 [revised edition]. As I write this, in ...

Colorado.eduspot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1200,Spr07/singer.pdf

All Animals Are Equal

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Wordpress.comgrupojovenfl.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/peter-singer-animal-liberation-1.pdf

Peter Singer, Animal Liberation - WordPress.com

That's an important step forward, and a sign that over the next forty years we may see even bigger changes in the ways we treat animals. Peter Singer. February ...

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Animal Rights Theory and Utilitarianism.pdf

In Practical Ethics, Peter Singer argues that ethics is not "an ideal system which is all very noble in theory but no good in practice." 1 Singer identifies ..

Libcom.orgfiles.libcom.org/files/2023-08/beasts of burden antagonism.pdf

Beasts of Burden: Capitalism - Animals - Communism - Libcom.org

Beasts of. Burden. Capitalism · Animals. Communism as on ent ons. s a een ree. Page 2. Beasts of Burden: Capitalism - Animals -. Communism. Published October ...

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Nov 18, 2005 ... Beasts of Burden forces to rethink the whole "primitivist" debate. ... Gilles Dauvé- Letter on animal liberation.pdf (316.85 KB). primitivism ..

Opinion

Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations blend Indigenous customs and European thinking in surprising ways

(The Conversation) — The Aztecs deliberated on how to continue their traditions and preserve their group identity following the Spanish invasion.

Ezekiel Stear
October 28, 2024

(The Conversation) — Every year, five hours west of Mexico City on Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacán, residents flock to the island of Janitzio to visit the graves of their departed relatives.

On the evening of Nov. 1, the Noche de animas, or Night of the Souls in Purgatory, families will bring a meal to share with their ancestors. They will also use the time to clean the graves and decorate them with elaborate displays of candles and marigolds. Some will spend the night sleeping among the tombstones.

In Mexico City, parades will feature people in colorful customs with large skull masks while skull-shaped floats move through the streets to the rhythm of Aztec drums. Marigolds, skull-painted faces and swishing skirts will fill the downtown from the main square of the Zócalo to Bellas Artes, the Palace of Fine Arts.

This vibrant scene reflects the blending of Indigenous, European and specifically Mexican customs that define Day of the Dead celebrations today.

As a scholar of colonial Mexico, I study how Indigenous people have maintained their traditions despite the Spanish invasion. Whereas scholars once thought that these cultures simply blended – a phenomenon called syncretism – researchers today understand more about how Indigenous people intentionally deliberated about which of their own traditions to continue, and how.

Celebrations for the dead had an important place in Indigenous cultures before the Spanish came. But, as historian James Lockhart explained, the Spanish, in their attempts to impose their religion and customs, often did not recognize what was most important to local cultures. As long as Indigenous celebrations for the dead did not contradict Spanish preaching, they could go unnoticed.
Indigenous choices

The immediate effects of the Spanish invasion brought hard choices for Indigenous people. Most of the Indigenous deaths of the conquest came not by the sword, but by epidemic diseases such as smallpox and salmonella, for which the native population had no natural immunity. In the 16th century, whole towns depopulated, and people needed to decide where they would go to find the best opportunities.

After the Spanish came, around Lake Pátzcuaro, displaced families suffering the effects of European illnesses and the deaths of family members moved to cities and towns. On the shores of the lake and on the island of Janitzio, they continued their customs of sharing harvest produce with the dead.

Setting aside time to care for the tombs of the dead became a yearly observance during the colonial period. After independence from Spain in 1821, a series of state decrees in Michoacán even encouraged residents to honor the war heroes buried on Janitzio.

Since the island had already been sacred for hundreds of years, it was a logical site for the veneration of the new heroes of Mexican independence. So, patriotism strengthened the Indigenous tradition of honoring the dead, which was already underway.
How Indigenous practices survived

In Mexico City, colonial policies also ironically allowed Indigenous practices to survive. Before the Spanish came, the Aztecs displayed thousands of skulls of sacrificial victims on a skull rack, called the tzompantli.

In their view, the vital energy released from sacrificed bodies fed the Sun and ensured that the universe continued.

Aztec ritual human sacrifice.
Via Wikimedia Commons

The Aztecs honored many of their sacrificial victims before these rituals with days of feasting, fine clothes, luxury lodging and other pleasures. Each year, during the festival of Miccailhuitontli, the “little feast of the dead” in the ninth month of the Aztec calendar, children were ritually killed. In the tenth month, it was the adults who were sacrificed during the festival of Huey Miccailhuitl, “great feast of the dead.”

Although Spanish military invaders suppressed these celebrations, they also unintentionally gave the newly colonized Aztecs ways to combine their beliefs with Christian celebrations.

Franciscans and other religious orders who followed brought the medieval rituals of religious theater and processions as part of their efforts to convert the local people. Both of these highly public medieval practices gathered large numbers of spectators, as Aztec rituals had done before the invasion.

The Indigenous actors in these plays, themselves recent converts, portrayed pageants during Christmas, Holy Week and other observances.

While the friars did not plan to draw on Indigenous beliefs, these religious plays had parallels with the preconquest Aztec practice of deity impersonation. For example, before the Spanish came, in the festival of Toxcatl the Aztecs would dress up a specially chosen prisoner as their deity of divination Tezcatlipoca. The impersonator danced and paraded through the city on his way to be sacrificed atop the main temple.

When Catholic religious theater came to the city, local actors continued to take on the persona they represented to such a degree that one local actor even hanged himself after portraying Judas in a Passion play.

During the long colonial period, from the 16th to the 18th century, religious processions became a mainstay in the city. Historian Susan Schroeder recounts the chronicles of the Indigenous writer Domingo Chimalpahin about multiple processions as a source of Indigenous communities’ civic pride.

Over time, taking cues from the “mascaradas” – the large, papier-mâché heads of Spanish processions and festivals – Day of the Dead began featuring enormous, colorful skulls parading through the streets, just feet away from where the Aztecs once displayed human skulls.
Beyond graves

Besides the usually cited All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day on Nov. 1 and 2, more covert European elements have influenced Day of the Dead practices. One of these is the belief in the soul and an afterlife. Historian Jill McKeever Furst explains that in the Aztec view, only death in battle or during childbirth earned immortality.

Most people went to Mictlan, the Land of the Dead, releasing their vital energy into the universe and ceasing to exist as individuals. Today, depictions of the living interacting with the dead, singing to or talking with them, such as in the movie “Coco,” likely reflect adapted ideas about the afterlife from Christianity, as cultural critic Anise Strong has noted.

European influences have also shaped home altars with their seven or nine levels, representing layers of underworld, Earth and paradise. Research has revealed that many Indigenous communities in what is now Mexico viewed the universe as flat and placed Mictlan far away from the living, rather than below the Earth.

Historians Jesper Nielsen and Toke Reunert have noted that it is likely that Indigenous images of the universe as made of three realms, with a reward in the sky, Earth in the middle, and the world of the dead below, come from Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. Dante’s literature depicts the universe in a vertical fashion – from the heights of heaven, through purgatory, Earth and with abysmal hell at the bottom.

As local people converted, they left horizontal views of the universe and moved toward a positive up and a negative down. The vertical cosmos contrasts with ancestral Indigenous views of the universe as a plane where humans and supernatural beings interacted.

People gather on the island of Janitzio, Mexico, to clean the graves of their deceased loved ones, decorate them with marigolds and bring baskets with offerings for the Day of the Dead in Mexico.
Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Celebrations continue

The island of Janitzio on Lake Pátzcuaro and Mexico City show how Indigenous choices helped their traditions survive despite Spanish influence. In the city of Pátzcuaro, sharing food with the dead during harvests continued alongside All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Meanwhile, in Mexico City, the history of public ritual sacrifice gave way to the religious pageantry of Spain’s Renaissance.

Today, individuals and groups continue to decide how to celebrate the Day of the Dead. Whether it’s about communicating with the dead, letting go, or believing they remain among the living, the holiday’s strength lies in its ability to hold many meanings.

As long as Indigenous, Spanish and modern Mexican customs continue in home rituals and public celebrations of past lives, current lives and cultural heritage, the Day of the Dead will be alive and well.

(Ezekiel Stear, Assistant Professor of Spanish World Languages, Literatures & Cultures, Auburn University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Samhain to Soulmass: The Pagan origins of familiar Halloween rituals

Beverley D'Silva
BBC

OCTOBER 30,2024


From outrageous costumes to trick or treat: the unexpected ancient roots of Halloween's most popular – and most esoteric – traditions.


With its goblins, goosebumps and rituals – from bobbing for apples to dressing up as vampires and ghosts – Halloween is one of the world's biggest holidays. It's celebrated across the world, from Poland to the Philippines, and nowhere as extravagantly as in the US, where in 2023 $12.2 billion (£9.4 billion) was spent on sweets, costumes and decorations. The West Hollywood Halloween Costume Carnival in the US is one of the biggest street parties of its kind; Hollywood parties such as George Clooney's tequila brand's bash make a big social splash; and at model Heidi Klum's party she is renowned for her bizarre disguises, such as her iconic giant squirming worm outfit.

Heidi Klum wore a worm costume for Halloween 2022 in NYC – scary disguises were originally intended to ward off evil spirits (Credit: Getty Images)

With US stars turning out again for the biggest dressing-up show after the Oscars' red carpet, it's no surprise Halloween is often viewed as a modern US invention. In fact, it dates back more than 2,000 years, to Ireland and an ancient Celtic fire festival called Samhain. The exact origins of Samhain predate written records but according to the Horniman Museum: "There are Neolithic tombs in Ireland that are aligned with the Sun on the mornings of Samhain and Imbolc [in February], suggesting these dates have been important for thousands of years".


Celebrated usually from 31 October to 1 November, the religious rituals of Samhain (pronounced "sow-win", meaning summer's end), focused on fire, as winter approached. Anthropologist and pagan Lyn Baylis tells the BBC: "Fire rituals to bring light into the darkness were vital to Samhain, which was the second most important fire festival in the Pagan Celtic world, the first being Beltane, on 1 May." Samhain and Beltane are part of the Wheel of the Year, an annual cycle of eight seasonal festivals observed in Paganism (a "polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping religion", says the Pagan Federation).


The ancient Celtic festival of Samhain is still celebrated in some places, including Glastonbury Tor, pictured in 2017 (Credit: Getty Images)

Samhain was the pivotal point of the Celtic Pagan new year, a time of rebirth – and death. "Pagans had three harvests: Lammas, harvest of the corn, on 1 August; the one of fruit and vegetables at autumn equinox, 21 September; and Halloween, the third," says Baylis. At this time animals that couldn't survive winter were culled, to ensure the other animals' survival. "So there was a lot of death around that time, and people knew there would be deaths in their villages during the harsh winter months." Other countries, notably Mexico, celebrate The Day of the Dead around this time to honour the deceased.
Costumes and ugly masks were worn to scare away malevolent spirits believed to have been set free from the realm of the dead


At Samhain, Celtic Pagans in Ireland would put out their home fires and light one giant bonfire in the village, which they would dance around and act out stories of death, regeneration and survival. As the whole village joined in to dance, animals and crops were burned as sacrifices to Celtic deities, to thank them for the previous year's harvest and encourage their goodwill for the next.


It was believed that at this time the veil between this world and the spirit world was at its thinnest – allowing the spirits of the dead to pass through and mingle with the living. The sacred energy of the rituals, it was believed, allowed the living and the dead to communicate, and gave Druid priests and Celtic shamans heightened perception.

And this is where the dress-up factor came in – costumes and ugly masks were worn to scare away malevolent spirits believed to have been set free from the realm of the dead. This was also known as "mumming" or "guising".

Those early Samhain dressing-up rituals began to change when Pope Gregory 1 (590-604) arrived in Britain from Rome to convert Pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. The Gregorian mission decreed that Samhain festivities must incorporate Christian saints "to ward off the sprites and evil creatures of the night", says Baylis. All Souls Day, 1 November, was created by the Church, "so people could still call on their dead to aid them"; also known as All Hallows, 31 October later became All Hallows' Eve, later known as Halloween.

"There is a long tradition of costuming of sorts that goes back to Hallow Mass when people prayed for the dead," explains Nicholas Rogers, a history professor at York University in Canada. "But they also prayed for fertile marriages." Centuries later boy choristers in the churches dressed up as virgins, he says. "So there was a certain degree of cross-dressing in the ceremony of All Hallow's Eve."

New York City Halloween parade participants in the early 1980s (Credit: Getty Images)


The Victorians loved a ghost story, and adopted non-religious Halloween costumes for adults. Later, after World War Two, the day centred on children dressing up, a ritual still alive today at trick-or-treating time. Since the 1970s, adults dressing up for Halloween has become widespread again, not just in creepy and ugly costumes, but also hyper-sexualised ones. According to Time, these risqué outfits emerged because of the "transgressive" mood of the occasion, when "you can get away with it without it being seen as particularly offensive". In the classic teen film Mean Girls, it's jokingly said that "in girl world" Halloween is the "one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it". It's not just in "girl world" that Halloween has a disinhibiting effect – it is a hugely popular holiday in the LGBTQ+ community, and is often referred to as "Gay Christmas". In New York, the city famously comes alive every year with a Halloween parade featuring participants in elaborate and outlandish costumes.

Playing with fire

Echoes of Samhain also live on today in fire practices. Carving lanterns from root vegetables was one tradition, although turnips, not pumpkins, were first used. The practice is said to have grown from a Celtic myth, about a man named Jack who made a pact with the devil, but who was so deceitful that he was banned from heaven and hell – and condemned to roam the darkness, with only a burning coal in a carved-out turnip to light the way.

The ritual of carving lanterns out of pumpkins came from the myth of a man called Jack who made a pact with the devil (Credit: Getty Images)


In Ireland, people made lanterns, placing turnips with carved faces in their window to ward off an apparition called "Jack of the Lantern" or Jack-o'-Lantern. In the 19th Century, Irish immigrants took the custom with them to the US. In the small Somerset village of Hinton St George in the UK, turnips or mangolds are still used, and elaborately carved "punkies" are paraded on "punkie night", always the last Thursday of October. In the UK town of Ottery St Mary there is still an annual "flaming tar barrels" ritual – a custom once practised widely across Britain at the time of Samhain, where flaming barrels were carried through the streets to chase away evil spirits.
Soulers went door to door singing and saying prayers for souls in exchange for ale, cakes and apples

Leaving food and sweetly spiced "soul cakes" or "soulmass" cakes on the doorstep was said to ward off bad spirits. Households deemed less generous with their offerings would receive a "trick" played on them by bad spirits. This has translated into modern-day trick or treating. Whether soul cakes came from the ancient Celts or the Church is open to argument, but the idea was that, as they were eaten, prayers and blessings were said for the dearly departed. From Medieval times, "souling" was a Christian tradition in English towns at Halloween and Christmas; and soulers (mainly children and the poor) went door to door singing and saying prayers for souls in exchange for ale, cakes and apples.
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Apple bobbing – dipping your face into water to bite an apple – dates back to the 14th Century, according to historian Lisa Morton: "An illuminated manuscript, The Luttrell Psalter, depicted it in a drawing." Others date the custom back further, to the Romans' conquest of Britain (from AD43) and the apple trees that they imported. Pomona was the Roman goddess of fruitful abundance and fertility, and hence, it is argued, apple bobbing's ties to love and romance. In one version, the bobber (usually female) tries to bite into an apple bearing her suitor's name; if she bites it on the first go, she is destined for love; two gos means her romance will start but falter; three means it will never get started.

It is thought that apple bobbing originated in the 14th Century – or possibly even further back (Credit: Getty Images)


British rituals, at the heart of Halloween traditions, are the subject of Ben Edge's book, Folklore Rising, illustrated with his mystical paintings. Edge says that he has observed a "resurgence of people becoming interested in ritual and folklore… I call it a folk renaissance, and I see it as a genuine movement led by younger people".


He cites such artists as Shovel Dance Collective, "non-binary, cross-dressing and singing traditional working men's songs of the land". There is also Weird Walk, a project "exploring the ancient paths, sacred sites and folklore of the British Isles… through walking, storytelling and mythologising." If interest in folk rituals is on the rise, so too are the numbers turning to such traditions as Paganism and Druidry, both adhering to the Wheel of the Year, and Samhain, "dedicated to remembering those who have passed on, connecting with the ancestors, and preparing ourselves spiritually and psychologically for the long nights of winter ahead".

Ben Edge
The Flaming Tar Barrels of Ottery St Mary (2020) is featured in artist Ben Edge's book about ancient traditions, Folklore Rising (Credit: Ben Edge)

Philip Carr-Gomm, a psychologist, author and practising druid, says that he has witnessed a "steady growth" in interest around Druidry over the past few decades. "We now have 30,000 members, across six languages," he tells the BBC.

The need for ritual, connectedness and community is at the heart of many Halloween traditions, says Baylis: "One of the most important aspects of Halloween for us is remembering loved ones. We light a candle, possibly say the name of the person or put a picture of them on an altar. It's a sacred time and ceremony, but you don't have to be a Pagan to be involved. The important thing is that it comes from a place of protection and love."

Marvel's series 'Agatha All Along' gets it right, say modern witches

(RNS) — Marvel Studios’ television series ‘Agatha All Along,’ which has its finale Wednesday (Oct. 30), oozes witchcraft lore, movie references and symbolism. Modern witches are all in.

Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), from left, Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), Teen (Joe Locke), Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) in Marvel Television’s “Agatha All Along,” exclusively on Disney+. (Photo courtesy of Marvel Television. © 2024 Marvel)

Heather Greene
October 30, 2024

(RNS) — Marvel Studios’ television series “Agatha All Along,” which has its finale on Disney+ on Wednesday (Oct. 30), oozes witchcraft lore, movie references and symbolism.

And modern witches are there for it.

“They are really doing their research,” said Opal Luna, a witch, author and crafter in Florida, “and I appreciate that.”

A spinoff from Marvel’s “WandaVision” miniseries, which ran in early 2021, “Agatha All Along” picks up from that show’s final episode with Agatha, played by Kathryn Hahn, who was magically enslaved by Wanda, known as the Scarlet Witch. The show follows Agatha and her covenmates — among them Lilia (Patti LuPone) and Rio (Aubrey Plaza) — as they seek to recapture their magical powers.

This is all standard television witchy fare, but “Agatha” is drawing real-life witches with an aesthetic that aligns directly with a long legacy of magical storytelling — a teenage witch’s room is littered with witchcraft movie memorabilia — and with modern witchcraft practice. In one episode, the creators imagine the characters as figures inspired by the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot cards, a classic card set first published in 1909, with Agatha as the Three of Swords, Lilia the Queen of Cups, and Rio Death.

RELATED: As the pioneers of modern paganism die, fears grow that their wisdom will be lost


Opal Luna. (Courtesy photo)

“The people that wrote this have to have a background in paganism, witchcraft or something,” said Luna. The characters are “not all typical Halloween witches.” (Marvel Studios did not respond to a request for comment.)

Inspired by the show, Luna plans to include its theme song, “The Ballad of the Witches Road,” in her rituals celebrating this year’s Samhain, a pagan holiday honoring the dead that is celebrated between Oct. 31 and Nov. 7. Luna believes it will become a pagan staple for years to come.

The song, composed by the Oscar-winning duo Kristin Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who wrote “Let It Go” from Disney’s “Frozen” and the tear-jerker “Remember Me” from Pixar’s “Coco,” speaks of a “a dangerous journey” leading to a reward. Agatha and her coven seek their lost power; Luna’s Samhain ritual is a spiritual walk into the underworld to confront death and discover wisdom.

