NY Daily News

Thousands of Kaporos Chickens Die from Heat

Kaporos services in parts of Borough Park were negatively affected Thursday after thousands of chickens awaiting slaughter suffocated in their cages due to the intense heat.

“We lost about 2,000 chickens because of the heat,” said a man who works in Skvere Mosdos, a Borough Park shul.

“It’s a big loss,” added the man who declined to give his name. Another person at the 45th St. establishment estimated the death toll at 800.

The hot and muggy day caused a calamity for other Kapparot operations.

“Due to weather condition, a lot of chickens died,” according to an email sent by another yeshiva to its members. “Sorry 4 the inconvenient (sic).”

The yeshiva, Machzikai Hadas on 43rd St., charges $8.50 per chicken. It also posted a flyer advising the public about lack of poultry, but employees denied that anything was amiss.

“No matter what faith you follow, we all believe in God,” insisted employee Shia Porges, 31. “And that’s why the chickens did not come to any harm because God takes care of everything in His own way.”

A colleague, Chaim Singer,32, claimed that water and shade were provided for the ritual roosters, adding, “We make sure they’re comfortable and well fed.”

Ultra-orthodox Jews use the chickens in a custom observed before Yom Kippur in which they’re swung above the head three times in a symbolic transference of one’s sins. They’re then slaughtered and donated to the poor for a pre-fast meal.

Chickens are kept in stacked crates on the sidewalks throughout Hasidic neighborhoods, sometimes for hours or even days before the Day of Atonement, which begins Friday evening this year.

Critics of the practice have long called it illegal animal cruelty that’s not mandated in the Torah or Talmud. This week, they were crying foul even louder.

“I am horrified, I am upset, but I am not surprised,” said Rina Deych, 57, a member of the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos, which advocates the use of coins instead of chickens.

Karen Davis, president of their umbrella organization, United Poultry Concerns, said that over dozen birds are typically crammed together, often injured, weak and susceptible to harm in harsh weather conditions.

In a small way, she said, succumbing to the heat was a blessing.

“Their misery is so totally compounded that the best thing to happen to them under the circumstances is to die,” said Davis. “They didn’t have to suffer the further pain and indignity” of Kapparot.

27 Comments

  • big deal

    millions of chickens die each day in the USA

    this was obviously a accident

    If there is a negative story about the frum community you can count the daily news to report it

    • Andrea Schonberger

      Excuse me for a minute but how would you like to be penned up in a tiny cage with no water, food, or proper shelter from the weather and in the end die from lack of proper care? Yes, millions of chickens (other animals too) and people die everyday under these awful circumstances but that is no excuse for what happens in your own neighborhood. I admit that I have no control over what happens in the horrible factory farm industries, the dreadful sweatshop conditions in many countries, or the global wars that claim millions of lives–all I can do is to buy responsibly and work for peace in my own small way. However, I don’t have to make the situation worse by ignoring what happens in my own backyard where I do have a voice and may be able to make a difference. If on the holiest of Yom Kippurs we are permitted to save a life then provisions should have been made in advance for the well being of those chickens. The definition of frum is pious–are you going to tell me those mistreated chickens are an example of frum? Don’t even go that way for the love of Hashem.

    • moish

      this was not reported in the daily news…it should have….have some respect for a living creature. you are a mess and are a reason that both goy and other jews dislike, with venom, your kind…..right before yom kippor….ur a mess

    • Milhouse

      Excuse me? “On the holiest of Yom Kippurs” we are permitted to save the life of a ben yisroel, not of a chicken!

      This was obviously not intended, nobody buys chickens and deliberately lets them roast to death, but it was an unexpectedly hot day and there wasn’t anything they could do that would be practical and cost effective.

    • @1 - True

      True

      Throughout the country chickens are all transported this same way.

      They are looking for a new reason to fight the Frum

    • CHer

      The simple truth here is that using chickens as Kaporos took off in preindustrial, agrarian environments. Chickens simply don’t belong in an urban environment on this massive, unregulated scale, even for only a few days.
      The city needs to begin regulating this unprofessional manner of slaughter, since the new environments evidently stresses the animals, and the conditions enhance the proneness for accidents such as this.
      I’m saddened Bloomberg didn’t take this matter up. I don’t think a non-Jewish mayor will have the gall to take it on.

  • Where was PETA to prevent this?

    B”H

    PETA is busy picking on Crown Heightsers, who are too nice to eject them, while chickens die from neglect, or whatever, in BP, where PETA is too “chicken” to go!

