Title: There's going to be a chicken Holocaust Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Sep 29, 2010 Author:joo Post Date:2010-09-29 23:40:26 by Itistoolate Keywords:None Views:466 Comments:6
Since, nowadays, nearly all of us get our chickens plucked, cleaned and wrapped in cellaphane in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, the process of picking out one's chicken dinner that existed more than a century ago (and still used in most places on earth) looks downright barbaric.
What this shows is the Orthodox custom of "kapparot" that takes place a day or two before the beginning of the Yom Kippur fast. A live chicken is purchased for each member of the family (usually roosters for each male, hens for each female), lifted around each person, and then slaughtered for a meal. In most families the slaughtered chickens are given to the poor for their pre-fast meal. This is NOT a required ritual but mere custom -- which is, happily, diminishing in practice. Jews who are squeamish about doing this with a live chicken will do it with a fish (usually a carp), or even with a vegetable, after which money is donated to the poor.
I should add, if anybody should ever stumble across this thread in research on kapporot, that this ritual is used as a relic or a lingering emulation of the sin offering that was supposed to be made in the Temple of Solomon before the Day of Atonement. The chicken is used for this primarily because (1) in the last several centuries, it is the animal most readily available, since the sacrifice was supposed to be an edible creature, yet (2) the chicken was not used as a sacrificial animal in the Temple and therefore this ritual acknowledges the loss of the Temple and the lasting effect it has had on Jews. As the usual practice is one chicken per member of the family, most of the chickens used are promptly donated to the poor for their meals.
However, there is ample evidence, not just in recent decades, but in recent centuries of acceptable forms of kapporot that did not involve animals. Very likely this trend will grow as city life and concern for animal welfare makes the use of live chickens less and less easy.