JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
(JTA) — An organization that objects to a pre-Yom Kippur ritual that involves swinging live chickens is renewing its legal effort to stop the religious rite in New York City, citing the coronavirus pandemic. Kapparot involves swinging a live chicken over one’s head three times and reciting a prayer to transfer sins to the bird. The…
(JTA) — Animal rights activists protesting the Jewish custom of swinging around a chicken were assaulted in the Israeli city of Hadera. Six of the activists, one man and five women, were lightly wounded in the incident Thursday night, in which residents in Hadera began throwing stones and other objects at the protesters who came…
A video broadcast by New York’s ABC 7 channel shows chickens in cages that have died waiting to be used for kapparot, the ultra-Orthodox practice of swinging a chicken around your head to transfer your sins to it. The broadcaster reporting the video noted that, although the word kapparot means “forgiveness” in Hebrew, “it is…
Kapparot is a customary Jewish atonement ritual practiced by some Jews between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Traditionally, a person waves a chicken around his or her head and recites a penitential text. The chickens are then donated to the poor. In Tur Orah Haim, laws of Kippur (chapter 605), we find the following discussion:…
Yom Kippur Eve And Teshuva (Repentance) • The guiding rule in observing Yom Kippur is maintaining a balance between respecting the sanctity of the day and one’s physical health. • According to Shulhan Arukh (Code of Jewish Law), the practice of doing Kapparot with chickens should be eliminated. • We must ask for forgiveness and reconcile with…
An animal-rights group filed a lawsuit against the Irvine, California Police Department for not enforcing animal cruelty laws by halting a pre-Yom Kippur ritual. The lawsuit filed this week is aimed at stopping Chabad of Irvine’s kapparot ceremony, a pre-Yom Kippur ritual in which a chicken is swung by its legs and then slaughtered. It…
(JTA) — A municipality near Paris warned farmers of an elevated risk of theft of sheep and fowl ahead of the Muslim and Jewish holidays of Eid al-Adha and Yom Kippur, respectively. The warning, which provoked angry reactions on the part of communal leaders who felt it was discriminatory, came in a letter sent earlier…
(JTA) — The pre-Yom Kippur ritual of kapparot can continue in New York, a New York appeals court found. The Appellate Division First Department in Manhattan on Tuesday upheld a lower court decision that declined to block the pre-Yom Kippur slaughter of chickens in 2015, when the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos and 19…