  • tzar baalei chayim

    this is tzar baalei chayim in it’s simplest form. when the chickens are in our care, we must care for them- no matter that chickens die every day everywhere from the heat. and the fact that kapparos is scrutinized by the whole world for its “cruelty to animals” should make us even more careful

  • Milhouse

    Remember that not everything the Daily News reports is necessarily true. They don’t do any independent fact-checking.

  • Saddened

    How sad! We were told on COL very recently that the way we treat our chickens during kappores is wrong! Its poshut Tzaar baalai chaim to its enth degree;
    I’m sickened that the chickens had to die that way. No ones fault? maybe, but someone somewhere could have thought of it; the heat was intense!
    How sad!!

  • mendoza

    were is peta to protect the animals being killed in Syria ? every day hundreds of animals are being killed . and nobody says a word

  • Chicken farmer

    Bogus. It is impossible to feed and water chickens while they are in cages. Every time chickens are transported from the farm to the slaughter house, and it often much farther and longer in time then the 1/4 day the chickens spend at kapporos, a percentage die. It’s called acceptable loses. Every day even in a. Chicken barn a certain number of chickens die, again it’s part of the business. It was a hot day, and sadly chickens died but its no reason to stop using chickens for kapporos.

  • Dovid

    tzar baalei chayim is not a halacha that frum ppl care about simply because we don’t live on farms anymore. Of course we are always a victim always, so of course the media hates us and we shouldn’t make sure to avoid this next year.

  • caution

    It is tsar baalei chaim-this is ossur!!I am an old fashioned ainikle of shochtim,and has been to the shlaachthuis , who has always used chickens and am in no way a vegan or Peta(ptu ptu) person.I eat chicken and meat and have no problem watching the shchita,but this way of keeping the chickens is wrong.It is ossur to keep an animal and not feed it or give it water.
    And if the chicken dies and is not shechted -what happens to al those who shlogged with it-it cant be right.

  • Light

    we are supposed to be a “light onto the nations” regardless of how many millions of chickens die each year, we should be extra careful. There is no question that the ritual today does not resemble the way it was performed in the shtetel. I remember as a child going to the shlacht hoize where the chickens were brought as they are brought all year round. This isn’t the case today. today it’s it’s more like minhag haba b’avira.

  • moshe

    this was obviously a accident before yom kippur dont judge

    just because the media found something bad about BP does not give us a reason to do so

  • Jonathan

    They could have got bigger cages, some shelter and some water. It would have cost money. Instead, we show the world something embarrassing and a huge chillul hashem. I’m sorry for them.

  • m b

    # 1….

    why are u upset at the Daily News..

    CHI shouldn’t help them spread their story…. especially after all the issues about Kapores… Peta etc.

  • mhut gefregt bai a rov?

    PETA is motivated by hate for fruma and use their platform to hide behind and attack judaism

    However
    In this case Judaism itself is against causing tzaar baalei chayim

    I dont think Legitimate Kaporos Which for centuries has been practiced humainly should be discredited by a handful of organizers today who deserve to be repremanded for their anti_halachik treatment of birds

    Kaporos is minhag yisroel and heilig! !

    Tzaar baalei chayim is against what we stand for
    So lets keep the two seperate for judaisms sake!!

  • to #2

    im sorry ur totally wrong, we can only be mechalel shabbos etc. for s YID, not a chicken,

    besides, like someone else already pointed out, only NOW u wake up about chickens dying? everywhere in america there are! only NOW you wake up?

    WHAT A FOOL! im sorry, but thats foolish

  • Andrea Schonberger

    Yidden I’m sorry I didn’t fully explain. By saving a life I definitely meant a human being not a chicken. What I meant to say was that before Yom Kippur the remaining chickens should have been properly cared for and not left to die in those conditions. I always make provisions for my cat and bird on holy days–they have to eat and drink too–and see that they are comfortable and safe. Other than that I stand my by previous statement.

  • Citizen Berel

    Lost in all this is that tzaar balei chaim is mutar mutar mutar mutar when it serves a human purpose. There is no issur atzmi of tzaar baalie chaim. This is expressed in that schita is allowed to us, even for pleasure.

    Question: you need something to write with so you pluck a feather from a live chicken to use for a quill. Mr. chicken says ouch. Have you transgressed the issur tzar baalei chaim? Answer: no you did not. But you have acted mean and in discord with the Jewish spirit , which is why you should not do that. (based on Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch).