Chicken off the menu as Jewish leaders spurn Yom Kippur rite

IN AN alley of the religious neighbourhood of Mea Shearim, plastic cages stuffed with chickens are stacked five high as men, women and children mill about. The butcher charges about £10 for each bird, sold live with its legs bound.

One man, in long black coat, wearing a hat over his sidelocks, grips his new purchase with his left hand while chanting from a prayer sheet held in his right. He then swings the chicken above his head, mutters a blessing, and takes the bird to be slaughtered.

For generations ultra-Orthodox Jews marked the festival of Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement and holiest day in the Jewish calendar, which began at sunset yesterday – by swinging live chickens over their heads while saying a blessing, then slaughtering the birds as a symbolic way to purge their souls of sin.

But now some rabbis are speaking out against the practice, calling the ritual animal abuse, and attacking the cruel conditions in which the chickens are kept as a violation of Jewish law, which has strict rules on the care and killing of animals.

Rabbi Meir Hirsch began having second thoughts about the practice, known as in Hebrew as kaparot, when he noticed chickens squawking in distress in cages near his home.

Rabbi Hirsch, a member of the Neturei Karta (Guardians of the City) sect in Jerusalem, said: “[Butchers] bring the chickens from the farm at night, and they spend all day in the sun without food or drink. You cannot perform a commandment by committing a sin.”

The tradition dates back at least 800 years and calls for believers to wave a live chicken three times over their heads ahead of Yom Kippur. After slaughter, religious Jews often donate the meat to charity.

Jewish leaders across Israel and the United States have called for an end to the practice for years, but leaders of insular ultra-Orthodox communities have been resistant.

The controversy surrounding kaparot stretches back centuries.

Rabbi Joseph Karo, one of the codifiers of Jewish law, called it a “foolish custom” reminiscent of paganism. Since his 16th-century pronouncement, Jews of Sephardic, or Middle Eastern, origin have tended to perform kaparot without animals, sometimes swinging sacks of coins above their heads before donating the money to charity.

Those following Ashkenazi, or European, customs, have continued to use chickens, however.

Yehuda Shein, a community activist in the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Shemesh, founded an ultra-Orthodox animal rights group last year. This year, about 50 activists from his group, “Behemla,” or “in compassion,” handed out flyers citing rabbinical opposition to performing kaparot on chickens.

“People doing kaparot think only about holding onto the chicken, and they think they did a good deed of donating the chicken to charity. But they don’t understand the pain the animal endured,” he said.

Menachem Friedman, an expert on Jewish religious society in Israel, said replacing chickens with donations to charity is a rising trend. He added: “There is also a very accepted custom in synagogues, that in the afternoon, people bring their money for kaparot, and everyone chooses the charity he wants to support.”

Most opposition to chicken kaparot has come from progressive Jewish circles, and modern Orthodox worshippers shun the practice, though Mr Friedman said “there are sprouts of an awakening” now among the very religious.

Most of the ultra-Orthodox still transfer their sins to chickens for Yom Kippur, he said.