Israel discourages Kaporos. U.S. authorities ignore it. Many U.S. Jews protest against 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 50,000 to 100,000 by the estimated 130,000 Hassidic Jewish households worldwide in the practice of Kaporos scarcely amounts to a statistical footnote.
Among the approximately 16 million self-identified Jews worldwide, the 130,000 Hassidic Jewish households are scarcely more representative than the handful of backwoods Christians, among 210 million Christians in the U.S, who handle live rattlesnakes in their ceremonies.
But most of the snake-handlers are in isolated pockets of Appalachia, seldom seen anywhere else.
Most of those 130,000 estimated Hassidic Jewish households are in Israel, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Visible celebration of animal abuse
In all of those places, Kaporos is arguably the most visible celebration of animal abuse, in which public officials collaborate with practitioners to facilitate torturing chickens to death.
As a religious ritual, Kaporos has aspects in common with the public slaughter of sheep, goats, cattle, and sometimes chickens practiced in much of the Islamic world in preparation for the annual Islamic “Feast of Atonement,” or Eid al Adha.
But Kaporos also significantly differs from the Islamic practice.
The point of Eid al Adha is not to kill an animal
The Eid al Adha is the celebratory meal that ends the two weeks of ritual daytime fasting that observant Muslims worldwide practice during the haj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are to make, if possible, at least once in their lives.
Historically, Islamic heads of households customarily slaughtered animals for family feasting, giving a third of the meat to their neighbors and a third to the poor, as directed by the Prophet Mohammed.
Gifts to charity are also acceptable under Islamic law, as interpreted by most (but not all) branches of Islam.
Many vegan Muslims celebrate a vegan Eid al Adha.
The point of the Eid al Adha slaughter is not to kill animals, but rather for the affluent to share some of their good fortune with the less fortunate.
But Kaporos is all about killing a chicken, who usually is not eaten
By contrast, the whole point of Kaporos, according to the practitioners themselves, is to transfer their sins to the chicken, then expiate those sins by killing the chicken. The victim chicken is seldom eaten afterward, since that would mean ingesting the supposed receptacle of sin.
Kaporos, explained 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 private ceremony, is conducted on public sidewalks and in other public places during the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
The cruelty begins long before the ritual torment
Crated chickens are trucked in from Hassidic communal farms outside of New York City, then offered for sale where they will 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 told Keogh.
(See Kaporos: chicken soup for the soulless? and Live animal markets in New York City: a cut-throat business at best.)
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, including Moss, have for more than 30 years protested the practice of Kaporos almost everywhere it occurs.
After several years of the New York City demonstrations becoming increasingly confrontational, the emphasis has in recent years shifted to rescuing any chickens who somehow escape from the sidewalk vendors 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 development?
Avi Dichter, 71, the current Israeli minister of agriculture and rural development, was among the first generation of Jews born in modern Israel. Both of his parents were Holocaust survivors. Before entering politics, Dichter served with distinction in Sayeret Matkal, an elite unit of the Israel Defense Forces, then joined Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.
Along the way, Dichter earned his undergraduate degree from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, then added an MBA from Tel Aviv University.
If any authority could be said to be steeped in the traditions and beliefs of modern Judaism, Dichter might.
But Kaporos has no more to do with anything in the Torah, or in traditional Judaic teachings, than snake-handling has to do with Christianity. Jesus never handled a rattlesnake, or any snake so far as the Bible mentions; Moses never swung a chicken.
Under Mosaic law meant to minimize the suffering of animals used in work or killed for human consumption, Moses would very likely have found chicken-swinging as offensive as does Donny Moss.
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We want the abuse & killing of Chickens to STOP — a symbolic adoption can be devised for purposes of tradition & culture — again, we MUST STOP abusing, killing Chickens.
Heartbreaking — cruel, sadistic, hateful and IMMORAL — downright CRIMINAL — we have OPTIONS — we NEED NOT abuse & kill Chickens.
This ritual needs to be tweaked — Nothing major at all changes for the Orthodox faith with exception of NOT USING Chickens — I strongly believe God would appreciate Orthodox even more.
These traditions, in all faiths that have them, were originally rooted in compassion and caring for others. How sad and indeed twisted it is that the letter of the law is practiced by the heartless and also by those who never think of what it is that they are truly doing in their supposed quest for “goodness,” with absolutely no understanding or regard for the original reasons for its being done.
The One God Who created us all absolutely would never condone cruelty to any of His creations, especially the most innocent. In no way does cruelty atone for anything. It only perpetrates and increases evil.
Sharing with gratitude…and all the rest.
Thank you — beautifully written — AND, every one of your sentences is TRUE.
Slight correction: The article implies that a maximum total of 100,000 chickens are used in the ritual. Actually, 100,000 chickens are used in kaporos every year in Brooklyn alone. Kaporos is practiced all over the world – mostly by Hasidim. The Chabad sect is one of the biggest promoters of the use of chickens in the ritual and they have chapters throughout the world.
Numbers as high as 100,000 chickens killed in Brooklyn alone are untenable in view that quite a few sources agree that there are only about 200,000 Hassidic Jews in all of New York City, of whom only adult males practice Kaporos. If about 35% of the Hassidic Jewish population are adult males, i.e. over age 18, which would be a normal population ratio, and every one of them swung a chicken, the number would top out at about 70,000. But Hassidic Jews tend to have larger than average families, with more children relative to adults. If only 25% are adult males, and every one of them swings a chicken, the number of chickens killed tops out at about 50,000.