Comments

  • The Bukharian Jews who use the yeshiva building on 108th and 66th Road (one block from the YM/WHA) on high holy days also practice Kaparot and have been for years.

    I remember the first year they came in and parked a flatbed truck filled with chickens in front of the school — the neighborhood was in complete stun! And the sounds from the chickens? It was pretty freaky.

    Steve, I hope you are prepared for several comments on how you are insensitive, making fun of someone’s religion and religious practices, etc.

    Posted by MaryJane
    on September 24th, 2007 at 9:02 am

  • More evolved people use money instead and that is donated to the poor. This barbaric practice flies in the face of the teaching that go against using sacrifice as a manner of replacement of one’s good acts. There is little support for this in the general community and it should be stopped all told. Sometimes, traditions are just bad and need to be stopped. This is not making fun of anyone, it is cruel and causes unnecessary pain to the animal, which by the way, goes against the jewish law as well.

    If indeed these people believe that we have sole dominion over the creatures of the earth, we should be their protectors, not their torturers.

    Posted by KGResident
    on September 24th, 2007 at 9:10 am

  • Things like this make me worry about the mindsets of otherwise rational-seeming people. Although I can’t limit it to one particular religious custom. Catholicism, Judaism, Islam all have customs are downright odd. I don’t agree with Bill Maher on a lot of things, but when it comes to religion and its effect on society, I think he is on point.

    Posted by Peter
    on September 24th, 2007 at 9:23 am

  • I am indeed prepared for that, MaryJane, but I fully plan on using my three years in an honest-to-Hashem yeshiva day school featuring four hours a day of religious instruction by long-bearded, black-hatted rabbis as a defense.

    Posted by Steve
    on September 24th, 2007 at 9:28 am

  • Happy New Year to all those who observe. If you will pardon me, I have to clean up the mess from a chicken projectile that flew through my window.

    Posted by bobbyrab
    on September 24th, 2007 at 10:14 am

  • My Parents are Jewish and my Dad is even a holocaust survivor. They never ever taught me that. And my Dad goes to pray every year on the high holiday. However, my Mom was in an orphan school (yes, I probably need therapy) ran by Hasidics (sp) and they tortured her. This sounds like one of their overblown old school ways.
    Like women sitting separate during prayer cuz they might be dirty with their periods.

    Posted by Jayne
    on September 24th, 2007 at 12:45 pm

  • “I feel like Chicken Tonight, like Chicken Tonight…”

    Posted by Birds of a Feather
    on September 24th, 2007 at 8:30 pm

  • After you “swing” your chicken, will they clean and cut it up for you? Those kosher chickens are the best . . .

    Posted by Sarah
    on September 24th, 2007 at 10:08 pm

  • I believe they’re donated to the poor or something. You might be able to work out a deal.

    Posted by Steve
    on September 25th, 2007 at 12:50 am

  • If they also do some chicken juggling, I’m so there…

    Posted by peterd
    on September 25th, 2007 at 11:11 am

  • Sorry to revive this thread, but everyone here is obviously not particularly knowledgeable about Torah Judiasm (sorry Steve). The custom of using a chicken goes way back, and is still practiced by most Chassidim. Which brings to mind, Jayne, that you and your mother also are very wrong about why women and men sit separately in the synagogue. It has nothing to do with a woman’s menstrual cycle - it’s because men shouldn’t be distracted from their prayers. Since men are more easily distracted then women, we have to make certain accomodations for their weaknesses.

    Posted by FHNative
    on December 28th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

  • Well, respectfully, FHNative, I’m going to have to beg to differ. I’m well aware that the chicken thing is an old practice, but I do have to take issue with your conflation of kaparot with “Torah Judaism”–which I understand is a popular term among Orthodox Jews but which is also a bit of a confrontational term, you have to admit, implying that Conservative, Reform and other Jews have lost touch with Torah, an assertion most of them would likely dispute. You described it as a “custom,” which is entirely accurate–it’s not at all halachic, as evidenced by Yosef Karo’s distaste for it. While it is true that it remains popular among Hasidim, Hasidism itself is a relatively new form of Jewish practice that started as a rebellious movement less than 300 years ago and has its own traditions, which it very well may believe to be closely connected to the spirit of Torah but much of which originated with the Ba’al Shem Tov and his inheritors, rather than being the pure form of Judaism that many, both Jews and non-Jews, mistakenly believe it to be.

    Posted by Steve
    on December 28th, 2007 at 12:48 pm

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Forest Hills chicken-killin’ report

Posted by Steve on Monday, September 24th, 2007

Central Queens never ceases to amaze me by housing communities of Jews I didn’t know existed. Way, way up in the outer reaches of Forest Hills lies the Congregation of Georgian Jews, a synagogue serving an obscure Jewish ethnic group originating in Georgia — the Georgia that produced Stalin, not Newt Gingrich. I already knew about the CGJ, but what I did not know until this weekend is that they participate in the age-old Jewish custom of Kaparot. “Kaparot,” for the Hebrew-impaired, translates as “swinging a chicken over your head, then eating it.” It’s done on Yom Kippur weekend in order to transfer your sins to the chicken and thus absolve you from responsibility.

Now, here’s something interesting about the Kaparot ritual: Pretty much every Jew living today looks down upon it as bizarre at best and barbaric at worst. And some of the great Jewish sages of the past didn’t have much more respect for it — Maimonedes, the 12th-century rabbi and physician whose commentary is found in the margins of every Talmud printed today, hated it; and Yosef Karo, the man who codified Jewish religious law in the 16th century, banned it. But in Forest Hills, you — yes, you — can do it yourself, right here in 2007. At $15, it’s quite the bargain, and assistance is provided for novice chicken swingers.

Yes, things just keep getting more progressive. Happy New Year!