Kaparot arrogance

Speaking as someone who has been monitoring the kaparot ritual for over 20 years, I must take issue with your inaccurate description (“Atone for your sins,” September 27).

Most people yank the chickens by the wings or legs and swing (not wave) them around their head or someone else’s. I have seen men grab three chickens at once to swing around the head of their pregnant wife, one hen for the woman, and a rooster and hen for coverage of both a male and female fetus. When children are upset hearing the chickens crying, parents tell them they are “singing” because they are “happy to do this for us.”

How rational is it to believe that sins can be transferred to something else prior to Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, in a ritual that is not mentioned in the Torah or Talmud? How arrogant of us to believe that someone or something else should die for our sins. Are we emulating Christianity? Are these Jesus chickens?

Furthermore, regardless of what practitioners are told, most of these poor chickens (many of which die before the ritual for lack of water, food and protection from the elements) are thrown directly into the garbage. Yes, they go to the poor – the poor worms, the poor flies and the poor ants.

RINA DEYCH New York

The writer is an RN and founding member of the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos.