Animal rights group files lawsuit comparing Kapporos ritual to Wuhan "wet markets," linking it to COVID19

As readers of this blog know, I oppose using chickens for the  kapporos ritual, and have been outspoken on this issue for years. But I also oppose using antisemitic tropes to get publicity in the fight against it. 

This year, the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos has sunk to a new low.  They have re-opened a lawsuit from 2018 opposing the ritual, now linking it to COVID19. 

When I first heard about this, I assumed they were referring to social distancing and the danger of gathering in large crowds.  A concern I would agree with. But the Alliance takes it a step further, evoking, however unintentionally, an old trope about Jews being the source of plagues and diseases. This I must condemn as tone-deaf and dangerous.

 In their lawsuit, they compare pop-up kapporos centers to "wet markets" in Wuhan, China, where it is believed COVID19 mutated, and implying the same thing can happen with Hasidic Jews slaughtering chickens in New York.

This theme been picked up by animal rights groups all over the internet, resulting in posts like this tweet:

The implication here, as I read this post, is that COVID19 will jump from humans to chickens, mutate there, then jump back to humans in a more virulent form and wipe out New York City.  Not only is this an irresponsible, inflammatory scare tactic, it is scientifically impossible. Chickens do not get COVID19. The pop-up kapporos centers may be messy and cruel, but they are not incubators for a new form of coronavirus.  (Chickens can, however, give you a case of salmonella, which is why the CDC recommends not kissing or snuggling them.)

COVID19 is a mammalian virus, believed to have originated in wild bats that were being sold as food.  Isolated cases have been reported of cats and dogs getting COVID19 from humans, including a tiger in Central Park Zoo, but birds, including chickens, cannot carry or transmit it. 

The Chinese in Wuhan might eat bats, but Hasidic Jews do not, nor do they eat other kinds of wild "bush meat."  The chickens used at kaporos centers come from the very same commercial sources as the chicken sold in your local grocery.  Unless you are a vegetarian, you probably have some in your freezer. 

There is a very big difference between handling domestic species that humans have interacted with for centuries, and "wet markets" selling wild-captured exotic species with possible viruses against which humans have no resistance. 

Nevertheless, the animal rights groups are now using #wetmarket in their Tweets and posts, purposely causing kapporos to turn up in searches about COVID19 and primitive meat markets in Wuhan and elsewhere.  Making such a comparison at this point in time, when people are already panicked and angry, is bound to have negative consequences. Especially since the people involved are Jews, a group that has been falsely accused of spreading diseases in the past.

There are already antisemitic memes online, linking Jews with plagues, like this sign seen at a recent white supremacist protest. Conspiracy theories blame George Soros,  the Jewish billionaire who is everybody's scapegoat. QAnon claims the Democrats worship Satan, another accusation sometimes leveled at Jews. Adding fuel to this fire is a bad idea. 

Rina Deich, a founding member of the Alliance, has tried to assure me in a text conversation that their intent was not to say that COVID19 will mutate in chickens. Rather, they are referring to crowds of people gathering in the unsanitary conditions, where some sort of new mutation of viruses in chickens might happen. In her words to me:

 "There is a toxicologist who has spent hours with the lawyer discussing the potential dangers of kaporos, especially the way it is practiced. Just because it hasn't happened yet does not mean that in the right conditions it wouldn't happen. It's a distinct possibility."

Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it can't?  I suppose that is true of just about anything.  Hard to disprove a negative, they say.  

But even if this unnamed toxicologist is right, and some other virus in chickens could mutate, linking kapporos and COVID19 in a publicity stunt right now is still irresponsible. And publicity stunt it is. The first thing the Alliance did was send out a press release. Whatever their original intent, it has now gone viral.  And not everybody is making fine distinctions between Wuhan bush meat and chickens in New York.  Just read the headlines.

Deich tried to reassure me that, "When we are interviewed by the media, if we handle it the correct way, it should not fuel anti-semitism. In fact, people seeing that Jews are opposed to this practice takes away their ammunition."

Brave words. And if Deich does the interviews, it might well be true, although I doubt whether antisemites will care if Jews protest it or not.  However, if Karen Davis, their primary spokesperson, is the one giving those interviews, I do not trust it will be handled "in the correct way."  She has a bad record for saying insensitive things about Hasidic Jews, a culture she does not like or respect. (Read more on that.)

As of this writing, it is not even clear if the judge will re-open the case, which was denied back in 2018. But that doesn't really matter, because the Alliance already got what they wanted: lots of free publicity.  They have also set the stage, come October, for the public to see Orthodox Jews as a bunch of dangerous, disease-ridden people spreading the Plague.  They didn't intend it that way, but there are always unintended consequences.  I only hope it does not result in violence against the community like it did in the past, heaven forbid, when Jews were burned at the stake for supposedly causing the Black Plague. 

As I said at the beginning of this article,  I oppose the use of chickens in this ritual. I would love to see it shut down forever.  I encourage my fellow Hasidim to avoid these gatherings, not because of chickens who don't carry COVID19, but because of people who do. At the same time, I cannot, and will not, endorse this latest mutation of the anti-kapporos campaign.

Kapporos Protests: Reflections on a New Approach

Note from the Editor: As readers of this blog know, I was a founding member of the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos in 2010, but broke with the organization in 2014 over what I saw as disrespect of Hasidism and Hasidic culture on the part of Karen Davis, who was their primary spokesperson at the time.  In the past year, however, some members of that organization have re-evaluated their aggressive approach (which, quite frankly, was not working) and decided to try using love and compassion instead.  In this guest column,  Rina Deych, also a founding member of the Alliance, describes what they did in the fall of 2018, and how it was received by the Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities in New York. (Rabbi Gershom)

* * * * *

Kaporos Protests: Reflections on a New Approach

Guest Column by Rina Deych

Since 2010, the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos has been protesting the use of chickens in the custom of Kaporos (background info here.)  Although at times we did get into some great discussions with practitioners, interactions were often angry and contentious.   Last year, for the first time, we partnered with The Save Movement and Jewish Veg, and our approach was very different.

Compassion instead of anger

Author Rina Deych (left)
and Anita Krajnc 

Anita Krajnc, co-founder of The Save Movement, met with a group of us to promote a love-based initiative inspired by the writings of Leo Tolstoy.  It was a truly eye-(and heart)-opening experience to hear her speak.  She encouraged us to have love and respect for practitioners and to approach them from a place of compassion.

It made me remember a conversation I’d had with a friend who insisted that if she were brought up in a community that used chickens in the ritual she would “know” they were suffering and she’d refuse to do it.  I told her at the time (and mentioned when I spoke at our meeting) that no one can say that for sure.  I explained (to her, at the time, and later to the group) that if one is indoctrinated from birth to believe (or ignore) certain things, it’s very hard to change – especially when one lives in a community that reinforces those things. Therefore, difficult as it is, we need to feel compassion for these people.

Teaching a how to properly
hold a chicken by supporting
her body

Last Kaporos, we visited groups in Boro Park, Williamsburg and Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where the ritual was being performed.  Activists opened crates and gave food and water to as many chickens as they could reach.  Sadly, that wasn’t many, because they are so tightly crammed into crates that are stacked several high and many across.

A more positive response

I noticed almost immediately that the practitioners’ reactions to us were completely different than in previous years.  Children gathered around, wide-eyed with curiosity and both kids and adults were asking us questions.

Chickens drinking water
offered by protesters

Sage Max of Jewish Veg gave out flyers with historic information supporting the use of money (instead of chickens) in the ritual. There were activists showing practitioners the correct way to hold a chicken (under and around his or her body, instead of by their fragile wings).  One butcher (some of the rituals occur outside of butcher shops) with a long white beard came over to me and showed me that he was giving the birds challah (bread) soaked in water.  I was touched by his compassion and thanked him.

There were some angry words from practitioners, but we tried our best to respond to them with kindness.  This is what I call putting water on the fire.  In previous years, some of us have thrown gasoline on it… not intentionally, but in response to seeing the chickens suffering.   That approach was counterproductive and did not help the chickens.

Continuing postive outreach

This year, we plan to continue our feeding, watering, and outreach efforts.  We planted many seeds of compassion and this Kaporos we plan to water them.  I thank Rabbi Gershom for his wonderful book Kapporos Then and Now, which I have given to rabbis and some key members of the community to inspire them to use money, instead of chickens.  It has been an invaluable tool in helping to spread compassion.

Rina Deych
Founding Member
Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos


---------------------------------------------------------

"Hasidic Man Speaks Out Against Mass Animal Sacrifice Kaporos" -- a video of last year's actions, produced by Donny Moss of  Their Turn. Note especially the outspoken young Hasidic man at the beginning of the video, who is protesting the custom.  It is important to remember that not all Orthodox Jews do this ceremony.


Also check out this well-written article by Donny Moss, about how the footage of the Hasidic man in the video came about, behind the scenes discussions with Hasidim who disapprove of using chickens, etc.  Very well-balanced, informative, and accurate.

For practical suggestions on organizing effective protests and other actions you can take, see Rabbi Gershom's activist manual online here. 

For more on Rabbi Gershom's Book, Kapporos Then and Now: Toward a More Compassionate Tradition, click here, where you can read a synopsis by the author and order copies at a discount.

Guest Column: "To Save a Life" by Rocky Schwartz

Editor's Intro: Each year I write a column about why I oppose using chickens for Kapporos, the pre-Yom Kippur ceremony practiced by some Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. I have written about it from the standpoints of history, of Jewish mysticism, of public opinion, of culture wars and politics.  In all of those stories, the chickens themselves were anonymous, suffering en masse in the background. This year, I received this story about one individual chicken whose life was spared at a Kapporos site, and the compassionate way that came about.  I was deeply touched by this true tale, and so I offer it to here, my readers. Perhaps seeing one chicken as an individual life will help you to see all of them as God's creatures, each with his or her own story to live. (Rabbi Gershom) 

*  *  *  *  *

To Save a Life

by Rocky Schwartz

On a Monday night in October, we walked into hell. We had come to protest an Orthodox Jewish ceremony called Kapporos, in which chickens are slaughtered before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  Although I myself am Jewish, I am not Hasidic and did not grow up practicing Kapporos.

Kapporos chickens in a crate

On a busy street corner, men were grabbing six-week-old baby birds, flipping them upside down and slicing their throats. Behind them, a truck sat on the sidewalk, filled with crates stacked upon crates of more babies.

When I immediately began sobbing at the horror of the sight, a dozen little boys gathered around me, mocking and laughing. Someone shouted, "Kill it right in front of her!" He swung a young peeping chicken by her wings.

I was horrified that such young people could be so callous toward baby animals suffering before them. The adults present either did not see what was happening, or they did not care.

After I composed myself (read: put up all the mental walls so as to not truly see the reality in front of me), I joined about 50 activists who stood protesting the slaughter. Tensions ran high on both sides, but I tried to remain calm. I walked among those who were swinging the birds, telling them:

They feel.

They feel pain.

They want to live.

They are fighting for their lives.

*You* have a choice.

Some people responded, "Yes, I have made my choice," meaning that they had decided to have their bird slaughtered. I told them the birds didn't have a choice in having their lives taken from them. Most ignored or mocked me, but one young girl, maybe 12 years old, spoke with me. She told me her name was Rose, and said a lot of people were listening to us and and having their minds changed, even if they did not say so in public.  She herself was torn. Should she follow the lead of her parents or not?

I asked her if she would do it if the animals being used were cats or dogs.

"Definitely not," she answered.

I told her the birds are no different, that they, too, feel pain and fear. I showed her the background on my phone, in which I'm hugging my late love, a rooster named Tabitha. I told her he was my best friend, but he died in January.

"And tonight," I told her, you have the choice not to take someone else's life."

"But what do I do?" she asked. "I already have a ticket!"

A fellow protester named David instructed me to ask her to still use her ticket to get a bird, but give the bird to me after the ceremony, instead of having her killed.

"I'll give her a safe home," I assured her.

"Okay," she said, "I'll find you."

I returned to the group of protesters, hopeful but not optimistic that the child would actually return and give me the chicken.

To my surprise, only five minutes later a young figure ran toward me through the crowd and shouted, "Here!"

Rose the hen at about six weeks old,
soon after she was rescued

It was the same girl. She quickly pushed a live hen into my hands. Then we ran in opposite directions, she back into the crowd and I toward the safety of my fellow protesters Vanessa and Steven's car. As I ran, I called out a stunned "thank you," clasping the trembling, feathered body in my arms.

On the way back to the car, I hid the small survivor behind my protest sign, shielding her from the crowd filling the street, who were killing her kin. I was also afraid someone might grab her from me. Once in the car, the chicken continued to tremble in my lap, but slowly accepted gentle petting and some water. I decided to name her Rose, after the little girl who had spared her life.

While I was sitting in the car, my partner Jay spoke with the girl. He told her how brave she was and asked if she wanted to be an animal rights activist. She told him her parents are extremely protective, that she doesn't even have a cell phone or email address. She wasn't able to protest publicly, but she did care about animals. I wondered how many others in the crowd didn't want to kill their chicken, but were not as brave as this child.

Vanessa and Steve returned to the protest, managed to convince one more man to spare a baby rooster, and then drove us home.

*  *  *  *  *

Rose today, as full-grown adult

Safe at home, Rose the rescue hen sits contented in my lap, preening herself and my arm. Out in the expanse of our backyard, she chooses to stand beside me. When I go to put her to bed at night, she cries out in panic and runs after me toward my bed, until I sit with her as she falls asleep.

She still bears the marks of the life she escaped. Badly infected feet from days spent in filth and crammed into a crate. A too-big body for a six-week-old, still-peeping chick, the result of over-breeding for the meat industry.  Anxiety from her history of trauma.

But she is one of the lucky ones. Though she was specifically destined to be part of a religious ritual, her fate was to be no different from the 263 baby chickens killed for food in the United States each second, an incomprehensible 52 billion globally each year. The only difference for her? She was seen as an individual. And a child had the power to save her life.

The author, Rocky, and her new friend Rose

*  *  *  *  *

Editor's postscript:  Rocky refers to the birds being slaughtered as "babies."  These are not fluffy baby chicks, but six-week-old broiler chickens who have been artificially over-bred to grow and gain weight as fast as possible.  It is not that the Hasidim purposely choose to use babies as such; rather, it is that these are the type of chickens available from the meat industry.  The days of mother hens raising their chicks to maturity are long gone.  If you eat chicken, the likelihood is that the bird on your plate was also a juvenile bird hatched in an incubator and killed when only a couple months old.  They go to their deaths peeping in panic, never living long enough to cluck or crow. 

For more on this issue read my previous 2013 post, Kapporos Chicken's Don't Sing!  about the peeping chickens, and why Hasidim do not understand that they are crying. 

See also The Baal Shem Tov did it with a chicken, so why do you tell me not to? which explains this question from the standpoint of Hasidic mysticism.  

Kapporos and storytelling: A reply to Shmarya Rosenberg's critical review of my book

  

Shmarya Rosenberg, creator and webmaster of the Failed Messiah website, completely missed the point of my new book, Kapporos Then and Now: Toward a more compassionate tradition, in his September 22, 2015 review on his blog. (Read the full review here.)  Although admitting that, quote: "the actual halakhic and theological information on kapparot and the information on animal handling and welfare issues Gershom included in Kapporos Then and Now is quite good," he ridicules me for telling midrashic and Hasidic stories, which he writes off as "fairy tales" and calls me "childish" for citing them.

Rosenberg would much rather have me drag in things like cases of pedophelia and other criminal behaviors that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.  (Then again, his whole website is about muckraking the Orthodox world, so I suppose he had to find something about me to nitpick.) Such omissions were not, as Rosenberg accuses me, due to "cognitive dissonance" or "making excuses" for Hasidism.  I am perfectly aware that the Orthodox world, like all communities everywhere, has its share of bad apples.  I failed to discuss pedophiles and other such criminals because this was not the topic of the book.  That's called good writing.  You don't throw in everything but the kitchen sink.

Normally I don't bother to reply to such reviews, but he so completely misread me that I feel a reply is in order.  I am not, as Rosenberg states, living in a Fiddler on the Roof fantasy (his words.)  I am perfectly aware of the difference between history and folklore, as anyone who has read my other works would know.  However, I am also aware that Hasidim live in a basically non-historical universe, where these stories carry a lot of weight.  As I said at the beginning of the book, I was going to look at both sides of the issue from within the viewpoints of each side.  For the Hasidic side, that includes storytelling. 

Whether or not the stories are literally true is beside the point.  Even outright parables carry weight when discussing religion.  When Rebbe Nachman of Breslov was asked if the stories he told were true, he replied, "Not all of the stories are true, but when the people tell them, they are holy." Religious teaching stories are not documentaries, but they do contain truths.

Hasidic stories and other midrashim are the examples held up as ideals by Hasidic rabbis and others.  My purpose in citing them was to compare the tales we tell about the sages of old with the realities of the meat industry today.  No, things were not perfect in "the good old days," but neither were there any factory farms back then, either.  So I was asking the basic question, "How would the early sages and Rebbes react to today's conditions?"

I said at the very beginning of the book that I was going to approach it as a combination theologian and anthropologist.  And, as any anthropologist knows, storytelling is central to any culture.  Whether written or oral, stories are how the values of a culture are passed down. The Torah itself is basically one long story of the Jewish people -- a story that we minutely dissect and discuss over and over in a perpetual yearly cycle.  Stories are the heart of a culture, as is the way we tell them.  As someone once said, "Change the story and you change the world."

Rosenberg states that the rural Jewish world I describe never existed, and that, in his words,  "most 'shtetls' were really commercial towns, some of significant size and importance, where Jews were overwhelmingly urbanized. Some families clearly kept their own chickens, but by the end of the first half of the 19th Century, many others did not." 

I have no argument with that. I never said everyone had chickens in their backyard.  But even in the urban centers, chickens came from nearby farms, for the simple reason that there was no refrigeration back then.  It's pretty hard to transport live chickens hundreds of miles by horse and wagon.  Most people were, by necessity, basically locavores.  I am old enough to remember ice boxes, home deliveries by the milkman, and our first family refrigerator -- and that was right here in the good ol' USA during the 20th century.  So even in the big city (I'm talking about Philadelphia in the 1950s) it has not been that long since food got industrialized.

There were indeed many small villages in Eastern Europe as well as larger "commercial towns."  I have actually been to rural Ukraine where Rebbe Nachman of Breslov lived, and the area around it is still mostly farmland.  People there still do have chickens in their backyards, as well as goats, sheep, and other animals.  In addition, I have personally talked with Holocaust survivors who described exactly what I say in the book.  Plus there are plenty of published firsthand accounts -- many of which I have on my own bookshelves -- about pre-Holocaust Jewish life in small villages.  So it is not out of line for me to make references to such.

The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidim, lived in the first half of the 18th century, and spent his early years wandering in the Carpathian mountains, not the big cities like Warsaw and Brody.  In fact, the urban rabbis were at first opposed to Hasidism, with the Vilna Gaon actually excommunicating the Baal Shem Tov and his followers.  Only in later generations did Hasidism spread to the bigger cities. 

And therein lies a possible reason that Rosenberg, as an ex-Chabadnik, might not be familiar with the more rural, nature-oriented themes of the early stories.   It has been my experience that the Chabadniks of today pretty much stick with studying sources by their own line of Rebbes.  And, as I said in the book, the founder of Chabad, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liady, was not very much interested in animals or nature -- an attitude that has carried down through the Chabad line.

In fact (as I also say in the book), more than once I have been told by Chabad rabbis that the Baal Shem Tov wasn't really "that guy out in the woods."  They prefer to portray him as a scholar.  Which he may well have been, but he was also in tune with animals and nature.  I would argue that much of our sensitivity toward God's creation was lost when Hasidism went from rural to urban in later generations. Much was also lost within Chabad when Schenur Zalman intellectualized an ecstatic revivalist movement into the intellectualism of Tanya, the "bible" of Chabad.

Which brings us to another area where Rosenberg misread me.  He seems to think I'm calling for everyone to move to the country and live off the grid.  That is not my intent.  Yes, I do live in the country myself and yes, I do have my own chickens and other animals. This has given me firsthand experience that most urban Jews lack.  That experience has enriched my narratives and made them more authentic.  But I am not expecting everyone to live as I do.

What I am calling for is an emotional and spiritual re-connection with animals as living, breathing, sentient beings and not Cartesian machines.  It is perfectly possible to do this in the city, and many people do.  But you have to make the effort.  When you have people who never leave the confines of the few blocks they call home -- not even to go to a museum or a park -- then there is a serious disconnect from the natural world.  And that, I do believe, is at the heart of many animal welfare problems in the  Orthodox Jewish community.  Especially Chabad, where their last Rebbe forbade children from looking at pictures or playing with toys in the shape of non-kosher species of animals.  (Read more on that...)

Rosenberg states, regarding the abominable conditions of the kosher meat industry: "The problem is not lack of technology, added cost, or some gross inconvenience to humans. The problem is a near-complete lack of rabbinic will to do better."

Rosenberg is living in his own fantasy world if he thinks that all it would take to "fix" the kosher meat industry would be for rabbis to have more "rabbinic will" to do better.  As I explained in the book, animals used for kosher meat come from the same commercial sources as non-kosher.  Whch means factory farms. And it is not very likely that Jews are going to begin raising their own animals on humane farms.  Even in Israel, where some Jews do raise animals, the factory farm system has become the norm.

He is also wrong to think that it would not cost any more to produce humane kosher meat.  Technology is indeed the problem, and it does add cost to raising animals more humanely.  The Chipotle restaurant chain recently found that out.  They pledged not to use pork from pigs raised in tiny crates -- and soon discovered that pig farmers in the USA were not willing to make the more costly changes necessary to raise them humanely.  Chipotle is currently importing their pork from England. (See http://chipotle.com/carnitas)  As for chickens, in my local grocery store the free-range, humane-raised eggs cost twice as much as eggs from "battery hen" cages.  So much for cost not being a factor.

Rosenberg also felt I was unfairly biased toward Karen Davis and her anti-kapporos campaign, and not critical enough of Rabbi Hecht, who promotes the ritual.  So I did a search of the whole book by names.  Yes, I did mention Davis more often, for the simple reason that she is pretty much a one-woman show.  The vast majority of protest articles are by or about her, and she has made it very clear that she is in charge.  Her opinions have pretty much defined the movement.  So naturally most of the quotes I refuted were coming from her.

Rabbi Hecht, on the other hand, is part of a vast organization called Chabad, which in turn is part of Orthodox Judaism, which in turn runs the kosher meat industry.  So there were far more sources I could cite besides Hecht -- and I did.  If you add those references, the criticisms are about equal on both sides.  There are whole sections where I describe in detail the horrors seen at kapporos centers, the way chickens are raised and transported there, etc.  And while it is true, as Rosenberg complains, that I did not specifically name the Agriprocessors plant and the scandals there, I was very critical of the whole industry in general, as well as taking Hecht specifically to task for some of his statements.

What comes through in Rosenberg's review is his own personal bias against Chabad.  He is himself an ex-Chabadnik, and there is no greater critic of any philosophy than a disillusioned former disciple. If you read his online About Me page, it is clear that he had a bad experience which caused a crisis of faith that he never really recovered from, (To be fair, his criticism of the Rebbe is well-deserved in his case.)  So it is understandable that, having been completely turned off by Chabad Hasidism, he would resent any attempt to show it in a positive light.  

True, there were places where I defended Hecht's point of view and theology, even though he is a villian in the controversy.  But I also defended Davis and the animal rights people in several places, too.  Ironically, I have received emails from Orthodox Jews who thought I was too easy on Davis because I defended her against accusations of antisemitism.  I suppose this is bound to happen with any book that tries to look at both sides of a problem.  One often ends up writing a book that pleases neither side.  But at least the book has gotten some discussions going, and that was really my goal.  People may not be willing to completely cross the bridge to the other side, but some, at least, are meeting in the middle.

New Book: "Kapporos Then and Now: Toward a More Compassionate Tradition" by Yonassan Gershom

Every year, right before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, there is a cultural war in certain Jewish neighborhoods over a ceremony called Kapporos, in which a chicken is slaughtered just before the holy day. The animal rights people show up claiming, “Meat is murder!” while the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who practice this ceremony accuse the activists of antisemitism and violating their freedom of religion. Epithets fly and confrontations occur across the barricades, but nobody is really listening to each other.

In this book, I seek to build a bridge of understanding between these two warring camps. On the one hand, I oppose using live chickens as Kapporos, as I have written on this blog before. (Read More...)  Like many other religious Jews before me, I advocate giving money to charity instead. But on the other hand, I am a Hasid who understands and believes in the kabbalistic principles behind the ceremony and Hasidic life in general. In fact, it is that very mysticism that has led me not to use chickens for the ritual.  And I believe it is essential for activists to understand and respect this mystical worldview if they want to be effective.

On the surface, my task in writing this book would seem easy: Explain to animal rights people the reasons why some Orthodox Jews use chickens in a religious ceremony, and explain to Orthodox Jews why animal rights people find this offensive and cruel in modern times. But there is much more to it than that. Beyond this specific ritual lies a vast chasm between two very, very different worldviews. On both sides of the issue I have found sincere, caring people who, in all good faith, believe in what they are doing. But at the same time, each side is appallingly ignorant of the other. Could I possibly write a book to bridge the gap?

To do this successfully, the book could be neither a vegetarian manifesto nor a "Torah-true" religious tract.   My methodology was to approach the subject as a combination of theologian, cultural anthropologist, and participatory journalist, examining the issue from the perspectives of both sides.   As Richard H. Schwartz, author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, wrote in his Foreword to my book:

“Rabbi Gershom has a very clear, conversational style of writing, scholarly yet very readable, and he explains complex issues very well. He is careful to put issues in context. He is not a polemicist, but seeks common ground and solutions. He uses examples from his own personal experience and also cites authorities.”

Chapter 1 opens with my involvement with the Alliance to End Chickens as Kapporos (Karen Davis' org), my reasons for leaving the Alliance over theological issues (read more on that...) but not the movement itself -- and how this ultimately led me to write this book.

In the rest of the book I trace the history of Kapporos and the impact of the modern meat industry on the ceremony, comparing it to my own experience raising and observing chickens in natural, free-range flocks on my hobby farm in Minnesota.   I explain how the very un-Jewish ideas of Descartes have affected Jews and gentiles alike.  And because I believe it is essential for activists to understand the mystical worldview of Hasidism, I devote an entire chapter to "raising Holy sparks," the question of whether animals have souls and/or consciousness, and how this relates to Kapporos.

In short, I explore the issue from many different perspectives and present what I believe to be a number of convincing arguments for why, in modern times, this ritual can best be accomplished by using money instead of chickens.  This will not be an easy book for either side to read, but I believe it fills an important educational gap on both sides.

You can order your copy now  on Lulu.com. Also available on Amazon but if you order thru Lulu you get a discount and I get a better deal as an author. Lulu also offers quantity discounts.

Karen Davis, anti-kapporos activist, misses the mark on Jewish theology

For the past few years I have been a part of The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos, (hereafter referred to as "the Alliance"), a protest group headed by animal rights activist Karen Davis, campaigning to end the use of live chickens in a pre-Yom Kippur Jewish atonement ceremony practiced by some groups of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews.  (Read more on that...)  I advocate using the alternative, fully acceptable by Jewish law, to use money for the ceremony instead, then donating it to charity.

Anti-kapporos protest on Brooklyn Parkway, 2014.
Karen Davis is in the center holding a chicken.
(Photo by Matthew Taub)

I was among the early founders of the Alliance org -- I even helped think up the name.  In 2013, I narrated a one-minute slide show for them called A Heartfelt Plea for Mercy, and provided text and images for some of their protest posters.  (Including the one with the mother hen and chicks in this photo.)  I do not deny or retract those things, because I still believe in everything I said back then.

However, this past year [2014] before Yom Kippur, I found it necessary to distance myself from Davis' campaign.  This article explains why.

Let me be very, very clear that I still oppose using chickens as kapporos and will continue to do so.  But I have come to believe that Karen Davis -- who is not Jewish and does not understand Judaism or Jewish culture -- is the wrong person to be leading a campaign about an Orthodox Jewish ceremony.  Especially since she draws wrong conclusions about Hasidic beliefs and refuses to listen to real Hasidim -- like me -- who try to correct her.

I do recognize that Davis has done a lot of very good work for sensitizing the public to the suffering and exploitation of chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys and other domestic fowl.  If she would just stick to science and secular animal issues, everything would be fine.  But when it comes to Jewish theology -- which she confuses with Christian thought (more on that below) -- she is like a runaway tank in a minefield.  And this year, it all blew up in my face.

Preaching to the vegan choir?

Karen Davis is a vegan.  A very radical vegan.  To her, veganism is not just a diet, not just a personal lifestyle choice -- it's a religion, complete with dogmas, taboos, and its own special terminology.

Although there is no mention of veganism on the Alliance website, the group is in fact a vegans-only club, rejecting any argument that is not 100% vegan in content.  Although nobody ever insisted I had to become a vegan (I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian, eating only eggs from my own chickens), neither would they listen to any viewpoint that was not vegan.  Over the past three years Davis, who runs the group with an iron fist, has refused to use or forward links to any of my articles on this blog that even mentioned  slaughter.  Not even if such articles were effective within the Hasidic community.  Davis, it seems, prefers preaching to the vegan choir rather than preaching to the people who actually do this ceremony.

The problem with this approach is that the vast majority of Hasidim are not vegetarians, let alone vegans, and the idea of mixing this issue with veganism is counterproductive.  If you use this "all-or-nothing" approach, most Hasidim will chose "nothing."  Going vegan means a lot more in Judaism than just giving up meat, because so many traditional Jewish foods and holy days center around meat.  It can be exceedingly disruptive to a family to go vegan cold turkey (pardon the expression.)  .

On the other hand, if you can start with simply giving up using a live chicken and substituting money for kapporos, this is not so threatening.  And it can be one step toward vegetarianism in the future.  I have seen it happen.  In fact, this has long been a Hasidic method of bringing Jews back to Torah observances:  Start with a few practices, rather than hit people with all of it at once.

When I first joined the Alliance, on the recommendation of Richard H. Schwartz, then president of Jewish Vegetarians of North America  (JVNA), I had no idea that veganism would be the litmus test for whether or not an argument could be used.  Since this was a specifically Jewish issue, I naturally assumed the keystone would be Judaism.

I had worked with Schwartz before and, although he himself is a vegan, he does not insist that this is the only way to present animal issues to Jews.  In his now-classic book, Judaism and Vegetarianism, he covers many different philosophical approaches -- from health to theology to world hunger -- as to why a person should give up meat.  And he considers them all valid.  He does not condemn Judaism for permitting meat, nor does he villify the rabbis and sages who ate it in the past.  He simply argues that in today's modern world, vegetarianism -- or even veganism -- is the best way to keep kosher.

So I naively assumed that we, in the Alliance, would take a similar approach, arguing from within the multi-faceted aspects of the Jewish worldview.  But I was wrong.

Inadvertently arousing antisemitism

I also assumed -- wrongly -- that Davis was Jewish, because "Davis" is a common Jewish surname.  Only later did I learn she is not.  This is not to say that a non-Jew cannot work on this issue, but I do feel that he or she should take the advice of those who are Jewish and who know the culture from within.  Which Davis does not.  To her, veganism is a religion, complete with dogmas she will not violate.  One of those dogmas is that you should never, ever appear to allow slaughtering anything for any reason.  You cannot ever believe that any kind of slaughter could be humane, or you become a heretic.  And that includes kosher slaughtering.  Even PETA does not go as far as Davis does.

The result is, that Davis has said and written some gross misinformation about Hasidism that has aroused antisemitism, even if that was not her intent.  I do believe her when she says she is not an antisemite and is just concerned with the abuse of animals by anybody anywhere.  But she is cluelessly naive about how her words can be twisted by those who are Jew-haters.  Targeting kapporos is not the same as protesting outside McDonalds.  Kapporos is a Jewish ceremony, practiced in some communities of Orthodox Jews who are already seen as highly visible "outsiders" by many Americans.  Unless handled with care and respect, the issue can spill over into hatred against all Jews -- which, in some cases, it has.

My attempts to educate Davis and the protesters

Early on, I raised the point that Davis was doing nothing to educate the protesters about the positive things in Hasidic culture, and that if their only contact with Hasidim was to show up once a year and yell "meat is murder" at the kapporos centers, then she was arousing hatred toward Hasidim in general.  She replied in an email that she was not the one abusing chickens, so I should direct my anger at the Hasidim, not the protesters.  She took absolutely no responsibility for the numerous vicious, antisemitic remarks coming from the vegan community in support of her cause.

We may all look alike to you,
but we do not THINK alike.
I am not the face of the enemy

Davis herself is not an antisemite, but a lot of her readers sure are.  The first time I visited the Alliance Facebook page I got flamed as "the enemy" based on my profile picture.  To her credit, pagemaster Rina Deych removed the offending comments and added to the "About Us" page a statement that the Alliance is against the ceremony only, not Hasidic culture in general.  But the fact that this happened at all was disconcerting, to say the least.  Apparently they saw only the clothes and not the face on the posters they were carrying.  If this happened with a member of any other group it would be blatant racism.

When I suggested we write some educational materials to send to protest organizers before the next year's events, she showed no interest.  So I took it upon myself to write a series of articles on my blog, as well as post a download link to Richard Schwartz's interview with me, Raising Holy Sparks: Hasidism and Vegetarianism, included in his 2012 book, Who Stole My Religion: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal Our Imperiled Planet.  (Visit the book homepage.)

Davis' response was to write off the whole "Raising Sparks" thing as "a solipsistic conceit" (her words.)   It wasn't vegan, so it wasn't valid, period.  She even refused to forward the link to my 2013 article, Kapporos chickens don't sing! to activist Rina Deych, who told the story that inspired the article in the first place.  (However, to be fair, it does appear that other activists read the article and understood it, as witnessed by this poster in the 2014 protests.)

Whenever I posted a new article, Davis's only response would be to nitpick why it was not vegan enough.  When she viewed my 14-minute video on Raising Sparks and why I believe it leads to vegetarianism, she asked if she could use just the "Forward to Eden" part at the end and cut out the rest.  Which of course would have gutted the whole thing, so I refused.

The one exception to all this was Kapporos protests: What works and what doesn't, where I carefully danced around the vegan issue in order to get it past the Davis censorship.  That one she did link to, but not any of the materials that attempted to educate the protesters about Hasidic theology.

The last straw

The last straw for me came in August 2014, when I designed a flyer specifically directed at Hasidim, speaking from within that worldview. (View and/or download it here).  Davis would not use it because I had told the story of how the Baal Shem Tov used to cry when he had to slaughter an animal.  She accused me of "pulling a knife" (her words) on her for even mentioning slaughter in the same sentence as "compassion" and stated that the Baal Shem Tov could not have possibly have had any compassion if he was willing to slaughter at all.

She thereby wrote off the founder of Hasidim and with it, the entire culture and worldview.  (Not to mention that she also, by this argument, would write off Jesus as having no compassion, since he also ate meat.  So did Francis of Assisi, the Roman Catholic patron saint of animals.)

Davis kept citing the Mission Statement of her org, United Poultry Concerns which funds the Alliance.  That Statement reads: ""Promoting the Compassionate and Respectful Treatment of Domestic Fowl."  It was then that I realized that "compassion" is a code word for "vegan."  She could not say the Baal Shem Tov has compassion when he slaughtered because compassion, to her, means no slaughtering, period,.  And, I suppose, one cannot be "respectful" in her eyes if one is not vegan, either.  Her "About us" page says "We inform people about and actively promote alternatives."  But in reality "alternatives" is not really a plural.  Veganism is the Only Way

Comparing the Holocaust and 9/11 victims to chicken slaughter

The problem is, Davis sees any use of animals as "exploitation" and cruelty.  There are no degrees of difference in her mind between a Native American who prays for the soul of the animal he kills, reverently thanking it for giving its life so the people may live, and a psychopath who abuses animals for personal pleasure.  Beyond that, she sees no difference between animals and humans, and has compared factory farms to the Holocaust, as well as stating that the people who died in the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers did not suffer any more than chickens in the meat industry.  On a physiological level that may be true -- pain is pain -- but it shows a terrible disregard for human feelings to say that the life of a child in a daycare center was worth no more than that of a chicken.  Talk about lack of compassion!

Inadvertently (?) citing gnostic canards about Judaism

It became obvious to me that because Judaism permits eating meat, Davis feels this invalidates everything else.  At one point she told me to "get in touch with the God of Genesis" -- in opposition to the God who permits slaughter.  I doubt she realizes that she had just invoked a very antisemitic gnostic Christian belief from the Middle Ages, namely, that the "real" God of compassion who made the universe was not the "God of the Jews."  Davis is not sophisticated enough in theology to realize -- or even recognize -- the pitfalls of this type of thinking.  I doubt she would actually call Jews "children of Satan" or burn them at the stake as witches like the medieval Christians did.  But as I said before, when it comes to theology, she is a runaway tank in a minefield.

Davis confuses Jewish and Christian theology about Atonement

More recently, she has taken to stating that Jews are purposely "punishing" the chickens as "objects" and that "abuse" is part of the ceremony.  She is basing this on references she found where kapporos is compared to the biblical scapegoat.  She wrongly assumes that means it takes on all the suffering of the practitioner on a physical level.  In October 2014 she was quoted as saying, referring to kapporos chickens:  “They’re treated like what they are intended to be in the ritual, punished objects,  The only role of the chicken in the ritual is to be a symbolic recipient of the sins or wrongdoings and the punishment of the practitioner, to be mistreated, to be punished.”

Mistreating chickens like this is NOT part of
the ceremony, nor is it "punishment."  It is
a by-product of the modern secular meat industry.

Yes, it is true that the chickens suffer terribly when being trucked in without food or water, then stacked in piles of little cages -- again without food or water -- for days.  But this mishandling is not part of the ceremony!  All that is required is to say the blessing and slaughter the bird, period.  Even if is done with the most gentle care, with a healthy. well-cared-for, free-range bird handled properly, it is still kapporos -- and that is what it used to be before modernization.

There is NO requirement for the bird to tortured or "be punished."  There is NO requirement for the birds to mishandled, starved, etc. -- in fact, those are things that invalidate the ceremony, which is why rabbis who oppose it will focus on the cruelty of the pre-slaughter suffering.  Everything that happens before the actual saying of the blessing is NOT part of the ceremony.  To the contrary.  The cruelty in transporting and handling the chickens under modern conditions is frequently cited as an argument against using live chickens, based on the prohibition against cruelty to animals in Jewish law.  I myself have argued that the modern cruelty of mass production cancels out any value the ceremony once had in the past -- as I explained in my 2014 article, The Baal Shem Tov did it with a chicken, so why are you telling me not to?

Because the article quoting Davis was in The American Free Press, a white supremacist pub, I thought maybe she had been misquoted, or that the interviewer had distorted her words.  So I queried her.  It took almost a month for her to reply, but she did eventually say that she had no idea of the nature of this pub at the time (which I do believe, since their title is deceivingly innocuous) and was sorry she had give them an interview.  But she did not deny the statement about punishment.  On the contrary. she defended it and referred me back to a book she had previously quoted to me in an email, where the kapporos chicken is compared to the biblical scapegoat.  (Davis thinks I do not know my own theology and is forever trying to "correct me.")

Judaism and Christianity read biblical texts very differently!

However, once again, she misunderstood the reference, because she insists on equating "atonement" with "punishment."  Davis, who, I remind you once again, is not Jewish, simply cannot comprehend that the word "sacrifice" means one thing in Christianity and another thing in Judaism.  This is a common problem in general with Bible studies, where the issue is not only translation itself, but also the nuances of words in the different cultures.  The most common example being "eye for an eye," which, in the Christian world means tit-for-tat revenge, but in Jewish law means monetary compensation for the loss of the eye -- a very big difference!   In the same way, the words "sacrifice" and "atonement" have very different meanings in Judaism and Christianity.

The words translated as "sacrifice" also have different roots in Hebrew and Greek, a detail I won't go into here.  Suffice it to say, the scapegoat was not tortured, because it had to be a perfect specimen without any blemishes.  It was not even slaughtered.  Sins were symbolically placed on its head, but only by a laying on of the High Priest's hands.  Then it was sent off alive into the wilderness.  A second goat was slaughtered, but that was not the scapegoat.  And it was not tortured, either.

Once again:  All biblical sacrifices had to be perfect unblemished specimens (Leviticus 22), which means they must have been well-treated before being brought to the Temple in Jerusalem.  There was nothing in biblical times that even comes near to the horrors of today's factory farms.

Atonement does not mean torture

Yes, some people do see kapporos as an atonement sacrifice -- but in Judaism, that does NOT mean hours of torture.  This is not like Jesus on the Cross, where suffering in agony is part of the "sacrifice."  There is nothing in Judaism even remotely resembling Mel Gibson's R-rated film, Passion of the Christ.  And just because money -- which is an "object" -- can be substituted for a chicken does not mean the chicken is also a mere "object."  The bird can be redeemed -- ransomed -- with money, but that does not imply that the chicken is the same thing as money.

The Jews doing this ceremony do not wake up in the morning and say, "I'm going to go torture a chicken today so I can get rid of my sins."  Yes, some people do see the chicken as a substitute for their own death (which is theologically wrong but people believe it anyway).  And yes, some people do believe the chicken's soul benefits spiritually from this through helping to "raise the Holy Sparks," as I have written about.  But that does NOT mean they believe the chickens have to suffer or be punished.

But again, all my attempts to try to explain these things to Davis have fallen on deaf ears, and she continues to say this thing about Jews "punishing" the chickens.  Her mind is made up and she does not want to be confused by the facts.  More recently she has also claimed (in the American Free Press interview I mentioned earlier) that the whole thing is just made up "in the guise of religion" and the real purpose is for the rabbis to make a lot of money -- also wrong, but analyzing that charge will have to wait until another article, as this one is getting overly long.

Conclusion:  The difference between me and Davis

In conclusion, I will say that the big difference between me and Karen Davis is this: I protest out of love for my fellow Hasidim, seeking to lead them toward a more gentle way of life from within the Hasidic worldview.  I understand that these communities see themselves as the last remnants of a culture destroyed by the Holocaust, and that any change in religious practice can be seen as a betrayal of their martyred ancestors.  I respect that, and try to find arguments from within the tradition.

And I have had some success in this.  Right before Rosh Hashanah this year, a Chabad Hasid called from California to thank me for putting my materials online.  He had first found my videos on YouTube, then spent three hours reading this blog.  The result?  He said it "changed his thinking."  He also said the materials he found on on PETA, The Alliance, and other sites dd not move him because it was "all politics."  I was the only one he had found who came at it from the stand point of Jewish spirituality.

Davis should take a clue from this and similar stories.  But she cannot, because she has imprisoned her mind in the narrow vegan worldview.  She has no respect for Hasidim because they eat meat, and she comes at the issue filled with anger and rage.  She insists on projecting her own biases onto somebody else's culture.  As any anthropologist will tell you, that's a great big no-no.  To understand a culture, and to meaningfully dialogue with members of that culture, you need to be willing to see things from their point of view.  Davis is incapable of doing this.  Her  agenda is to make everyone vegans and, judging from the articles she has published,  she has no real respect for any other viewpoint.  Which makes her  very ineffective.

Not long ago another Chabad Hasid called me from Boro Park, NY, asking about my stance against kapporos.  We dialogued on the "Holy Sparks" doctrine and although we disagreed on how to interpret it, the conversation was mutually respectful.  During the course of the debate he asked me point blank if I thought the protests had ever convinced anybody not to use chickens as kapporos.  And I honestly had to say no, they have not.  I cannot think of a single instance where shouting "meat is murder" has changed anybody's mind in the Hasidic world.  On his end, he told me that nobody in his New York neighborhood takes the protests seriously, either.

The Alliance gets a lot of press, but has no real effect on Hasidim. It has become simply an annoyance to put up with -- one of many for a people who get harassed on the streets every day.  If anything, the disrespect of many protesters has caused the community to "circle the wagons" and hold on tighter to the tradition.  In the end, neither side is really listening to the other.

*  *  *

ADDENDA, added November 14, 2014 

Here is yet another place where she insisted on including the shipping of the chickens as part of the ritual.  This is from a mailing she did to her own org, United Poultry Concerns back in September 2006.  So this is not a one-time blooper on her part, it is a pattern of distortion she insists upon.   She stated:  "Kapparot includes the pre-ritual cruelty to the chickens, who are forced to sit crammed together in their own excrement for days without food, water or shelter awaiting their terrible death."

NO, as I explained above, kapparot as such does NOT include any "pre-ritual cruelty."  There is no requirement to "force" chickens to "sit in their own excrement," etc.  In the past, there were no factory farm cages, no open trucks, no sitting for days in warehouses.  As I explained in The Kapparot Ritual: how tradition has become a travesty, things were very different in pre-Holocaust Europe, where Jews lived is small villages and chickens were all locally raised free-range.  The problem today is urbanization, where people do not raise their own chickens and must truck them in from miles away.

To repeat:  NOTHING that happens before the blessing is said is required as part of the ritual, period.   Everything before that is secular and has no bearing at all on the ritual itself. 

Yes, cruelty happens nowadays in transit, because that is how ALL chickens are shipped and handled in the meat industry. The Jews are no worse than anybody else in this.  Yes, it is terrible.  Yes, it is cruelty for anybody to do that to a chicken, including those who slaughtered the secular meat sitting on your own plate.  But it is NOT part of the ceremony,  It is not "Jewish."  And it is NOT required that the birds be "punished" by starving them in cramped cages for days.

Granted, this was written in 2006 before I became involved with her, so maybe she was ignorant back then?  Maybe.  But since she said it again in 2014 (as cited in the article above), she has not become any more educated on the topic.  She certainly has not listened to me or anybody else.  

ADDENDA #2, added January 4, 2015

After writing this article, I found this by Davis in another interview from 2014  where she reveals that not only does she twist and misinterpret the ceremony, she has no respect for Hasidim in general:

Davis:  Rabbi Shea Hecht of the Lubavitch community, whose father began trucking chickens to Crown Heights, Brooklyn in 1974 and whose family is regarded as the leading cause of the growth of using chickens for Kapparot in the U.S., told NPR in this September 2009 report:

“The main part of the service,” he says, “is handing the chicken to the slaughterer and watching the chicken being slaughtered. Because that is where you have an emotional moment, where you say, ‘Oops, you know what? That could have been me.’”

Now, it is true that Rabbi Hecht said this on NPR, in answer to why he does not use money instead.  However, what he meant -- and what it has always meant -- is that the death of the chicken should remind us of our own mortality -- that's the "emotional moment."  But she interprets it to mean something it has never meant in Judaism,   Once again, she projects her own vegan values on another culture.  She goes on to say:

In short, Rabbi Hecht, and probably many (though not all) other Kapparot practitioners who use chickens, enjoy the experience of making and watching a helpless creature suffer and die “for them” (be punished in their stead for their sins). They like the control and are gratified by the pain and suffering they can inflict with impunity in the guise of religion. Obviously it is not necessary to cause needless suffering and death in order to improve yourself — just the opposite.

There is NOTHING in Hasidism about "enjoying" the suffering or being "gratified by the pain and suffering" and it is not done in the "guise" of religion.   Those who do it are sincere and do regard it as a form of worship.  Yes, there are differences of opinion about the validity of the ritual BUT this is true of just about everything in Judaism.  Rarely do Jews speak in one voice.  And just because one group rejects something does not mean it is invalid for everyone.

