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October 6, 2011 | 11:09 pm

Humane Kapparas

Posted by Rob Eshman

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I think my wife Naomi struggles to find the good in the farm I’ve crammed onto our city lot.  Sometimes she reaches her limit—like when the goats escape and barge into the house—or when she’s trying to write or study and the chickens are clucking and the dogs are barking and I can practically see the thought bubble forming above her head of a regular backyard with a lawn, a couple of flower beds, and a hammock where you can lay down without fear that a pair of goat horns might reach up through the bottom.  That’s happened.

But she tries.  I think the times the farm brings her the most joy is when it helps her bring a Jewish text or ritual to life.  And that happens, too. Because you can’t read Biblical texts read like a farmers almanac: fat years, lean years, shepherds, oxen, goats, barley, milk, honey—Jews are an urban people whose whose greatest literature revolves around the country.

We’ve had chickens for years now, and for years we’ve talked about doing a humane homemade version of kapparas.  Kapparas is an atonement ritual. In traditional communities its practiced between the New Year and Yom Kippor, the Day of Atonement.  Traditionally it involves swinging a white rooster (if you’re a man) or a white hen (if you’re a woman) above your head, while reciting a prayer that transfers one’s sins to the bird.  The animal is the given to the poor, which completes the expiation.

Because in many Orthodox communities the chickens have been terribly mistreated, manhandled and malnourished and crippled by the handling and the swinging, animal rights groups and Jewish activists have fought to change the ritual.  In many communities it has been de-chickenified—a pledge of money is given to the poor in lieu of poultry.

That’s usually what Naomi does.

But last night,  after dark, when we were lying in bed, Naomi asked me if I wanted to do kapparas. Real kapparas.

“Sure,” I said.

After all, we have 6 chickens outside, and at night they are especially docile—chickens are pretty much night blind and somniferous starting at sundown.

Naomi gathered her ritual handbook and a flashlight, and a baseball cap.  This would involve holding a chicken above our heads. 

I entered the chicken yard and picked up one of the older ones.  She melted into my arms, her eyes wide open but otherwise very still. 

She read a long passage in Hebrew:

Children of Man, who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, shackled in affliction and iron. He removed them from darkness and the shadow of death, an broke open their shackles. The fools—because of their sinful path and their iniquities they were afflicted.

It goes on for a while about how awful we humans are, then comes the out:

If there will be for someone but a single defending angel out of a thousand to declare a man’s uprightness on his behalf, then He will be gracious to him and say, ‘Redeem hium from descending to the Pit; I have found atonement.

Then comes the chicken part.  Naomi instructed me to pass the chicken over her head each time she recited, in Hebrew, the sentence below, for a total of three times.

‘This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. This hen will go to its death while I will enter and go on to a good long lif, and to peace.

Fortunately our chickens don’t understand ancient Hebrew, just modern.

The prayer book had an out, in brackets, for people who have abandoned the killing chickens part.  It provided substitute, “or this money will go to charity,” that you could recite instead.

But we had a chicken, and she really didn’t seem bothered at all.  At one point her heavy lids closed, and she only snapped them open when I put her back on her perch with a quiet, “Thanks.”

Naomi closed her prayer book and kissed it.  She took off her baseball cap.  Tomorrow we would each give the equivalent of the chicken’s value to the poor.  (I rescued the chicken from a butcher shop, where I paid $7 for her).  According to the rule book, it’s a perfectly legit switch.

I am all for stopping the cruel aspects of kapparas as it is still practiced in a few neighborhoods. I’ve seen it and written about it, and it’s vile and cruel.  Chickens stacked in battery cages.  Terrified, often sick and crippled and then hauled off to slaughter. It’s not atonement, it’s an actual sin in itself.

But as of tonight I can see why the people who do it with birds prefer it: weird, mysterious rituals have a weird, mysterious power.  Our religion, like our lives, has moved further and further away from its natural anchors, and something is lost in the distance. Yes, we gave up sacrifice—not a bad thing.  But we also gave up the intimate, interdependent relationship we had with the natural world—a world through which the people who forged early Judaism understood the very power of God. 

A humane kapparas is not a bad thing: we walked away feeling connected to an ancient tradition, and maybe just a tad more cleansed.  And the chicken, she couldn’t have cared less.

Tomorrow, some poor person will get $14.  And we’ll get another egg.  And Naomi may find one more reason not to be fed up with the farm.

