When Israel's Ministry of Agriculture tried to place ads in haredi newspapers asking haredim to use money for the kapparot ritual rather than live chickens, the newspapers – Yated Ne'eman, HaMevaser, BaKehila, HaPeles and Hamodia – refused to run the ads. The lone haredi publication to agree to run the ads was the relatively moderate Mishpacha Magazine, which agreed to run the anti-chicken-kapparot ad – but only if a quote from Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulkhan Arukh (Code of Jewish Law) opposing kapparot was removed from it.
Haredi Papers Refuse To Run Anti-Chicken Kapparot Ad Placed By Government
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Ban the ads.
Israel’s Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel of the right-wing Zionist Orthodox HaBayit HaYehudi Party wanted people to use money instead of chickens for kapparot (kaporos; a pre-Yom Kippur ritual of apparently pagan origin that ‘transfers’ the sins of an individual to a live chicken, which is then slaughtered in front of the person so he can watch the chicken die) and then donate the kapparot money to the poor.
But haredim wouldn’t hear of it or, it seems, read of it, either.
According to a report in Arutz Sheva, when the Ministry of Agriculture tried to place ads in haredi newspapers asking haredim to use money for the kapparot ritual rather than live chickens, the newspapers – Yated Ne'eman, HaMevaser, BaKehila, HaPeles and Hamodia – refused to run the ads. The lone haredi publication to agree to run the ads was the relatively moderate Mishpacha Magazine, which agreed to run the anti-chicken-kapparot ad – but only if a quote from Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulkhan Arukh (Code of Jewish Law) opposing kapparot was removed from it.
The Ministry of Agriculture had a backup plan, however. It posted the ad as a poster on notice boards and walls in haredi neighborhoods across the country. How long those posters remained in place on those walls and bulletin boards undamaged by haredim is yet unclear.