Kapporot: Use money, let the chickens live!

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is coming soon, and with it comes a ceremony called kapparot or kapporos, in which a chicken is sometimes slaughtered just before the holy day.  Although traditionally the chicken was then given to a poor family as charity, nowadays this is not necessarily what happens to it.  According to this September 3, 2013 article in the Jewish Journal, today's kapparot chickens are often thrown in the garbage after the ceremony.  This, to me, is a complete waste of both animal life and potential food, which violates the principle of bahl tashchit -- "You shall not destroy."  People are being told that their kapparot chicken is going to charity when, in fact, it often ends up in the city dump.

This is one reason why I advocate giving money to charity instead of slaughtering a chicken.  Giving money is a time-honored custom and a perfectly acceptable substitute.  Plus you know it is really going to do some good for someone.

This year, in connection with the Alliance to End Chickens as Kapporos, I appear on this poster with my pet rooster, Big Bird.  (Apologies to Sesame Street, but he is big and he is yellow, so it was inevitable my grandson would call him that!)

This same photo also appears in a short one-minute slide show that I narrated, Kapporos: A Heartfelt Plea for Mercy.  (Follow the link to view on YouTube.)  Plus, the same narration was used on a video sound truck displaying the images (as well as others) during demonstrations in New York.  You can see the truck on YouTube, but the sound track is bad -- recommend viewing on mute.)

For taking this stance, I have been called a "self-hating Jew" (and worse) by  cyber-hecklers -- a ridiculous accusation, given my lifelong devotion to Judaism.  Lately it seems that anytime a Jew stands up and voices legitimate criticism of anything Jewish, he or she is labeled "self hating," whatever that is supposed to mean.   I hate neither myself nor my Jewish identity, but I do hate mindless stupidity.   God does not intend for us to blindly follow the crowd like a bunch of lemmings.  There is a long history of debate about kapparot within the Jewish tradition, and I see nothing wrong with continuing that dialogue today.

Scholars and sages much greater than little ol' insignificant me have condemned the use of chickens for kapparot.   Even in the Middle Ages, there were rabbis who condemned it as a pagan superstition.  (For basic background information on the history and meaning of the ceremony itself, see The Custom of Kapparot in the Jewish Tradition , by Dr. Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., and me.)

More recently, numerous Orthodox rabbis have opposed it, including:

In 2010, Rabbi Steven Weil, CEO of the Orthodox Union of Rabbis in New York City, told the Alliance that the OU opposes using chickens as Kaporos due to the ritual’s “insensitivity” to the birds and the lack of historical foundation.

 Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, Head of Jerusalem’s Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim, stated on video in 2010 that due to the animal cruelty, “It is recommended that one should conduct the atonement ceremony with money.”

Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Congress and Former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, wrote: “Those who wish to fulfill this custom can do so fully by using money.”

Rabbi Shlomo Segal, Rabbi of Beth Shalom of Kings Bay in Brooklyn, states: “The pain caused to the chickens in the process of performing Kapparot is absolutely unnecessary. Giving money is a more humane method.

I hardly think those rabbis are all "self-hating Jews."  so please, dear reader:  Sp please, dear reader, heed the message and don't shoot the messenger!

As I wrote in a previous article on this blog, the kapparot chicken used to be taken from a local flock and was used for the meal before Yom Kippur, or for breaking the fast afterward.  In this way, one could argue that the soul of the chicken was sanctified by participating in the feast and, in kabbalistic parlance, the "holy sparks were raised."  But how can this still be true if the dead chicken is simply thrown into a plastic bag and hauled away to the dump by the sanitation department -- as has been documented in the Jewish Journal article I cited above.

In addition, people are now cruelly holding the birds by their wings, in a way that was not done in the past and which causes much suffering to the bird.  I might add that the Nazis tortured people in a similar way, by pulling their arms back and suspending them by the elbows.  This torture was called Eine Stunde Baum ("an hour of tree") and it dislocated the shoulders as well ripping the muscles and causing excruciating pain.  I have been told about this torture by Holocaust survivors.  So I ask you:  If such treatment is so painful to a person, then how can you not understand that it is also torture to do this to a live bird?

