September 21, 2007 | 12:08 pm

Counting chickens

Posted by Dikla Kadosh

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I dreamt of chickens last night.

I couldn’t get the squawking, fluttering birds out of my head after my first experience with kapparot. The ancient tradition of swinging chickens over your head in a symbolic act of atonement the day before Yom Kippur is fraught with contradictions and controversy. Though practiced since the ninth century, several prominent Jewish sages throughout history have strongly opposed what they called a foolish and pagan ritual. Modern Jews have objected to the treatment of the live chickens and expressed concern about children who witness the slaughtering of the animals.

But I wasn’t contemplating all that last night as I stood in line in a dark parking lot on San Pedro Street on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles. It was 1 a.m. and very cold. The powerful smell of fowl was nauseating. The birds’ anguished cries echoed through the parking lot as men, women and children clamped down on their wings and feet and circled them around their heads - one time, two times, three times.

“This is my exchange, my         substitute, my atonement; this rooster (or hen) shall go to its death,        but I shall go to a good, long life, and to peace,” they intoned three times. Then they handed the doomed chicken to a shochet, or slaughterer, to slit its throat in one quick motion. Tossed into upside down orange cones suspended above the ground, they jerked and spasmed for a few second until all the life had dripped out of them, along with their blood from the bottom of the cone.

My stomach was in a knot as we approached the front of the line. A man shoved a box towards me. I peered inside and saw a white, undersized hen sitting there quietly. I felt a small sting in my heart for the poor creature destined for death. “You’re freeing the soul trapped inside that chicken,” my boyfriend reassured me, referring to the Kabbalist notion of reincarnation.

I took a deep breath and gently lifted the chicken by its wings. Its warm, pulsating body startled me and I whispered, “I don’t think I can do this.” An instructor from the Kabbalah Center stood beside me. “Yes, you can. You’ll be fine,” she said reassuringly. I swung the bird over my head, repeated the prayer quickly and handed my little bird over to a young shochet-in-training.

I tossed ashes on the pool of blood beneath the cone where my hen was dumped and that’s it. It was done.

I haven’t yet processed how I feel about this experience, but a few words come to mind: strange, primitive, cultish and scary.

I sincerely hope that whatever misfortunes were scheduled to occur in my life this year were transfered to that bird and the sins I committed were eradicated with its passing.

I also hope that tonight as I lay in bed, hungry and thirsty, there won’t be chickens flapping in front of my mind’s eye.

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