Rosh Hashanah is here which means Yom Kipur is around the corner and you know what that means? Time for the annual protests of the annual chicken swinging ritual known as kapparot. The generally fatal chicken “swinging” and slaughtering most often performed on the day before Yom Kippur (but can be held anytime between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) and has some very vocal adversaries. Opponents, who this year advertised briefly in Times Square, aren't against the ritual so much as they're against the chicken killing.
Animal Rights Activists Plan Kapporos Protest in CH
Rosh Hashanah is here which means Yom Kipur is around the corner and you know what that means? Time for the annual protests of the annual chicken swinging ritual known as kapparot. The generally fatal chicken “swinging” and slaughtering most often performed on the day before Yom Kippur (but can be held anytime between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) and has some very vocal adversaries. Opponents, who this year advertised briefly in Times Square, aren’t against the ritual so much as they’re against the chicken killing.
To get their message of peace for poultry out, The Alliance To End Chickens as Kaporos is going to host protests in Brooklyn Jewish communities. The group argues their side like this:
The use of chickens in Kaporos rituals is cruel and contrary to Jewish teachings. It is not a mitzvah but a custom that originated in the middle ages. Most observers give money to charity which they express symbolically by swinging coins while reciting prayers for mercy and peace. Swinging and slaughtering chickens as Kaporos violates tsa’ar ba’alei chaim, the Jewish mandate not only to avoid needlessly hurting animals, but to show them compassion.
The Alliance advocates swinging money rather than chickens, quoting Rabbi Shlomo Segal, Rabbi of Beth Shalom of Kings Bay in Brooklyn: “The pain caused to the chickens in the process of performing Kapparot is absolutely unnecessary. Giving money is a more humane method.”
The Crown Heights protest will take place Thursday evening Oct 6, at 792 Eastern Parkway between Kingston & Albany Avenues from 6-8pm.
Milhouse
“Generally fatal”?! I would certainly hope so! If it’s not fatal “ur doin it rong”.
Forgrddaboudit
The fad of the day can’t overide the smallest minhag of the Torah.
Same old Hypocrites
These so called animal rights activists are clearly just out to make trouble for a group of people that they have come to believe are easy targets. The chickens are killed and then eaten as is the case with any chicken eaten in a restaurant or from any butchery. The only difference is that the sharpness of the knife and the method of slaughtering the chicken is much more humane. These rational, kind hearted protesters should be protesting outside all restaurants, butcheries, and meat stores…if their concern is really with the fact that the chickens are killed- and not the ritual, as mentioned above.. These people are just rabble trying to stir up violence. They can’t stand to see happy well adjusted people and want everyone to be as miserable as they are.
Truth
It gets to a point where it’s anti- Semetitism. Plain and simple, I have no problem saying that.
Chaim Tovim
I use money
bring on the show
Yes finally some fun in this town
DaasTorah
They have a really good point. The chickens are shechted but almost none are actually eaten. They are simply disposed of and it’s a huge waste! Talk about baal tashchit!
Bring It
What’s the matter McFly…chicken?
Clearly, protesting is going to make a difference (not), so these bozos are at it just to get us riled up. Well, bring it on. And I’ll be waiting for you. Me and me mates. And we’ll give you a traditional warm Crown Heights greeting.
And then we’ll go kill some chickens.
chr
google pics of the Rebbe holding the chicken before, during and after kaporos. it is very respectfully held. can definitely learn from the pics. i did when i saw them last year, and it was best kaporos experience ever.
it is preferable to do kaporos. if it the Rebbe did it, then we know this is preferable over tzedakah.
Proud American
Yeh and were destroying the trees so this year schach only from makeshift plastic and recycled paper
We know better then the ancient generations
To 7
Just think about the rest of us who won’t get eaten we will be ball tashkit and others will be deprived of our flesh. At least we should donate our organs so that hashem didn’t create them for tashkits
To7
And cutting your bris and chucking it into the garbage is also baal tashkis
We should ban circumsision too cause its ball tashkis
Shak
Wait what?? Are you kidding?? How do you think they feed all the Bochurim and Meidlach in the neightborhood Yeshivas…..the ones shechted outside of Hadar HaTorah get soaked and salted and we eat them the whole year almost!! Seriously grow a brain!!
Yehuda Venice CA.
every day we kill fowl and meat so what is this day a call for protest? it is just publicity, let them park outside shlachthouses…? ahah!!
Milhouse
#7, once again you show that your daas is heipech hatorah. First of all, most of the chickens are eaten — as many as can be cleaned and salted within 72 hours of the shchitoh. But let’s suppose they weren’t. Let’s suppose they were really thrown out, perhaps because there wasn’t enough labor available to process them in time. So what? How would that be bal tashchis? How much does a raw unsalted uncleaned chicken cost already? $4? $5? Isn’t that a reasonable price to pay for a good year? Kol asher lo’ish yitein be’ad nafshoi!
gutyartou
why do we care what conservativist moovement people think? they make their protests to falsely and conivingly try to turn good but less informed yidden against our holy Torah and mesorah.
Dr. Binyomin Nemon (Sh.U.B.)
To my dear Brethren in Crown Heights:
Alas I cannot be with you to oppose these VILE (and deceitful) Anti-Kapporos protesters, as I am in the Ukraine SHECHTING Kapporos in several cities.