But this is not the end of it her diatribe.  It gets worse:

INTERVIEWER: Why don’t they just use bags of coins instead of the chickens?

DAVIS: As I just mentioned in the example of Rabbi Hecht, many Hasidic rabbis insist on swinging and slaughtering chickens for Kapparot instead of swinging bags of coins for symbolic atonement and charity: there is a liking for the slaughter, the power, the blood. As human psychology, it is about the desire to have an innocent victim (Lamb of God, Scapegoat, Jesus Christ, Thanksgiving Turkeys, Experimental Animals, Young Boys sent to war to be slaughtered) suffer and die for oneself/community/nation/society. It’s about the age-old system of belief in cleansing/purifying/expiating sins, vices and diseases by transferring them to an innocent victim or class of victims.

So here she actually says what I have deduced all along:  She is indeed confusing it with Jesus on the Cross, as I discussed above.  And this bit about the "liking for the slaughter, the power, the blood" is, again, NOT part of Judaism.  It is HER projection, her prejudice against anyone who eats meat, religious or not, whether in the present or in all past centuries.

When asked if all Jews do this, she says most are Hasidim but also some are "Conservative and Modern Orthodox."  I have never heard of any Conservative synagogue advocating kapporos with chickens -- most don't even do it with money.  Nor do most Modern Orthodox do it that way, if at all.  Where she gets this idea, I do not know.  Maybe she confusing Modern Orthodox with Haredim (who do use chickens)?  What I do know is that she is abysmally ignorant about the different kinds of Jews.  She often relies on third-hand information from books or uniformed non-religious token Jews in the vegan world.  Just because someone is born Jewish does not mean they know what they are talking about.

She then goes on to disparage not only the ritual, but all of the Hasidic community:

In addition, Hasidic communities/members will rarely depart from/defy what their specific rabbis tell them to do. Even if a member personally winces or objects, he or she won’t speak up publicly. These communities live strictly defined lives like the Amish, Jehovah Witnesses, and other extremely insular groups. Women are not respected as persons in their own right. Fear of being shunned/ostracized, having no other options or imaginings but to conform, stay, and obey, are motivations....

I am probably partly responsible for that last part.  At one point I tried to explain that while it was easy for her to come in once a year, scream "meat is murder," then disappear until next Yom Kippur, for people who actually live in the neighborhood, it is harder to go against the grain.  People have to live with each other, and Hasidim are not the only people on earth who avoid confrontations in order to get along with their neighbors.  That, plus the fact that public protests are not the way things get changed in traditional Jewish communities.  People do discuss things behind the scenes, there are differences of opinion, and variations within families.   Hasidim are not clones.  But neither are they going to join Davis on the barricades when she is so openly disparaging of their way of life.  As I noted above, the arguments that work are the ones she has rejected.

I explained this to her in order to get her to tone down the anti-Hasidic rhetoric but here she twisted my explanation to suit her own anti-religious attitudes -- even getting in a dig about how women are supposedly "not respected as persons" and thereby insulting my wife, who is a critical thinker and most certainly a "person in her own right."  (She just does not like a lot of publicity nor does she want her picture plastered all over the Internet.)

Davis then goes on:

Finally, the temples that do the ritual are said to make a lot of money from it — purchasing chickens very cheaply at a few cents on the dollar, and “selling” them to practitioners for a lot of money.

In another interview she quoted prices as $18 and $36 at some center -- unaware that these are normal amounts Jews give to charity.  Jewish fundraisers always ask for donations in multiples of 18,   Even those of us who use money instead often give $18 -- so that is not seen as exhorbitant in our culture.  I would prefer everyone just give the money and skip the chicken slaughter, but I am not offended by it being used as a fundraiser and certainly not for asking $18.  And, we should note, not all kapporos centers charge this much.

Besides, Davis get money off this issue, too.  By her own admission in her newsletter (Poultry Press, Winter 2014 issue, p. 12), she spent $23,532 on the anti-kapporos campaign in 2014.  If she has the funds to do this, then she, too, is making money off kapporos --  through her sensationalist tactics.  This figure came at the end of an anti-kapporos article, and right below it there was a plea for funds.  My bet is, kapporos is one of her best sources of income for her org, because it is so easy to arouse public opinion with graphic photos and inflammatory rhetoric.  So the pot calls the kettle black...

She then ended with:

(For the record, I am not Jewish or religious. I grew up in a family that attended the Methodist Church down the street from us, but religion never influenced me as a worldview. No religion even if proven “true” would reconcile me in the slightest to the way things are.)

Note that she would not accept any religion even if it were true.   A rather odd statement if she is really interested in truth, but that is certainly her privilege.  However, with an attitude like that, she is never, ever going to make any kind of impact on religious people.   She has certainly turned me off -- and I am against using chickens.  But if forced to choose between her antagonism and my faith, I choose Hasidism.  And so, I shall continue to educate my people about why we should use money and not chickens, but henceforth I'll do it without Karen Davis.

*   *  *

To learn how you can be effective in this campaign, get my new book, just out on June 4:  Kapporos Then and Now: Toward a More Compassionate Tradition available on Lulu.com.  Neither a vegetarian manifesto nor a "Torah-True" religious tract, I approach the issue as a combination of theologian, cultural anthropologist, and participatory journalist, offering numerous reasons why using money is a better option today -- but also critiquing both sides for both their strong and weak points.  WARNING:  Whether you are for or against using chickens as Kapporos, this book requires an open mind to read. 

On Kapporos: The Baal Shem Tov did it with a chicken, so why do you tell me not to?

As has been my custom for the past few years, I am writing my annual essay against using chickens for kapporos, the atonement ceremony before Yom Kippur.  My previous articles dealt mostly with the history and philosophy behind the ceremony, directed at activists who were planning protests and/or educating themselves about the history and philosophy behind this practice.  This time around, I am going to address my fellow Orthodox Jews from within our own tradition.  (Although, of course, everyone else is welcome to read it as well.)

When I suggest to fellow Hasidim that we should no longer use chickens for kapporos, the most common answer I get is this:

"The Holy Ari did it with a chicken; the Baal Shem Tov did it with a chicken; the Rebbe did it with a chicken -- and weren't they holy people?  So why do you say it is wrong now?"

The 7th Lubavitcher Rebbe
making kapporos

My vegan friends would probably reply that killing a chicken is cruel, period, and that our ancestors were a bunch of barbarians for ever doing it in the first place.  However, that is not an answer that would satisfy us as religious Jews.  In fact, it is downright counterproductive, sometimes even antisemitic.  I believe our sages and ancestors were holy people, who were in tune with God and would never be intentionally cruel to animals.  So my Torah-based answer to the question is this:

Yes it is true that many of our greatest rabbis and teachers did kapporos with a chicken.  But they also treated the chickens with care and respect.  

They understood that chickens are living beings with feelings.   It is said that when the Holy Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, sharpened his knife, he moistened the stone with his own tears.  (Shivchei Ha-Besht) Our religion acknowledges that Eden was vegetarian, and that in an ideal world, this is what we would all be.  But this world is not Eden.  Eating meat was a necessity in Old Russia and Ukraine in the 1700s.  Before the days of year-round fresh veggies flown in from everywhere, being a healthy vegetarian was virtually impossible in northern climates.  So the Torah does permit slaughter.  But the Baal Shem Tov at least felt deep sadness that something had to die in order for the people to live.

  

Now look around you at the kapporos centers.  Is anybody weeping for the deaths of the chickens like the Holy Baal Shem Tov did?  

Probably not.  I have been laughed at and ridiculed by fellow Hasidim for saying that chickens have feelings.  One heckler even asked, "Do you really think chickens are smart enough to know what is happening to them?"  Yes, I do.  Modern research shows that chickens have an intelligence level at least as high as that of a three or four year old child.  Think about that next time you see a pre-schooler or bounce your own child on your knee.  That child is certainly aware enough to suffer pain, hunger, and fear of death.  And so is a chicken.  The Baal Shem Tov understood this.  His modern followers do not.

Yes, it is also true that the Holy Ari also did it with a chicken back in the 1500s.  But he, too, was sensitive to the suffering of animals.  Consider the following story: 

It happened one day in Sfat, Israel, that Rabbi Isaac Luria, the great kabbalist known as the Holy Ari (Ari-Hakodesh), ordered one of his students to leave him immediately.  The student felt terrible.  What sin had he committed to deserve this?  All that day he wept and prayed to G-d that his sins should not keep him banished from his Rebbe’s presence.

The next morning he came to the Holy Ari and begged to be told what wrong he had done.  The Holy Ari said,” It is because of your chickens.  Three days now they have been without food.  They cried out to HaShem and because of this, you have been under a ban (karet) from Heaven.  Now, if you promise to feed your chickens even before your morning prayers, I will loosen the ban on you.”  The student promised to do so, and the ban was lifted.  (From Shivchei Ha-Ari)

From this we learn how much HaShem our Creator, Who “has compassion for all the creatures,” cares about the suffering of chickens.  The student’s sin was tzaar baalei chayyim, cruelty to animals.  The cries of those starving chickens were canceling out his Torah learning and banning his prayers from reaching Heaven.

 

Now, stop and listen to the voices of all the hungry, thirsty chickens at the kapporos centers. 

Those are NOT the sounds of happy birds, they are NOT singing in joy at "helping us do a mitzvah," as some people have been taught to believe. You are hearing the anguished cries that chickens make when they are in fear and pain.   Last year (2013) thousands of chickens in New York kapporos centers died of thirst and hunger during a prolonged heat wave.  In previous years, chickens that were not sold by the eve of Yom Kippur were abandoned in warehouses.  There they spent our most holy day of repentance slowly dying of neglect.  Again, recall the story of the Ari and the chickens above.  How is this any different?

Are those sad cries rising to Heaven and canceling out your Torah and mitzvot, Heaven forbid?   Even worse, are they canceling out the prayers of the whole Jewish community?  

This is a very serious question.  We are taught in kabbalah that when we use the things of this world -- mineral, vegetable, or animal -- for serving God, then we elevate the Holy Sparks (netzotzot) within those things and effect a tikkun olam -- a repair of the universe.   This is a classic Hasidic teaching,  we find it in the writings of all our Rebbes, starting with the Baal Shem Tov himself.

But the reverse is also true:  If we do not use the material world with holiness and respect, the sparks are not raised, and we drag the world down.   Rebbe Nachman of Breslov said that if shechitah (kosher slaughter) is not performed correctly and with the proper kavannah (focused intention), then the sparks are not elevated, and we absorb negativity (klippot) from the life-force of the animal.  (See Likutei Moharan #37).

Combined with the story of the Ari above, I interpret this to mean not only the actual moment of slaughter must be proper, but also how the chickens are treated beforehand.  I am pretty sure that Rebbe Nachman would not have approved of using today's abused, starving chickens.

So we must indeed ask ourselves:  Is the mistreatment of chickens at today's kapporos centers elevating sparks, or is it blocking our prayers from reaching Heaven?

Portrait of Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer,
the Baal Shem Tov

There are many Hasidic stories about how prayers were being blocked from rising upward, usually due to some sin blocking the way.  The Baal Shem Tov himself once refused to enter a synagogue because it was so full of such prayers that there was no room for him to go in.  He said, "Those prayers are all dead prayers. They have no strength to fly to heaven. They are crushed, they lie one on top of the other, the house is filled with them." (Meyer Levin, Classic Hasidic Tales) 

So:  Would the Baal Shem Tov be able to enter today's kapporos centers?  Or would his entry be blocked by dead prayers that do not rise upward to Heaven?

Today we have hardened our hearts to the suffering of God’s creatures.  Kapporos chickens are crammed into small cages, shipped for miles in open trucks, stacked for days in hot warehouses without any food or water, then handled roughly like cheap  merchandise.  People stand around gossiping, while they carelessly hold the chickens by the wings as if they were nothing but shopping bags.  Dangling them this way is very painful for the bird, and can result in torn muscles and ligaments in the wings, because a chicken's wings are not strong enough to support its body weight.

This gross disrespect for living things is NOT the way our ancestors held chickens in the past.  All of the old drawings I have seen show the chickens being held upright by the legs, or supporting the body with their hands, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe is doing in the picture above.  This dangling them by the wings is a modern cruelty learned, most likely, from the factory farm industry.  (I have seen gentile farmers doing this.)

Such cruelty does not elevate the Holy Sparks!   It drags us down into sin.  You cannot commit a sin to do a mitzvah! 

Or a minhag, for that matter.  Any validity the ceremony might have had in the past is canceled out by the cruelty to the chickens in modern times.  Precisely because of how the chickens are transported and sold nowadays, many rabbis recommend using money instead. 

In addition, there is the issue of waste.  In the past, people often gave their kapporos chicken to a poor family as tsedakah (charity). This charity was part of the kapporos ritual, it completed the tikkun. 

"Repentence, prayer, and charity avert the evil decree."

Bags of dead kapporos chickens in
garbage truck, 2013

But today, the chickens often end up in the garbage. The reasons often given is that there is no time to kasher them properly, or that they were somehow injured or damaged and not kosher to begin with. Think about that.  In the past, families would take their slaughtered chickens home, to pluck and kasher them for the pre-Yom Kippur meal.  But in this day of shrink-wrapped meats, few people do that themselves anymore.  So the chickens are simply tossed into garbage cans.

That violates the prohibition against needlessly wasting something  (bal tashchit).  Last year, under several news articles about how these chickens were ending up in the city dump, there were numerous comments asking:  "Why didn't they give them to the homeless shelters?  Or the local soup lines?"  Such blatant waste of food while people go hungry is a shanda, a public disgrace that reflects badly on the Jewish people.  Here there are people going hungry, and we throw the chickens in the dump?  Where is the holiness in that?

Sickly, injured chickens crammed in a
cage, waiting to be used for kapporos.
These are not the happy free-range
chickens our ancestors used.

Even in the days of the sacrifices in the Holy Temple, the meat was never just thrown away.  On the contrary.  It was holy, and had to be eaten as a sacred meal in a place that was ritually purified.   And because the sacrifices had to be perfect specimens without any blemishes, the animals were no doubt treated very well before the sacrifice -- not like the factory-farmed, miserable, starving kapporos chickens of today.

As our Sages teach us, the world is like a set of scales.  Every good deed tips the world to the side of good, and every sin tips it to the side of evil, heaven forbid.   

Is the cruelty in today's kapporos centers canceling out our prayers on Yom Kippur?  Is it adding to the burden of sin in the world?

Again, these are serious questions.  Giving money to charity instead of using a chicken eliminates all these questions of cruelty and kashrut. You can avoid absorbing negative klippah energy into your life and that of your family.  You can be sure that the monetary value of the chicken really is going to the poor and not to the city dump.  You can be more certain that your prayers are not being blocked from rising to Heaven.  You can be sure you are making a real tikkun -- the act of charity that averts the evil decree -- and not contributing to the burden of sin in the world.

For all these reasons,  I feel it is time for us to stop using chickens for kapporos and give money instead.  

May you have an easy fast, and may you be sealed for a good new year!

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I have written a condensed one-page printable version of this article, suitable for a flyer or small poster.   Download the PDF here.   Feel free to print and hand it out, adding your own local contact info at the bottom.

See also: Kapporos Chickens don't Sing! -- my 2013 article on the misconceptions about chickens that you may hear at kapporos centers, etc.

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To learn more about this issue, get my new book, just out on June 4:  Kapporos Then and Now: Toward a More Compassionate Tradition available on Lulu.com.  Neither a vegetarian manifesto nor a "Torah-True" religious tract, I approach the issue as a combination of theologian, cultural anthropologist, and participatory journalist, offering numerous reasons why using money is a better option today -- but also critiquing both sides for both their strong and weak points.  WARNING:  Whether you are for or against using chickens as Kapporos, this book requires an open mind to read.