Fringe haredi group: "SHAME ON WHITE LIBERALS WHO OPPOSE HUMANS WHO EAT MEAT YET SUPPORT THE MURDER OF BLACK BABIES THROUGH ABORTIONS."
A previous JPAC demonstration
The fringe haredi group JPAC sent me the following email yesterday, all bold and complete with spelling errors:
JPAC will be holding a counter rally this week to the protesters of the chicken kaporas ritual throughout Brooklyn. For the first time there will be signs reading SHAME ON ATHEISTS WHO OPPOSE HUMANS EATING MEAT,YET SUPPORT THE MURDER OF BABIES THROUGH ABORTIONS AS WELL AS MEN MARRYING MEN AND MEN MARRYING DOGS. For Crown heights there will be an added caviar which will unite the Crown heights Jews and Blacks against these liberal anti meat eaters. Those signs will read, SHAME ON WHITE LIBERALS WHO OPPOSE HUMANS WHO EAT MEAT YET SUPPORT THE MURDER OF BLACK BABIES THROUGH ABORTIONS. There is word in the streets of Crown heights that extra police will be on hand due to the possible confrontation between church going Blacks and the liberal anti kapora crowd. This is the first time JPAC The Jewish political Action Committee is getting involved in the religious rights issue of observant Jews use of chickens as kaporas.
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Kapparot in Crown Heights and in many other haredi neighborhoods have for many years been run cruelly. Chickens are often not fed for several days and it isn't uncommon for them to be held for more than 24 hours without water in tiny cramped cages so small, the birds can't even turn around.
Add to that mishandling of the birds by some kapparot goers and the fact than in previous years, many of these chickens were slaughtered and then discarded because there was no one to process them – something advocates of kapparot in previous generations could never have imagined.
On top of all that, there are rampant health code violations and the real danger of disease from the waste and blood that litters the streets.
And we must remember that leading halakhic authorities have called kapparot a foreign practice akin to magic or avoda zara, and its historical origin seems to be clearly pagan.
All of this has caused some haredi rabbis to tell their followers to use money rather than a chicken to perform the ritual. Other rabbis have insisted their followers only use certain kapparot centers that are properly supervised.
In Israel the Chief Rabbis have spoken out against the problems as has at least one haredi rabbi.
But in both countries most haredi rabbis have been silent.
Which brings us back to our insane haredi friends at JPAC.
I found this latest email so offensive and so ill-advised, I asked the sender if he had ever been diagnosed with a mental illness.
He avoided answering the question.
I asked him for his name.
He refused to give it.
He told me JPAC has a 13 man board.
I asked for their names.
He refused to give them, saying the message is what's important, not the people.
I told him it goes to credibility, and that no one will take him of JPAC seriously if the people who run it are anonymous.
His response was to threaten me by saying that pictures of the demonstrations would first be published on other blogs.
In the process of all this he told me that he had been told by a leading rabbi from Mea Shearim to make a sign reading, "SHAME ON WHITE LIBERALS WHO OPPOSE HUMANS WHO EAT MEAT YET SUPPORT THE MURDER OF BLACK BABIES THROUGH ABORTIONS," and use it in Crown Heights – something that is a profoundly bad idea on many levels.
I asked him who this rabbi is.
He refused to tell me.
He also told me JPAC is supported by leading rabbis, but he refused to tell me who they are.
Why?
It's the message that matters, he said, not the people.
On the other hand, I think this message needs to be tied to real names and faces.
This is where you come in.
Anyone who knows who these JPAC people are, please let me know.
And anyone who can get pictures of their anti-anti-kapparot protests – and especially of the people running them – please snap them and send them to me.
Then lets put names to faces and publicize them.
Lets not allow these people to operate in anonymity.