Marshall WSL, a witch and co-host of the podcast “Southern Bramble,” agreed that the song encapsulates “the journey of the (modern) witch” into their own power, he said.

Fans of the show from the witchcraft community also appreciate the complexity of the characters. Many modern witches, Marshall said, find their way to witchcraft through trauma or grief, turning to the practice as an alternative method “to realize their inner strength and power.



Teen (Joe Locke), left, and Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) in “Agatha All Along.” (Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2024 Marvel)

As a “heavily bullied child” and an outcast in a very small town, Marshall sees a parallel between his own story and the character Teen, with his Jewish backstory and queer identity.

“Agatha is complicated,” added Marshall. “None of us as individuals are truly all love and light. … We all have a range of emotions.” Agatha is “every witch.”

Marshall WSL. (Courtesy photo)

Marshall has been moved to create a talisman for himself modeled after a necklace Agatha wears on the show. The necklace, based on an 18th-century Italian brooch, depicts the pagan god Zeus’ daughters, three dancing graces. The show calls the trio “maiden, mother and crone,” another detail that “speaks to modern witches who work with (the triple goddess),” Marshall said.

“Agatha All Along” is not the first show or movie to strike a chord with modern witchcraft practitioners. “Bewitched,” which ran from 1964 to 1972, as well as “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” (1996-2003) and “Charmed” (1998-2006), all inspired modern-day witches.

In the mid- to late 1990s, said David Salisbury, a witch, author and activist in Washington, D.C., witchcraft-related movies and shows were everywhere. “It was very exciting to see all those fantastical witchcraft stories” on screen “and then go online (to the newly growing internet) to research and connect with other witches,” said Salisbury. “It was a perfect storm of inspiration and access.”

Salisbury said “The Craft,” from 1996, is a common movie cited by witches as a source of inspiration. As he studied magic, Salisbury said, he was fearful that his growing knowledge would eventually ruin his love for “The Craft,” but that never happened. “I realized that we actually are calling the elements. We are invoking directional spirits to help us. We are casting spells to improve our lives,” he said, just as the characters in the movie do.

The fidelity of “The Craft” to real practice was no accident. “The Craft” is one of the first films to openly hire a modern witch adviser, Wiccan high priestess Pat Devin. The modern witch community — and young seekers like Salisbury — recognized these details. The film’s cult status remains strong 30 years later and inspired a sequel, “The Craft: Legacy” (2020).


Zoe O’Haillin-Berne dressed as the Wicked Witch. (Courtesy photo)

It is not surprising that “The Craft” movie poster appears in Teen’s bedroom. But “Agatha” goes deeper into Hollywood’s witch trove by featuring MGM’s 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz” in its imagery and themes.

“Every little girl and every queer little boy wanted to be Dorothy, or maybe Glinda because they want to wear the big, beautiful gown,” said Zoe O’Haillin-Berne, a Celtic Christo-pagan and a witch who serves on the board of directors of the International Wizard of Oz club and plays the Wicked Witch of the West at events through her company, the Spirit of Oz.

O’Haillin-Berne was drawn to the Wicked Witch. Some of her magical altar tools are reminiscent of the Oz aesthetic and she wears black robes in ritual. “I’m an old-fashioned witch,” she said. “I love black pointy hat.”

However, her connection to Oz runs deeper than clothing and witchcraft paraphernalia. Her passion is tied directly to her self-empowerment journey. O’Haillin-Berne’s first witchcraft ritual, she explained, was performed the same day she began her gender transition. “Maybe it’s because I was this little trans kid that always felt disenfranchised by the world,” she mused, that she loved the Wicked Witch, “a woman who commands the world around her.”

“Agatha All Along” may never reach the status of “The Craft” or “The Wizard of Oz,” but the show, in its short run, has created a storm of approval from many in the modern witchcraft community. One fan posted on the social media platform Threads, “I hope ‘Agatha All Along’ inspires a whole new generation to explore witchcraft, just like ‘The Craft’ did for mine.”

RELATED: ‘The Wicker Man,’ the classic horror film and pagan must-see, gets new life at 50

Another user posted a video showing followers how to imitate the Safe Passage tarot spread, a tricky but slick maneuver performed on the show.

Teen (Joe Locke), left, and Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) in Marvel Television’s “Agatha All Along.” (Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2024 Marvel)

Marvel has announced an Agatha tarot deck, published by Insight Editions, the publisher of other Disney-related tarot decks.

Marshall said he’s already preordered the deck, but he’ll have to wait until July for its release. In the meantime, he and other Agatha fans in the community will be eagerly waiting for the next season.

“We (witches) are inspired by mythos. I think we are inspired by song. I think we are inspired by characters, deities, spirits that make us feel something,” he said. “And we are really getting that with ‘Agatha All Along.’”

The mashup holiday 'Diwaloween' celebrates light as the year turns dark

(RNS) — This Thursday (Oct. 31), two seemingly opposing holidays, Diwali and Halloween, will be celebrated as one by many South Asians for the first time since 2016.

