Israel discourages Kaporos. U.S. authorities ignore it. Many U.S. Jews protest towards it.
TEL AVIV, Israel; New York City, N.Y.––Compared to the slaughter of 25 million factory-farmed chickens per day for human consumption, the annual sacrificial killing of fifty,000 to 100,000 by the estimated 130,000 Hassidic Jewish households worldwide within the follow of Kaporos scarcely quantities to a statistical footnote.
Among the roughly 16 million self-identified Jews worldwide, the 130,000 Hassidic Jewish households are scarcely extra consultant than the handful of backwoods Christians, amongst 210 million Christians within the U.S, who deal with dwell rattlesnakes of their ceremonies.
But a lot of the snake-handlers are in remoted pockets of Appalachia, seldom seen anyplace else.
Most of these 130,000 estimated Hassidic Jewish households are in Israel, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Visible celebration of animal abuse
In all of these locations, Kaporos is arguably essentially the most seen celebration of animal abuse, during which public officers collaborate with practitioners to facilitate torturing chickens to loss of life.
As a non secular ritual, Kaporos has points in widespread with the general public slaughter of sheep, goats, cattle, and typically chickens practiced in a lot of the Islamic world in preparation for the annual Islamic “Feast of Atonement,” or Eid al Adha.
But Kaporos additionally considerably differs from the Islamic follow.
The Eid al Adha is the celebratory meal that ends the 2 weeks of formality daytime fasting that observant Muslims worldwide follow through the haj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are to make, if potential, not less than as soon as of their lives.
Historically, Islamic heads of households typically slaughtered animals for household feasting, giving a 3rd of the meat to their neighbors and a 3rd to the poor, as directed by the Prophet Mohammed.
Gifts to charity are additionally acceptable below Islamic legislation, as interpreted by most (however not all) branches of Islam.
Many vegan Muslims rejoice a vegan Eid al Adha.
The level of the Eid al Adha slaughter is to not kill animals, however relatively for the prosperous to share a few of their success with the much less lucky.
But Kaporos is all about killing a hen, who normally will not be eaten
By distinction, the entire level of Kaporos, in response to the practitioners themselves, is to switch their sins to the hen, then expiate these sins by killing the hen. The sufferer hen is seldom eaten afterward, since that might imply ingesting the supposed receptacle of sin.
Kaporos, defined New York Daily News reporter Elizabeth Keogh in 2021, “is performed by swinging a chicken around one’s head three times while reciting a prayer for forgiveness before slitting the chicken’s throat. The practice is done on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.”
Specifically, Kaporos, not meant to be a personal ceremony, is performed on public sidewalks and in different public locations through the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
The cruelty begins lengthy earlier than the ritual torment
Crated chickens are trucked in from Hassidic communal farms outdoors of New York City, then provided on the market the place they are going to be killed.
“Many chickens die from exposure, dehydration, and malnutrition while sitting outside without access to food or water, waiting, before anyone even uses them for the Kaporos ritual,” Animal Care Centers spokesperson Katy Hansen advised Keogh.
(See Kaporos: hen soup for the soulless? and Live animal markets in New York City: a cut-throat business at finest.)
Protest shifts to rescue
In 2023, “We think that practitioners will swing chickens from September 17 to September 23,” New York City animal rights activist and Their Turn blogger Donny Moss emailed to ANIMALS 24-7.
Jewish animal advocates, together with Moss, have for greater than 30 years protested the follow of Kaporos almost in all places it happens.
After a number of years of the New York City demonstrations turning into more and more confrontational, the emphasis has in recent years shifted to rescuing any chickens who in some way escape from the sidewalk distributors or the chicken-swingers, and evacuating them to sanctuaries.
Israeli authorities emphasize “redeeming atonements with money, not chickens”
In Israel, reported Sayima Ahmad from Tel Aviv for the Indo-Asian News Service on August 28, 2023, “In preparation for the upcoming Yom Kippur holiday – the Jewish Day of Atonement – Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development emphasizes to the public the importance of observing the custom of redeeming atonements with money, not chickens.
“Again this year,” Ahmad wrote, “the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development encourages the public to observe this custom with money, not animals, and to donate it to charity.
“Making atonements by means of monetary redemption is even supported by the greatest rabbis, who call on the public to prefer the redemption of atonements with money in order to prevent the suffering of animals.”
Who is the Israeli minister of agriculture and rural improvement?
Avi Dichter, 71, the present Israeli minister of agriculture and rural improvement, was among the many first era of Jews born in trendy Israel. Both of his mother and father have been Holocaust survivors. Before getting into politics, Dichter served with distinction in Sayeret Matkal, an elite unit of the Israel Defense Forces, then joined Shin Bet, Israel’s inner safety service.
Along the way in which, Dichter earned his undergraduate diploma from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, then added an MBA from Tel Aviv University.
If any authority may very well be stated to be steeped within the traditions and beliefs of recent Judaism, Dichter would possibly.
But Kaporos has no extra to do with something within the Torah, or in conventional Judaic teachings, than snake-handling has to do with Christianity. Jesus by no means dealt with a rattlesnake, or any snake as far as the Bible mentions; Moses by no means swung a hen.
Under Mosaic legislation meant to attenuate the struggling of animals utilized in work or killed for human consumption, Moses would very doubtless have discovered chicken-swinging as offensive as does Donny Moss.
