“Dead chickens, half dead chickens, chicken blood, chicken feathers, chicken urine, chicken feces, other toxins and garbage…consume the public streets. There is no oversight and no remedy for toxic contaminant-filled debris or clean up…[the kapparot rituals] constitute a substantial public health risk that could have catastrophic and epidemic consequences,” the suit says, adding that police and health departments "aid and abet" kapparot by blocking off streets and sidewalks and not enforcing city and state laws that regulate health and animal cruelty issues despite the evident danger to the public and the clear and open mistreatment of the animals.
Alliance To End Chicken Kapparos Sues NYC, Rabbis, Hasidim Over Animal Abuse, Health Code Violations
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
A group of Brooklyn residents is suing four rabbis, several hasidic congregations and the City of New York in a bid to stop kapparot atonement rituals from being done on the streets of the city, the Daily News reported.
The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by the Alliance to End Chicken Kapparot, reportedly says kapparot (also spelled kapporos and kapparos) is “barbaric” and cruel, and that the ritual – which has pagan roots – unnecessarily terrifies the birds who are also frequently mistreated and abused before that.
“Dead chickens, half dead chickens, chicken blood, chicken feathers, chicken urine, chicken feces, other toxins and garbage…consume the public streets. There is no oversight and no remedy for toxic contaminant-filled debris or clean up…[the kapparot rituals] constitute a substantial public health risk that could have catastrophic and epidemic consequences,” the suit says, adding that police and health departments "aid and abet" kapparot by blocking off streets and sidewalks and not enforcing city and state laws that regulate health and animal cruelty issues despite the evident danger to the public and the clear and open mistreatment of the animals.
Kapparot, which takes place during the 10 days leading up to Yom Kippur, is a major fundraising event for some hasidic nonprofits and a cash cow for the private kapparot operators who set up shop throughout the borough.
"Ten years ago, Kaporos only occurred in several small alleys and a handful of synagogue parking lots. However, every year it has increased in size and scope. Today, Kaporos has become an overwhelming event that has spiraled out of control.…[into] a carnival like atmosphere of bloody violence.” Clearly this event is now motivated by money and profits, and not by religious redemption,” the alliance’s lawyers wrote in an affidavit filed with the court.
Kapparot, which is thought to be a taken from a pagan ritual popular in the pre-Islamic eastern Middle East, was opposed by many senior rabbis. But others supported it and the ritual survived and then flourished when the hasidic movement adopted it as its own.
In the ritual, a live kosher animal, almost always a chicken, is swung around the head of the penitent as he or she recites a short liturgy in Judeo-Aramaic and Hebrew transferring his or sins to the animal. When completed, the animal is ritually slaughtered in front of the person is supposed to watch the animal bleed out and die while realizing that in reality, he or she too deserves punishment and even death for his or her sins.
The ritual is meant to prompt the penitent to deeper repentance as the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) looms.
In years gone by, the slaughtered animals would be given to the poor to clean, kosher, cook and consume.
But today, with thousands of birds being slaughtered in a very brief period of time, and with people unfamiliar with gutting and cleaning fowl, let alone the soaking and salting process need to finish the koshering process, the slaughtered birds are very frequently surreptitiously dumped in the garbage in large plastic bags.
Kapparot operators justify this by claiming the koshering process is too difficult for people to handle by themselves, that there is no time to do anything else with the slaughtered birds, and that the fee each person pays for a chicken is large enough for some of that money to be used later by the kapparot operator or sponsoring congregation to help the poor.
But whatever is done with the slaughtered birds, there is no denying that thousands of chickens are mistreated every year. They’re left caged in the hot sun without shade, water or food, crammed in tiny cages. Many die from heat stroke or dehydration while others are injured during transportation or while waiting for slaughter.
And in affidavits submitted as part of the suit, people who live and work in neighborhoods where kapparot are done reportedly describe getting sick at the sight of chickens running around with no heads or heads only partially cut off, from the stench of blood that permeates these neighborhoods, sometimes for days on end, and from the cries of terrified chickens.
In one of those affidavits, Aleksandra Bromberg, a student at Hunter College, said the stench from kapparot on her block is horrific and claimed that she was seriously ill with flu like symptoms for the past three years during kapparot season. It’s so bad, she and her husband are thinking of moving out of Crown Heights, the Brooklyn neighborhood that is a stronghold of Chabad-Lubavitch hasidim. "Slaughterhouses do not belong in our neighborhood," Bromberg reportedly wrote in her affidavit.
In his affidavit, 22-year-old Julien Deych said as he jogged though one of these areas, he saw children and adults taunt the terrified birds stacked up in a large tractor trailer truck.
New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who representsa the hasidic stronghold of Borough Park, Brooklyn, denied the claims in the lawsuit and questioned the sanity of the people of who filed it – despite years of clear video, photographic and other evidence that supports the lawsuit.
"I represent this community. I live here, walk around here, have an office in the heart of the community. And I don't know what in God's name they're talking about. They make it sound like there's blood running in the streets. It's just not true.… chickens are not being killed on the sidewalks,” Hikind huffed, even though the city’s largest kapparot center is located on a city street in Crown Heights – the southern service road for Eastern Parkway, one of the nicest boulevards in the city – and on the sidewalk adjacent to it.
Hikind also reportedly claimed that because it is against Jewish law to torture animals or cause them pain, kapparot operators and the Jews who frequent them are kind to the chickens before they are slaughtered – even though, again, there is more than ample evidence that many of the chickens are abused before slaughter.
None of the rabbis being sued who were contacted by the Daily News for comment returned those calls.
Many non-hasidic haredim and most Modern Orthodox Jews do the kapparot ritual by waving money, not a live animal, over their heads and then donating the money to charity. However, hasidim and many Sefardim refuse to make this substitution.
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