“Spooky Chai” artwork created by Manasi Arya, featuring a skeleton hand and a green hand with henna toasting with glasses of chai tea. (Image courtesy of Manasi Arya)
Richa Karmarkar
October 29, 2024

(RNS) — What happens when the religious festival celebrating the victory of good over evil coincides with the spookiest night of the year? Diwaloween. Or maybe Hallowali.

Mashups of Diwali and Halloween occur every few years as Diwali, a day on the lunar calendar that shifts from year to year on the Western calendar, falls on or around Halloween. This year the two coincide for the first time since 2016.

The made-up holiday takes the form of trick-or-treating at the temple, Bollywood-themed costume parties, sparklers lighting the night for both the evil-destroying goddess Lakshmi and little goblins. Diwaloween, say many South Asian Americans, is one of the best examples of the diaspora’s unique dual-belonging and could only happen in America.

“I think this is a sign of one of the many ways that Hindu and other South Asians who celebrate Diwali and festivals this time of year are making America their own in some way and participating in these rituals,” said Shana Sippy, associate professor of religion and chair of Asian studies at Centre College.

RELATED: For New York’s Indo-Caribbean Hindus, Diwali is a fusion of East and West

Diwali, one of the largest and most recognizable celebrations for South Asian of dharmic faiths, is celebrated by Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs around the world. Those who observe the day traditionally wear their best new clothes, exchange sweets with neighbors, light oil lamps called diyas, draw colorful rangoli patterns with sand and send off fireworks.


Devotees light earthen lamps on the banks of the River Sarayu as part of Diwali celebrations in Ayodhya, India, on Nov. 6, 2018. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

Increasingly a secular holiday even in the India subcontinent, the holiday can trace its roots to several strands of Hindu mythological stories of Lord Ram, Lord Krishna and the goddess Kali. Diwali is considered an especially auspicious time to start something new.

Halloween, with its ghosts, ghouls and skeletons, often seemed in conflict with the season of light, renewal and hope to many immigrants who came to the United States. Manasi Arya, a 27-year-old social media content creator and fashion designer in New York, said her parents initially “couldn’t understand the point” of Halloween and often asked, “Why don’t you just dress up as an Indian princess?”

“All my friends at school, my neighbors, they were always wearing these really cool costumes that were just like a different character, but I was literally wearing a lengha,” said Arya, referring to a typical Indian dress.

Arya’s family eventually warmed up to the American ritual, even helping her paint Desi-style pumpkins for competitions, with henna art or a heavily made-up woman’s face.

The inspiration led Arya to launch a Diwali-meets-Halloween line of clothing and accessories that included Desi vampires, patterned ghosts and witches with saris and bindis. On Diwaloween, said Arya, “It just so happens that two of our favorite holidays are happening in one day.”


“Desi Witches” artwork created by Manasi Arya. (Image courtesy of Manasi Arya)

The combined holiday also addresses the reality that the resources for traditional Diwali celebrations aren’t always available in the U.S. “We don’t get to do the very typical, traditional things for Diwali, the way that you can do it in India, right? So I think it’s cool to bring that American element into how we’ve been able to celebrate our Diwali here.”

Diwaloween even has its requisite holiday movie, thanks to Shilpa Mankikar, whose multigenerational comedy “Diwal’oween,” is about a diaspora family’s hijinks leading up to the holiday. The film, currently being screened at cultural organizations across the U.S., is patterned after Mankikar’s own upbringing as a first-generation Indian in New Jersey, the state with the most South Asians in the country.

The film’s laughs come from the contradiction of a festival of lights clashing with a festival of darkness, Mankikar told RNS. “They are in opposition, and that’s like the comedy clash of it all.”

Mankikar, 47, grew up in a time when representation of Indian Americans in the media was restricted to misinterpretations and offensive stereotypes. But today non-South Asian Americans’ awareness and even celebration of Diwali has shot to an all-time high. The holiday has been recognized as a work holiday by several states and school districts, including New York City public schools, which will recognize it with a day off for the first time this year


“Holidays are a good opportunity to learn about each other and also, with celebrating Indian culture, there’s so much color and dancing and food that people now are familiar with,” said Mankikar. “It’s such a rich culture, so it’s great too that it’s now in the mainstream. We’re kind of coming to it on our own terms as an American generation.”


Youth enjoy a craft table during a Diwaloween screening in Shelby Township, Mich. (Photo courtesy of Shilpa Mankikar)

Sippy pointed out that, as a result of its popularity, Diwali has taken on an air of all-American consumerism, pointing to a Diwali Barbie released earlier this year, or the packs of Diwali mithai (sweets), sparklers and other branded Diwali goods for gift-giving. Diwali’s adoption by the retail world is analogous to the corporatization of Hannukah, or “Chrismakkah.”

The professor said the urge to combine the two holidays points to a human need for connection and community in an age of atomization in American society. “When (else) do we let our kids knock on strangers’ doors? We don’t often know even our neighbors’ names,” Sippy said. “Here you dress up and you buy things to give away to complete strangers,” she said.

