Kaparot is a custom connected to Yom Kippur, where white chickens are waved over a person’s head and then slaughtered as a symbolic gesture of atonement while reciting specific verses from the Mahzor, a special holiday prayerbook.
The slaughtered chickens are then donated to the poor. It is believed that one transfers one’s sins from the past year into the chicken.
The Kaparot ceremony is held before the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which starts on Tuesday. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer.
Following the ritual, the chicken is slaughtered and donated to the poor. In Haredi Jewish communities, the Kaparot ceremony is still commonplace, but other streams of Judaism have discarded the practice or substituted the chickens for money, which is also given to the needy.
Some critics of the custom argue that it is not mentioned in the Torah or Talmud, while others view the practice as violating the Jewish ethic of tsa’ar ba’alei chayim, treating animals with compassion instead of cruelty.
“You cannot perform a commandment by committing a sin,” Rabbi Meir Hirsch, a member of the Neturei Karta sect in Jerusalem, said in an AP report on the custom. The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos says the practice runs counter to the mood and meaning of the Jewish High Holidays.
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