I would like to exhort you (even incite you a few of you) to do what I would do, if I were there in Crown Heights now (a play straight out of PETA’s own playbook). I would go up to a protestor (from behind) with open gallon can of oil based RED paint and just pour it on their head, telling them “Get the hell out of MY neighborhood, NEXT time you’ll leave in an ambulance” (Then beat it, before a cop comes).
With that “souvenir”, that protester will not likely be back soon.
#17
G g Bless you #17…I encorage all of Chabad to do just that
Chassidic Swinger
SWINGING??
The minhag is to ‘swing’ the chicken?? How about just calmly, gently circling it over one’s head? The Rebbe didn’t do any ‘swinging’!
Mendel L
It’s tzar balay chaim to cram chickens in cages for days without food or water. With 100s of chickens dieing each day before they get the chance to be sechted.
Until it’s better organized were the chicks are treated with respect and kindness. Do kopuris with a dollar and give the rest to charity.
To Mr. Mendel L.
1. Where exactly in halacha does it say you can’t do kapores on chickens that were cramed in cages for days without food or water???
2. Where exactly in halacha does it say that you can do kopoorys with a dollar and give the rest to charity?
3. Which charity should I give my rest to?
4. can I give charity to an animal rights organization?
5. what about a forest conservation charity?
6. can I give the money to PETA?
Chelm
TO 19, yes the minhag is to swing the chicken. Actually back in Chelm we could afford only one chicken for the entire vilage so the rabbi would tie a gartel to the feet of the chicken and then get up on the Bimah and then proced to swing the gartel with the chicken over the top of the entire congregation in circilur fashion. You can read more about it in the Jewish Press chelm section from a number of years back (I forgot the issue number since i’m not too bright as you can tell)
But then we came to America and we learnet that our ways were old fashioned and there were poeple who were very smart who showed us how to do kapoorys on a dollar and then send give the dollar to them. They even have an iPhone app that does the transaction for you since they said we could do it on digital money. Then they told us that bichlal the whole idea of a tradition that grew out of a cave is not shayech in our modern times so we should rewrite the shulchan aruch to accomidate other poeple and other ways since we are the same anyway
or maybe there’s not enough chickens in america or maybee they got scared when we would swing the Gartel since maybe the chicken would get loose and fly away and end up in the path of the jet engine of an airplane so the FAA and OSHA and PETA decited to print flyers and to “educate” the ancient poeple from Chelm about the dangers involved with swinging chickens
no. 18
thats not what we chabad are here for. we are lamplighters. we do not use violence to oppose those who do not think like us, we explain to them why what we are doing is the right thing. if you are not sure how to explain, i suggest stay away from the site, for there not to be any chilul chabad.
Some people are animals
To 17 & 18 – I hope when you do kapores the chickens will poop on you, and I don’t say this just to be funny. You certainly deserve it. BTW, you may be able to buy and own a chicken, but you don’t own an entire neighborhood. Try something like that and aside from the unforgivable chilul hashem that that would be, you will be caught, and you yourself will do time in a cage. You have no rachmonus on animals, no rachmonus for other people, and you deserve no rachmonus from Hashem! Please retract your vile words here in public where you spouted them, or prepare to meet your own decree against yourself.
Shlug a PETA, save a chicken!
The people in Willy will swing them azoi vi a kappore, a kappore, a kappore!
Milhouse
#24, treating these PETA animals as they treat others is a KIDDUSH Hashem, not a chilul. They throw paint on people who wear fur; why should we not throw paint on them? And yes, it’s our neighborhood, not theirs. Sheigetz arois!
Mrs. Segal
I think that PETA consciousness has helped us to treat our chickens more humanely. People make mistakes but over the years we have done teshuva- I was impressed at Hadar Hatorah today. The cages did not look overcrowded and chickens seemed to be plump and feisty. Maybe that is due to cooler weather but In general things seemed to be under better control with a lot more helpers.
Anon
Milhouse,
Jews did not arrive to CH until after WW2, mostly in the ’50s. So this idea you have that it’s “our” neighborhood is quite a stretch.
I don’t see how you can compare fur to this, especially when the animals for fur are not killed in a kosher, humane way. To be so indifferent to an animal’s suffering, to take their lives for granted, is despicable. They do have feelings, personalities, nerves and they feel pain.
They’re often stuffed, thrown into cages with other sick and dying animals, kicked around, beaten, hit, overfed.
Please get a life/wife. You spend too much time on the internet posting all over.
Correct History
Jews did not arrive to CH until after WW2, mostly in the ’50s. So this idea you have that it’s “our” neighborhood is quite a stretch.
—
Yawn. CH was Jewish – of all stripes – back in the 1920s. The mansions on President Street and Eastern Parkway were owned by Jewish professionals and businessmen. 770 was owned by a Jewish doctor.
White flight, which began with the arrival of decent middle class blacks and ended only in the 80s when Chabad had enough people to cement a presence there, came much later, in the mid 50s to early 60s when the decent black presence led to the arrival of lower class migrants from the South who became the NY urban underclass.
My own non-frum family lived there from the 20s until the 70s when my grandmother had to leave due to high crime. All of their neighbors were Jewish until well into the 50s.
Chabad basically saved the neighborhood and now middle-class professionals are moving back in. It is our neighborhood, because had it not been for us following the directions of our Rebbe who told us not to flee, it would be just another piece of urban Brooklyn blight.