Though opposites in spirit, Sippy said the two celebrations create warmth amid darkness — “Halloween being the dressing up, this opening of doors, the sharing of food, and the lighting of light as we start to get darker earlier.”

Prasanna Jog, national coordinator for the charity SewaDiwali, said Diwali food and parties have gotten better over the two decades since he arrived in the U.S. But what has gotten left behind is a tradition of thinking of the less fortunate on Diwali, he said. Jog co-founded SewaDiwali in 2018 as a reflection of the Hindu tenet of “seeing that everyone is happy,” and that inner growth happens when one “brings light to others.”

Opinion
Pennsylvania's recognition of Diwali as a state holiday is a big deal and long overdue
(RNS) — Beyond the symbolism of these bills and proclamations, there is the long overdue feeling of being seen.

(Photo by Udayaditya Barua/Unsplash/Creative Commons)
Murali Balaji
October 30, 2024

(RNS) — A native Pennsylvanian, I remember what it was like for my family to celebrate Diwali (or Deepavali, as it is also known for people of South Indian descent) at a time when Hinduism and other dharmic faiths were considered foreign and exotic religions.

In the 1980s, my family would perform a small puja at home on Diwali. We never mentioned that we were celebrating a religious holiday, despite Diwali’s significance to not just a billion Hindus, but to Jains, Sikhs and some Buddhists as well. We celebrated in the shadows, afraid of not being considered “American” because of Diwali’s foreignness, which only added to the stigma of growing up Hindu back then.

That’s why, when Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed Senate Bill 402, recognizing Diwali as a state holiday, last week, it was a long overdue acknowledgment of not only the presence of Hindus and followers of other dharmic faiths in Pennsylvania, but the contributions they have made, to the state and America as a whole. State Sen. Nikil Saval and state Rep. Arvind Venkat, who sponsored the bill in their respective chambers at the Statehouse, were there to see Shapiro sign it into law, along with Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhjia.

Pennsylvania’s recognition of Diwali follows in the footsteps of other states, such as New Jersey, New York, California and Texas, which have made similar efforts to recognize followers of dharmic faiths.

RELATED: How Kamala Harris and JD Vance appeal to Hindu voters

While Pennsylvania’s government won’t close on Diwali’s first and most important day, which this year falls on Thursday, its inclusion as a state holiday means that Hindu parents no longer have to defend taking their kids out of school in areas where the holiday isn’t already observed. A growing number of school districts in Pennsylvania (including my own alma mater, North Penn) already close for Diwali, signaling the important shift in recognizing Hindus as fellow Americans.

Diwali is commonly known as the festival of lights, though the holiday has multiple meanings and celebrations. The most widely commemorated by Hindus and non-Hindus is the return of Lord Rama from exile in the Hindu epic the Ramayana. The Sikhs’ celebration, known as Bandi Chhor Divas, marks the 17th-century release of Sikh Guru Hargobind and 52 Hindu kings who had been imprisoned by Mughal Emperor Jahangir for refusing to convert to Islam.

Beyond the symbolism of these bills and proclamations, there is the long overdue feeling of being seen. For years, I was bullied for being a Hindu, and a number of my peers (fellow Gen Xers) shied away from the religion so as to not be seen as foreign. My wife and I have vowed to raise our son Hindu in a manner in which he can proudly and comfortably feel connected to both our faith and our Americanness.
RELATED: The mashup holiday ‘Diwaloween’ celebrates light as the year turns dark

Our son’s teachers have asked my wife to make a presentation this week on Diwali, which was a welcome surprise. On Thursday, we’ll do a small puja, light the diyas (candles) celebrating Lord Ram’s return and then go trick-or-treating. Blending those celebrations together speaks to how far we’ve come from the days I had to hide who I was.
(Murali Balaji is a journalist and a lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

“As we gain economic prosperity, it’s even more imperative that we think of others,” said Jog, whose group of more than 450 contributing organizations has raised more than 2.2 million pounds of nonperishables for food pantries. “Even though we may not be born here like our children were, we consider the United States our ‘karma-bhoomi’ (land of action). Wherever you are, you need to contribute for the welfare or the betterment of the society, and it is through the power of selfless seva (service).”

And this year, volunteers send a special request for the little ones.

“We are just using that as an opportunity for the kids to have that courage to go door-to-door,” he said. “And in addition to asking for candy, they can also ask for some cans of food!”

RELATED: `Where the goodies are great’: Sweets lovers welcome Diwali

Republicans seek votes among the Amish, who rarely cast them, in swing-state Pennsylvania

LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — Wayne Wengerd, Ohio state director of the Amish Steering Committee, which navigates relations between Amish community leaders and government officials, recalls registration efforts as far back as the 1960s. Get-out-the-vote activists are “going to go after everyone and anyone they think they could possibly convince to vote for their party," he said. "The Amish are no different.”

Peter Smith
October 29, 2024

LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — On a recent weekday afternoon, an Amish man in a horse-drawn buggy navigated through a busy intersection of auto traffic in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, past a billboard proclaiming: “Pray for God’s Mercy for Our Nation.”

