Chicken...I think I'll pass

I love being Jewish. The traditions, the food, the prayer, the conversations, the opinions - you name it, we've got it. We even have those traditions that as a Reform Jew, I sometimes get a little squeamish over.

Enter Shlocking Kaporot (symbolic atonement using a chicken). My first encounter with this pre-Yom Kippur tradition was last year during Yom Kippur. My father stood on the Bimah and handed out rubber chicken finger puppets to all the children after Havdallah (he preached about it at some point during the day). The purpose confused me, but I had a rubber chicken to swing around my head nonetheless.

Coming to Jerusalem for the year, I was encouraged to take advantage of the many opportunities around me offering glimpses into worlds very separate from those of a Reform Jew. Once such opportunity was heading to the shuk for Kaporot. As I needed to go to the shuk anyway, I figured why not. Although I am incredibly susceptible to emotional reactions (especially when I have already had an emotional day), I should have known it wasn’t the best idea, but alas, hindsight is 20/20…

I found the big sign announcing that people could come in and pay to have their sins transferred to the chicken and therefore allowing them to start Yom Kippur on a clean slate. I walked up the stairs, unsure what I would find under the black mesh canopy. In a C-shape were stacked dozens of crates of live chickens. The smell was unbearable while the sound was a gentle squacking (until a chicken was taken out of its plastic crate and transferred to a cardboard box for the shocket (butcher) to have easier access.

Although five or six people asked me if I wanted to do it, I gave a wide-eyed answer of no, wildly gesticulating my disapproval and fear of this custom. Instead, I just wanted to watch (which I managed to communicate in bumbled Hebrew).  So, I stood there, a fearful 22-year-old, feeling out of place as the smell permeated my brain cells, waiting for someone to come in and actually have the chicken swung over their head.

At first, I watched as an Asian woman read off a list of names for a couple, asking that each person on the list have the ritual performed for them. To this, the shocket slit the throat of each chicken and threw it in a funnel like contraption so the blood could drain from their necks as they thrashed within. The next step would be the shave off the feathers with a brutal sounding standing machine, which would allow the chickens to be given to those in need of meat for the chag (holiday).

Finally, a woman showed up and I watched the shocket swing the chicken over her head, over and over, 4 repetitions of three times each. The entire experience was fascinating. No matter the request, the chicken ended up kaput, dead. And these people worked at this job all day, smoking, eating, joking as they did it. I was thoroughly disgusted.

However, this is not my practice. Although I don’t think it is humane or particularly nice (some may say chickens don’t have feelings, but they have never heard the ethereal squack of a chicken when its being held by its wings nor have they witnessed what a thrashing chicken looks like), I understand the intention behind it. One wants to be as cleansed as possible before he or she comes before God tomorrow, on THE day, Yom Kippur. I just feel there may be better ways to do it.

I will apologize to those around me. I recognize that I may not have atoned for EVERYTHING I have done wrong in the past year, but I know that I am not perfect, and that I have sinned. Yom Kippur is not just a day for atoning. It is also a day for petitions and for living, for celebrating being written into the book of life. I will remember the importance of gratitude, of appreciating the fact that I am alive each and every day.

            Most importantly, I will say thank you. So, thank you!