Kapporos Then and Now: Toward a More Compassionate Tradition

Every year, right before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, there is a cultural war in certain Jewish neighborhoods over a ceremony called Kapporos, in which a chicken is slaughtered just before the holy day. The animal rights people show up claiming, “Meat is murder!” while the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who practice this ceremony accuse the activists of antisemitism and violating their freedom of religion. Epithets fly and confrontations occur across the barricades, but nobody is really listening to each other. Rabbi Gershom seeks to build a bridge of understanding between these two warring camps. On the one hand, he opposes using live chickens as Kapporos, and, like many other religious Jews before him, advocates giving money to charity instead. But on the other hand, he is himself a Hasid who understands and believes in the kabbalistic principle of "raising holy sparks" so central to the ceremony. In fact, he says, it is that very mysticism that has led him not to use chickens for the ritual.