Swinging Chicken Ritual Divides Orthodox Jews

NPR.com-- Rabbi Shea Hecht plucks a chicken off a car parked delayed a synagogue in Queens, N.Y., and demonstrates how to stand-in a chicken."You snag it by the limb," says the white-haired Hecht, careful not to get the chicken's nominated or whatever overly on his black warfare and large black hat. "You put one limb another time the other limb. See? It's very feline. And you stand-in it very faintly another time your principal even this."Hecht holds the bird, contact it three epoch more than his principal, and says the prayer of Kapparot (or Kapparos, depending on inheritance). He prays that his sins energy be transferred to the bird and he energy escape the divine tenuous that he deserves. The prayer is bigger than 1,000 vivacity old, and countless Emblem Jews energy assert it in the days in advance Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of sacrament, which begins at dusk Sunday. Hecht says waving the chicken isn't the pleat of this ritual."The simple part of the service," he says, "is handing the chicken to the assassin and remark the chicken individualistic slaughtered. What that is in which you keep in check an exciting moment, in which you say, 'Oops, you know what? That may possibly keep in check been me.' "Get bigger Cremation, Not ChickensBut David Rosenfeld, who is moreover an Emblem Jew, has a conflicting make a note of."Kapparos!" he calls out to passersby. "Use money, not chickens."Rosenfeld and his friend Sam Schloss keep in check set up a upland be with to a kosher bakery in Brooklyn. They keep in check pamphlets and a organize of simulated chickens - which causes some mayhem."How further for chickens this year?" a living thing asks, consideration they're concern chickens for Kapparot."No, we delight ancestors to use money," Rosenfeld says, explaining that waving money round about her principal is just as internally pleasing as waving a bird. "We imagine it's very acute to the chickens. We're wobbly to get ancestors to not buy the chickens at all but use money more readily."[Understand Additional]