4 Comments — Leave your comment

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A humane kapparas (kaporos) using money or other nonanimal symbol of atonement is not a bad thing, but forcing other animal species to “participate” in this ritual is not a good thing. It’s even worse when the use of chickens and other animals isn’t necessary at all. In this case, the chicken waved by Rob and Naomi on their farm was one chicken at one residence, not thousands of chickens trucked in crates from factory farms to cities to sit for days without food, water, shelter or a shred of kindness or compassion on filthy sidwalks waiting to be swung (“waved”) and slaughtered. (And held tightly fisted by practitioners with their wings pulled painfully and injuriously backward, a sickening sight of human heartlessness.) 

If Rob and Naomi’s chickens were quiet and unprotesting, it’s because these people are kind to their chickens and the chickens are not afraid of them. This is NOT the case in kaporos ceremonies in LA, Jerusalem, Brooklyn or anywhere else this ritual is performed under tents, on the streets, at mass ceremonies. There is no notion amongst the practioners of “reconnecting” empathically with nature or with animals in the performance of chicken kaporos - just the opposite. The practitioners are proudly disconnected from the chickens, ignorant of their feelings (which they deny chickens have), and contemptuous of the birds. They throw injured birds, still alive, into plastic garbage bags with dead birds, and toss the bags in dumpsters uncaringly. It is inappropriate and irresponsible to suggest that chicken “swinging” is a good relationship to have with a bird, or with Nature, or that a bird should be forced symbolically to assume one’s sins. 

I was surprised, and disappointed, to read this editorial. For images, video, and information about chicken kaporos, please visit http://www.EndChickensAsKaporos.com. Thank you very much.

Karen Davis, PhD, President
United Poultry Concerns
757-678-7875
http://www.upc-online.org

Comment by Karen Davis on 11/03/11 at 1:57 pm

While it’s noble that Mr. Eshman rescued a chicken from slaughter, it’s inappropriate to glorify, on any level,  the use of chickens in this custom, which is not mandated in the Torah or the Talmud.  These particular chickens may be treated well, but this is not a typical scenario.  50,000 chickens are tortured and brutally killed for this ritual every year in Brooklyn, alone.  My grandfather, a kosher butcher (one of the first in Boro Park in the 1920s) who rescued cats, dogs, and birds, was adamantly opposed to use of chickens in this ritual, as was his father (who was a shochet).  Both men referred to it as a pagan ritual.  Interestingly, my grandfather became a vegetarian later in life, after visiting a slaughterhouse.  He was so horrified by what he’d seen, he couldn’t even speak.  It’s about time we, as a species, realize our connection with all life and begin to behave accordingly.

Rina Deych, RN
Vegan Nurse

Rina Deych, RN
Vegan Nurse

Comment by Rina Deych, RN on 11/03/11 at 6:09 pm

Karen, you know I’m a big fan of your work, but I have to disagree.  I think what we did is a model of how to do kappaaros in a way that acknowledges the sensitivity of the animals.  In other words, it is an alternative for people who want to somehow connect with the mystery of the tradition, without upsetting or injuring teh animals.  We did it exactly because the traditional methods are so cruel.  Think of it as the tofurkey version of kapparos—instead of telling people to avoid a turey like main dish altogether, you give them a similar-tasting main course alternative.

And yes, my chickens were as happy doing it as your dog is posing for a family picture.  Weird and human, but something they have to suffer through in exchange for being treated like princesses.

Comment by Rob Eshman on 11/03/11 at 10:37 pm

Dear Rob,

Thank you for responding to my comment. However, the analogy between using an animal and not using an animal (e.g. Tofurky) doesn’t work, and suggesting to people who are waving money or throwing bread in the water that they should (could, may) revert to, or proceed to, chickens in order to experience “mystery,” or whatever, is dangerous - for the birds. Chickens should not have to “suffer” for you in exchange for being treated well. You have chosen to keep them. Unfortunately, they have no such choice. They’re dependent on their “owners.” Once you tell people who do not have the luxury of land, a farm etc. that they can swing chickens “humanely,” and the practice grows, it becomes a collective activity, and the abuse increases. In fact, that is exactly what happened historically with kaporos. That is how things work.

Having the family dog sit for a family photo is not the same relationship as conceptualizing and using the dog as a literal or symbolic receptacle for one’s sins (one’s spiritual filth). This is a disgusting idea and being ancient doesn’t clean it up.

There is something dreary and appalling in your suggestion that the chickens you have chosen, freely, to provide a good home for should have to “pay” for the privilege. You eat their eggs, don’t you?

Karen Davis, PhD, President
United Poultry Concerns

Comment by Karen Davis on 11/04/11 at 12:31 pm

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