The billboard featured a large image of a wide-brimmed straw hat often worn by the Amish. If there was any further doubt as to its target audience, the smaller print listed the sponsor as “Fer Die Amische” — referring to the Amish in their Pennsylvania German dialect.

Researchers say most of the Amish don’t register to vote, reflective of the Christian movement’s historic separatism from mainstream society, just as they’ve maintained their dialect and horse-and-buggy transportation.

But a small minority have voted, and the Amish are most numerous in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania. So they’re being targeted this year in the latest of decades of efforts to register more of them to vote.

Republicans are seeking their votes through billboards, ads, door-to-door canvassing and community meetings. Republican campaigners see the Amish as receptive to GOP talking points — smaller government, less regulation, religious freedom.

“They just want government to stay not only out of their businesses but out of their religion,” said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., whose district includes Lancaster County, at the heart of the nation’s largest Amish population. Smucker, whose own family background is Amish, predicted a dramatic increase in the Amish vote, “basing that on the enthusiasm we see.”

Most Amish don’t vote, but every vote matters in a swing state

But while such efforts could yield an increase, don’t expect the Amish vote to dramatically swing the Keystone State’s bottom line, said Steven Nolt, director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County.

“For most Amish history and in most Amish communities today, Amish people don’t vote,” he said. “They haven’t voted, they’re not voting, and I think it’s safe to say in the near future we wouldn’t expect them to.”

But Amish in a handful of settlements in Lancaster and elsewhere have voted, typically less than 10% of their population, Nolt said. He has overseen post-election analyses of voting registration trends in areas with significant Amish populations — painstaking research that involves cross-checking voter rolls and church directories by hand and can’t be conducted in real time during an election.

There are currently about 92,000 Amish of all ages in Pennsylvania, according to the Young Center’s research, which is based on a number of sources, including almanacs, newspapers, and directories. About half are in the Lancaster area and the rest dispersed around the state.

But in a community with many children, less than half the Amish are of voting age, Nolt said. In 2020, he estimated that about 3,000 Amish voted in the Lancaster area, and several hundred elsewhere, he said.

“Even if we would imagine, for example, that here in Lancaster, there would be a tremendous percentage in percentage terms … we’re looking at several hundred to maybe a thousand additional voters,” he said.

On its own, that cannot come close to flipping a state that went for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 by about 80,000 votes.

Of course, the Amish are hardly the only religious or ethnic constituency being courted by candidates. “In a context where every vote counts, every vote counts,” Nolt said. “But no, we’re not talking tens of thousands of Amish votes.”

Still, Smucker is optimistic about a larger turnout. He said Republican messages resonate with a changing Amish community.

“It was once more agrarian, but they’ve long ago run out of land in Lancaster County,” he said. Only a minority are still in farming, with many starting small businesses, where the Republican emphasis on limited regulation is appealing. Plus, he said, the Amish community perceives Republicans as more friendly to religious liberty and opposed to abortion.

He said Amish tell stories of how their forebears were more likely to vote in the 1950s during controversies about compulsory school policies, but the practice has decreased since then.

Wayne Wengerd, Ohio state director of the Amish Steering Committee, which navigates relations between Amish community leaders and government officials, recalls registration efforts as far back as the 1960s. Get-out-the-vote activists are “going to go after everyone and anyone they think they could possibly convince to vote for their party,” he said. “The Amish are no different.”

Amish theology keeps the church separate from government

But most Amish avoid voting in keeping with “two-kingdom” theology, which puts a stark separation between earthly government and the church with its focus on a heavenly kingdom. They see themselves “being citizens primarily in another kingdom,” Wengerd said.

But, he noted, some still vote. “The Amish are just like any other people,” he said. “Not everyone thinks the same.”

Rural Lancaster County has for generations voted Republican, Nolt said, and so it’s also not surprising that any Amish who do vote would be influenced by their neighbors’ preferences. Most Amish voters register as Republicans, he said. .

An ad in a Lancaster-area newspaper, attributed to an anonymous “Amishman” from Ohio, said refusing to vote would violate Scripture by failing to “stand against evil” while “every good thing our nation stands for is destroyed.” A voicemail message seeking comment, left with the phone number on the ad, wasn’t returned.

Nolt said that ad is appealing to a theology more similar to that of mainstream Reformed Protestantism, which says Christians have a duty both to God and country, than to traditional Amish two-kingdom theology.

“It’s very different than anything in historic Amish documents, which would have said responsibility of the church is to be the church,” he said.

Nolt said a letter being sent to Amish residents did call for voting Republican but didn’t appear aimed at the Amish in particular, citing such issues as immigration.

The widespread support for Trump among conservative Christians of many types has long perplexed observers, given his casino ventures, allegations of sexual assault and vulgar public statements.

Nolt, however, said that compared with the Amish’s separatist lifestyles, neither presidential candidate looks much like them — one reason most of them don’t vote. “Donald Trump’s life is very different from an Amish person’s life, but so is Kamala Harris’,” he said.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.