Let me end with an excerpt from the slide show I helped the Alliance produce:

“Fellow Hasidim... You have been told that holding a chicken by its wings that way will make the bird calm and relaxed. This is not true! The bird is terrified, it is playing dead, the way it does if it is grabbed by a dog or a wolf. It is hoping you will let go so it can escape. Imagine somebody pulling your arms back, then hanging you up by the elbows. You would stop struggling, but you would NOT be calm or relaxed! You would be in terrible fear and pain, the same as these poor chickens are now. Please do not torture a bird this way – this is not a mitzvah, our Torah does not require this, it will not cancel your sins. I beg you, please give money, instead of hurting one of God’s living creatures.”

*  *  *  *  *

Updates:  On Wednesday, September 11, 2013, the weather in New York City hit the high 90s, and was hot enough for thousands of kapporos chickens to die while still stacked in crates.  Clearly these birds are NOT being properly cared for by the people who sell them (at $8.50 per bird or more, BTW.)  Read the new report on this.

You can also hear an interview with Dr. Richard Schwartz, author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, discussing reasons not to use chickens for kapporos on The Tamar Yonah Show -- (Click here.) There's a bunch of announcements and news items first, but hang in there, you'll get to it.  Or just scroll ahead on the status bar.

Chickens as Kapporos --  a video documenting how kapporos chickens  werebeing dumped in the trash on President Street at Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY on September 12 and 13, 2013.  WARNING:  this is very graphic stuff -- watch at your own risk!   However, it is valuable in that it not only shows the callous way the chickens are being treated, it also documents that they are terrified --that incessant cheeping you hear in the background is the very distinctive call of a frightened chick -- these birds are in no way "relaxed" as some promoters claim.   Read my later article, Kapporos chickens don't sing!

UPDATE 2014:  I have written a one-page handout directed at Hasidim on the issue of not using chicken for kapporos. No, it is not vegan or even vegetarian , but it is not directed at vegetarians, it is intended for Hasidim and argues from within the context of Hasidic thought.  Download the PDF here.   Feel free to print and hand it out.

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. 

Se also:  The Baal Shem Tov did it with a chicken, so why do you tell me not to? -- my answer to this Frequently Asked Question from fellow Hasidim.



  

Stirring up a hornet's nest -- literally!

Over the years, I have stirred up plenty of symbolic hornet's nests with my controversial stances on various issues -- but this time I did it for real.  OK, they were really Yellow Jackets, the smaller cousins of the Bald-faced Hornet -- but they get just as angry when you disturb their nests.

Yellow Jackets coming out of
an underground nest (Photo courtesy of
South Texas Nature Images on Flikr)

Of course I didn't do this on purpose -- nobody does that!  A couple days ago the wind took down a paper birch tree, and I needed some nice sticks for an upcoming Cub Scout craft project that my grandson's Pack is planning to do.  (Since I have a wood lot, it falls to me to provide a lot of the natural materials.)  I thought the white birch bark would look nice, so this morning I went out to cut off some of the branches -- and unwittingly stepped into the nest.

Yellow Jackets usually nest in the ground, often using an old rabbit hole or other tunnel, so they are very hard to see until it is too late  This one was covered by the crown of the fallen tree.   I was so intent on choosing and cutting my salvaged branches that I did not notice the wasps until a swarm was buzzing around me.

Luckily I was wearing heavy pants tucked into my boots, in preparation for tromping through underbrush in the ditch where the tree fell.  Good thing, because those little buggers grabbed onto the cloth of my pants and really hung on -- if I had been wearing shorts, I would have had stings all over my legs.  As it was, I only got 3 on my arms and one on my face as I high-tailed it out of there.  (This is why I'm always telling people NOT to wear shorts in the woods.   Sure it's hot wearing long pants -- but even worse getting scratched up or stung!)

While on the subject of Yellow Jackets, you may notice that there seem to be a lot more of them around your picnic table in the fall.  This is because during the summer they feed their young on insects, so they don't have much interest in your bottle of pop or your jelly roll.  But in the fall, after the new queens have flown and the colony starts to break up, the worker wasps switch to a sugary diet -- and start buzzing around your outdoor events.  Suddenly it seems as if the population has exploded overnight.  I myself have noticed a lot more of them around my hummingbird feeders lately -- and now I know where they are all coming from!  But really, they have been increasing steadily all summer, you just don't see many until fall.

Unlike honey bees, wasp and hornet colonies don't winter over.  The new queens fly and mate, then find a place to hibernate for the winter.  The rest of the wasps die off  with the cold weather.  So, after we get a few hard frosts, I'll be able to return to that tree and safely salvage some birch sticks.

