Chabad House Wins Case Over Controversial Kapparot Rite

Image by getty images

By Sam Kestenbaum May 17, 2017

A Chabad house in California won a legal victory when a judge ruled the controversial practice of kapparot, in which a live chicken is ritually killed before Yom Kippur, does not constitute a “business act” under state law.

U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr., in a written opinion released Friday, did not directly touch on animal rights concerns. He ruled that Chabad doesn’t engage in an unfair business practice by charging for the killing and disposal of chickens.

The lawsuit accused the Chabad house of violating state business law by arguing the ritual was a profit-making venture.

Birotte ruled that the Chabad house “does not participate nor compete as a business … by performing a religious atonement ritual that involves donations.”

In the ritual of kapparot, Jews swing live chickens over their heads to symbolically transfer sins to the chickens — and then slaughter them ahead of the Jewish day of atonement.

“We are overjoyed that the judge saw the wisdom of protecting our ability to practice a cherished tradition of our faith,” Rabbi Alter Tenenbaum, the rabbi of the Chabad of Irvine, California said in a statement, as reported by the blog CrownHeights.info.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

Sam Kestenbaum is a contributing editor and former staff writer for the Forward. Before this, he worked for The New York Times and newsrooms in Sana, Ramallah and Beijing. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum and on Instagram at @skestenbaum.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO