BROOKLYN, NY — Rabbis in Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish and Hasidic communities are taking a hard look at an annual religious ceremony in which the faithful swing live chickens over their heads.
Called kapparot, the fowl-whirling event occurs each year between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur - which take place next month - and is meant to transfer the sins of the believer to the chicken, which is then sacrificed.
Fowl Ritual, Rabbis Re-Examine Chicken Swinging
BROOKLYN, NY — Rabbis in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish and Hasidic communities are taking a hard look at an annual religious ceremony in which the faithful swing live chickens over their heads.
Called kapparot, the fowl-whirling event occurs each year between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur – which take place next month – and is meant to transfer the sins of the believer to the chicken, which is then sacrificed.
But after a series of troubling incidents, in which birds were found improperly dumped after the ceremony, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has its feathers in a bunch. (As reported on CrownHeights.info)
They’ve been circulating a video (Click here to watch) showing the chickens being tossed around like garbage in filthy conditions after a ceremony.
“The kapparot ritual must be examined. It is a serious health concern that children handle live, feces-covered and possibly diseased chickens and wade through the blood of slaughtered poultry,” PETA said in a letter sent to the city Health Department.
Earlier this month, a group of about a dozen respected rabbis met to look at the evidence of trouble. Afterward, they called for an upgrade of the process, including how the birds are trucked in, where they are held before the ritual, and how they are slaughtered.
“It’s not going to be stopped,” said Isaac Abraham, a Hasidic community activist. “We have to make sure everything is done in a proper way.”
Abraham said that at least 50,000 chickens are used in ceremonies across Brooklyn.
They are usually gripped by their feet and neck and briefly swung above the head.
The birds are then handed over to be slaughtered. Most wind up as a meal for someone.
Abraham said that the swinging is not cruel.
“It doesn’t hurt them,” he said. “[They are held] just like you see any animal pick up its cubs by the neck.”
PETA and the Hasidic community have long battled over the ceremony, and have even clashed at protests.
PETA spokesman Bruce Freidrich said the chicken swinging is not required, and some Jewish communities have abandoned the practice.
According to The Forward newspaper, some Orthodox groups swing money over their heads instead of chickens. Also, some historical Jewish thinkers, such as Moses Maimonides, deemed the practice pagan and argued it should be abandoned, the paper said.
PETA even invoked the threat of bird flu being spread by mass handling of chickens.
“The risk of communicable avian diseases and bacterial contamination is alarming, and the inhumane treatment and mishandling of animals at every stage of the process must be prevented,” the group said.
The Health Department did not immediately have a comment on the letter from PETA.
Abraham, however, said that the Hasidic community has no plan to end kapparot.
“It’s a ceremony that has to be done,” he said. “It’s not going to be stopped.”
Disturbing to see!
Wow! The video is shocking to say the least!! This should not be happening and shame on the residents of Crown Heighta to let this happen and to let someone take footage of it too, only to be spread around on the web. Sich a Chilul Hashem.
Correction:
We hold the chickens by their WINGS not necks. In any event, these are BIRDS, not mamals, so the babies aren’t cubs (that get held by their necks)!
Just ignore them
PETA is a people hating organization and the only thing we should be ashamed of is that community leaders are giving them any credence.
And as we already know, PETA videos can not be trusted.
c.h. resident
wow they really got good footage which makes us look bad but without trying to take sided i see that most of the wierd stuff is with hebrew in the background or guys wearing yechi yarmulkes im not pointing fingers but it definitely doesnt look as clean or organized as the hechts operation
I disagree
You know,
Until I watched the video, I agreed with Peta, but now I feel differently, to video tape a bunch of kids asking if they wanted to see the chickens, or a little child touching the chicken, (not unlike anything that goes on in a petting zoo,) and making that immoral, I think is the gross misbehavior of an organization with an agenda. If it was my kid on that video, I would sue the daylights out of PETA for making my kids conersation between children public. What about pedophiles who will get off on looking at the pics of that beautiful little baby making mir tzum leben dir tzum toit?? Dont get me wrong,, I dont think its ok to abuse animals. I do think ITS NOT OK to abuse little kids by putting their pics out there in public for every lunatic to see.
PETA is anti-semitic.
I have never participated in kapparot, my family always swings a bag of money. But if PETA is against it, I’m going to start using chickens. Thanks to PETA, 7 extra chickens will die this holiday.
Gershon Shapiro
There are incorrect facts n the article that must be corrected. the fact that someone allowed the video to be taken helped in creating the Chillul Hashem etc. we cannot sit on our hands & let a bunch of wackos like peta tell us wht halachos & minhagim we can & cannot due!!
don-t believe everything you see
just btw – PETA has in the past altered videos to make things worse then they are – have u ever been shocked with what you saw at kapporos? that’s what goes on – PETA is cruel to people trying to put anyone that clashes with them out of business to prevent "inhumane treatment" to animals – if you shecht or sell or eat meat watch out! PETA will be after u!
I didn’t watch the video but I have seen others that they’ve done & it’s not worth wasting your time. Yes, I will continue to shlog kapporos….
a gut yohr
"and is meant to transfer the sins of the believer to the chicken, which is then sacrificed"
thats wrong
its only there to tell you what was supposed to happen to you, nobody’s sin is going over to the chicken
and as for peta……….
One of the Margolins
PETA’s Headquarters is located at the end of the very same street as our Chabad House. We generally do kapparos with money. But now, with peta acting up -AGAIN- i would be more than happy to try my hardest to gather the community together – just over a mile from PETA headquarters – to swing and "sacrifice" chickens!
In our metropolitan area, called Tidewater, VA we like to call them PETA – People Embarrasing the Tidewater Area!
Another one i like: PETA – People Eating Tasty Animals!
anon
PETA spokesman Bruce Freidrich………
His name sounds Jewish.
Must be a self hating Jew.
People Eating Tasting Animals (PETA)
Giving in to PETA is like giving in to terrorists. First the kosher slaughter, then the kapparot and then???
To the person who questions why they were allowed to videotape. Do you think they walk around with a PETA hat on? I wouldn’t be surprised if they came dressed as a Jew. They’ll do anything for their belief. Belief that no animals should be a pet nor animals eaten.
"PETA rakes in nearly $30 million each year in income, much of it raised from pet owners who think their donations actually help animals. Instead, the group spends huge sums on programs equating people who eat chicken with Nazis, scaring young children away from drinking milk, recruiting children into the radical animal-rights lifestyle, and intimidating businessmen and their families in their own neighborhoods. PETA has also spent tens of thousands of dollars defending arsonists and other violent extremists."
Here’s some websites for more information: http://www.petakillsanimals…
Two PETA employees employees charged with animal cruelty, illegal disposal of animal carcasses (they had a state contract to find dogs new homes – instead they illegally killed the dogs and dumped them into dumpster, that where not theirs). http://content.hamptonroads…
elchonon
"PETA spokesman Bruce Freidrich said the chicken swinging is not required, and some Jewish communities have abandoned the practice."
Go burn! who the heck are you with chutzpa to tell us how to do mitzvos ? I dont care what other people do PERIOUD!!! this is what WE do.. THIS is what our rebbeim did!! and its a minhag yisrael as the rebbe said is a mitzvah.. you can go kushen mir tuches if you dont like it!
Let is not be fooled into arguing with PETA, they are a violent leftist group hated by mainstream america!
If they dont like our kaparos.. GOOD! score 1 point for us.. animals are not people are there is no tzaar balei chaim.. in fact shechita k’halacha is SPECIFICALY to cause the animal less pain.
I will do kaparos with extra joy this year and yumm going to enjoy the chickens!
STAND OUR GROUND
PETA has tried many times to stop the rituals of Shechita… We have to stand our ground, if we want to keep Kosher, we can’t let a bunch of lunatics tell us what is right or wrong. we have our Rabbonim, our community leaders, and they are the only ones we have to follow…
one suggestion though, offer to have professionals handle the chickens so there should not be any problems…
Eat your own chicken
I agree that the PETA group is probably a bunch of misanthropic anti-Semites, but there definitely can be problems with the Kapparos that should not happen; someone needs to step up, plan better and take responsibility to prevent a chilul HaShem. Our children need to be taught and our Community needs to have respect for all of HaShem’s creations, especially the day before Yom Kippur. I remember years ago, when I was a bochur in yeshiva, I was once recruited to assist with kapporos chickens. I was driven to a building somewhere in Brooklyn and garbage pails full of schechted chickens were brought in the whole night, into the early morning hours. The chickens were then put into two piles – one of males and one of females. From there the chickens were cleaned of feathers, examined and kashered. The only problem was that we worked the whole night and came the morning the pile of schechted female chickens had still not been processed, and the pile of males had not even been started yet, and more and more schechted chickens were still arriving too. The females, I was told, were done first because they have better, softer meat for eating. Much to my astonishment, a garbage truck then came by and the thousands and thousands of remaining chickens that had not been processed were then thrown right into the garbage truck. I spoke with the Rabbi in charge, and was told the halacha was that if it cost more to kasher the chickens than to throw them out, al pi halacha it was ok to throw them out. I left feeling sick, thinking that our community was being defrauded into thinking all the chickens were going to poor people and thinking of all the poor people in our Community who really could have used those chickens. While it may have been someone’s good intention that all the chickens go to the poor, it certainly had not happened that year. For many years thereafter whenever I did kapparos I took my chicken back from the schochet, brought it home, kashered it myself, threw the entrails up on my roof for the birds, and ate the chicken before the Yom Kippur fast. No doubt the problem was poor planning that year when I experienced the kapparos processing close up, but the fact is that when everyone is trying to do the mitzvah b’hiddur right before the moring watch, it is next to impossible for all of the chickens to then be kashered before Yom Kippur, unless people take the chickens home and kasher them on their own.
Yossi
At the end of the day, we, those that follow halacha, have to make sure that kapporos is done in the most sanitary and non abusive way. The organization are making a killing (no pun intended) off the community’s kaporos, let them hire more people and set it up in a more systematic way.
We do not live in the shtetel and what people say about us DOES matter.
Hevey mekabel es hoemes mimi sheomroi.
A Kaporo
This year we shlog Kaporos with PETA
A Kappoooooore
I think CH residents should be able to bid for the honor of shlugging the following for kapores instead of chickens:
1) Any visitors from PETA
2) Derrick "Dreck" Nelson
3) The car vandal and the burglar who were caught in recent days
I am sure there are some other candidates out there.
And yes, the video is most probably edited, with completely innocent scenes being purposely misinterpreted. However, we really do need a larger and more open site (or even more smaller and more controlled sites) for kaporos in CH, more for our safety (avoiding rodents and disease) than because some hateful organization is threatening us.
Dovid
i don’t really see exactly what there getting at with the video. there isn’t anything bad there, ok so a couple of chicked died from suffocation or whatever, but other than that i don’t see anything wrong. and i work there every year i see alot worse things then are on the video, it is true that some people need to learn how to hold the chickens, but other than that its perfectly fine.
gman
hey peta you will only squeeze our spiritual oil to make us do it even more!
supervison
There should be no jkaporas on the streets. Iyt should be done in a court yard like Beis Rivkah parking lot on 310 Crown. It should be properly supervised.
SHIMON COHEN
WHEN ARAFAT USED A DONKEY TO CARRY BOMBS INTO JERUSALEM THE PETA CROWD SENT HIM A LETTER PROTESTING THE DONKEY’S USE – NOT THE BOMBS. ARAFAT PROMISED NOT TO USE ANIMALS AGAIN TO KILL JEWISH PEOPLE – PETA ACCEPTED HIS PROMISE.
I GUESS NEITHER PETA OR ARAFAT WANTED TO DO ANYTHING TO BEING SO MUCH LIKE THEM.
chaya klein
The Goyim and told me many times, how crule we are with animals.
It is hard to explain to them what they see. Doing a religous thing with an animal. and treating it so unjust and not in a kind mannor, G-d doesn’t want us to do that.G-d tells us to be kind to animals. in the torah, it says we have to feed our animals before we eat.
also to help an ox out of a hole. also many other stories.
we just need to remember to tell others to do what we have to do, in a kind and gentle mannor.
CH resident
go gman you are right!
almost like in Russia when we are threaten we will do it better!
People not animals
PC idiots like PETA have almost completely destroyed Schechita in the UK. My father A"H was a butcher & by the time he retired he was sick of fighting the government & everyone else who killed (no pun intended) the kosher meat trade. If PETA isn’t stopped, I predict the same outcome here. Look what they tried to do to Agriprocessors (Rubashkin’s) in Postville.
I agree with the above comments…MORE chickens should be used as a Kaporeh.
BTW… Kapores @ NCFJE (824 E. Parkway)is always quick, easy, and not too disgusting (by Kaporeh standards.) They provide assistance & boxes for those poor little chickens for cowards like me! And I’ve yet to hear a chicken complain.
SaPA
What is the problem with the treatment of the chickens after sechita? Are we supposed to be burying them in caskets and all? PETA lost my respect a while ago and their crusades for misplaced causes is what will harm them in the long run. Their fight for animals is a noble one, but their battle against humans is immoral.
anon
save a chicken
eat a vegetarian
elchonon
Well according to PETA, chickens have feelings too.. these are the people that hold more regard for a animals life than a human..
Like the letter to arafat asking him to keep animals out of the "conflict" when they used a donkey to carry bombs and it blew up..
Maybe PETA can now start representing the arab terrorist animals ;)
Not surprised
“The kapparot ritual must be examined. It is a serious health concern that children handle live, feces-covered and possibly diseased chickens and wade through the blood of slaughtered poultry,” PETA said in a letter sent to the city Health Department.
One minute…aren’t they supposed to be "concerned" about animals? Since when is sanitation part of their mandate? So transparent…if their cries of cruelty to animals don’t work, they’ll change their tune and cry "unsanitary" instead, just to achieve their TRUE goal of manipulating the public.
Shochet in the US
OK children, listen up.
Just because PETA has an agenda does not mean that we can give them an excuse to bashmutz us. This attitude of "it’s PETA so we will be bedavka" is so childish!!!
The truth is that there is a mitzvah (as opposed to a minhag) to prevent tza’ar ba’alei chaim and there is also a mitzvah d’oraisa of kiddush Hashem. What benefit is there of doing kapporos and to He#$ with what the neighbors think. Kapporos is about being conscious of the aibeshter in our lives and in this case, it has caused a chillul Hashem.
There does need to be more organisation and that guy who was joking around with the chicken’s head after the shechita (I have seen that kind of stuff myself), What a busha!!!!!!
Why can’t everyone just work b’darkei shalom and make it more sanitary/nicer for the live chickens.
Would you complain if you saw some voodoo people doing black magic with some chickens in the street.(probably!!!)
Why is it such a problem to admit you’re wrong (especially during Elul)
Barnaby Twist
How anybody can justify this horrible abuse of chickens on religious grounds doesn’t say very much for your religion. Any religion that condones the suffering of other living beings is a bastard religion that doesn’t deserve any respect whatsoever. The abuse in kosher slaughter houses is also well documented. That any of you stand up for these practices and malign PETA says all that I need to know about you. I bet this comment won’t get published.