Do clothes make the Hasid?

When I first began this blog, the pic on my profile page was this one of me and my cat, Sapphire.  This was a photo recently featured in Cat Fancy magazine in an article called "Clergy Cats," about cats who live with religious leaders. (Read more about that.)  I thought it did a pretty good job of illustrating life here on our Minnesota hobby farm.  (And it provided a good joke about how I am "outstanding in my field.")

Well, it wasn't long before somebody asked me why, if I am really a Hasid, don't I wear a suit on my profile?  The fact is, a good suit is the last thing you want to be wearing when you are doing farm chores.  Ditto for white shirts.  To clean the barn, you want to wear the oldest rags you have -- and change them when you come inside.

However, I did think about it and replaced the old photo with this one of me wearing a jacket and standing in front of a bookcase -- the typical scholarly bio pic that was, in fact, used on a couple of my book covers.

Did that satisfy the halachah police?  Not really.  Before long I got another query asking why I wasn't wearing a brimmed hat.  Never mind that I was wearing a yarmulke -- "everybody knows" a true Hasid wears a brimmed hat over his yarmulke.

Yonassan Gershom, 2013

So OK, folks, here is a recent pic of me in a brimmed hat.  I'm a lot older and grayer than in the earlier pix, but that's life.

No doubt there will be somebody who points out that my coat is blue, not black.  Oy vey, when will it end?  First of all, Breslov Hasidim (the group I belong to) do not have a uniform, so you see all kinds of clothes at a Breslov gathering.  And secondly, it is a fact that Jews -- even very religious ones -- did not always wear black.  Neither did the American Pilgrims in the 1600s, even though we now portray them that way.  Their clothes were colored with natural dyes in various earth tones.

So were the clothes of Jews.  Consider this folk painting of pre-Holocaust stetl (village) life in Eastern Europe by Ilex Beller:

"Samedi Apres-Midi" (Sabbath Afternoon)

painting by Ilex Beller (click image to enlarge)

You can clearly see men's coats in a variety of colors, even on the Sabbath.  The rabbis in the center of the painting are wearing black (a mark of honor and scholarship back then), but the common people are dressed in blue, purple, brown, etc.  The fact is, a true black dye was not invented until the 1700s, and was very expensive in the early days of the Hasidic movement.  This was the origin of "black tie" events in the secular world for the upper crust, and of black coats on the Sabbath and holy days, when it is traditional to dress more formally.  For the weekdays, most people wore less expensive clothes.

This detail from another Beller painting shows shoemakers working -- and wearing non-black clothing.  Most likely, they did not want to get shoe polish and glue on their good Sabbath coats, same as I don't want dirt and chicken poop on mine. 

When I mentioned this history of black dyes in another online conversation, I was told that people got black wool from black sheep.  Not very likely -- most "black" sheep are not a true black, either.  They are more often a very dark grey or even brownish.  Which might have made a nice coat, but it would not be the black we know today.  It is true that recently some farmers have bred for the black color, but since black is recessive in sheep, they were not as common until genetics was better understood.  (Grigor Mendel did not work out basic genetic patterns until the mid-1800s.)

Last but not least, this detail from yet a third Beller painting shows a Jewish peddler wearing a long blue coat very much like the one I have on in the photo above.  One could argue that this artist simply used bright colors for the sake of art -- but his purpose was to chronicle life in his old village, in memory of those who died in the Holocaust.  Throughout the series of paintings there are recognizable individuals wearing the same clothing.  In some of his descriptions that accompany the paintings, he actually names them.  So I'm pretty sure he is painting memories of real people and how they dressed. 

Nowadays, it seems, everybody wants to dress in rabbinical black.  I don't fault them for this -- but really, the color of my clothes is no indication of whether or not I am a Hasid. 

"Do Clothes Make the Hasid" story now on video!

In October 2021, I decided to tell this story on video -- with a bit of humor, too. Enjoy!

 (And if you like it, please subscribe to my channel.)

UPDATE:  Clothes are not the only thing people use to try to discredit me.  See also:

http://rooster613.blogspot.com/2014/01/oy-vey-im-being-cyber-bullied-by-idiots.html

(Note:  The Ilex Beller paintings are used here as part of a critical art discussion about the works, which I believe falls under the category of "fair usage."  There is no intent to violate Beller's copyright.)