FROM A FEW DAYS AGO. As Jews around the world get ready to mark Yom Kippur, animal rights activists in Brooklyn are speaking out against the controversial tradition of slaughtering chickens in a symbolic gesture of ahead of the Jewish Day of Atonement. With the ritual, known as Kaparot, it is believed that Jews transfers sins from the past year into the chicken when they undertake the ritual, which involves swinging a chicken round the headb efore it is slaughtered.The ceremony is held before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which Jews traditionally observe with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer. Every year, the treatment of the chickens and the ritual itself causes controversy. On issue is the way they are stored ahead of the slaughter - in small plastic crates on the street. Last year, more than 2,000 stored in Borough Park, Brooklyn died because of the heat, the New York Daily News reported. “It violates Jewish teachings requiring compassion for animals,” the newspaper cited Karen Davis, president of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit that has been battling the practice since 1994, as saying. This year, Davis has organized three protests against the ill-treatment of Kaparot chickens. These started Tuesday night in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 10:08:09 +0000
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