Jewish ritual chicken slaughter endures despite concerns

JERUSALEM: In the stone alleyways of a Jerusalem neighbourhood, live chickens are repeatedly lifted above the heads of strictly religious Jews before being slaughtered – a ritual authorities are discouraging.

“We say that all our bad activities throughout the year should be taken from us and given over to the chickens,” says Yakov Schwartz, a 26-year-old dressed in the black suit and hat worn by ultra-Orthodox Jews, long sidelocks dangling beyond his ears.

The annual atonement ritual known as Kaparot occurs ahead of the fasting holiday of Yom Kippur, the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar beginning today.

Many of those who participate in it believe it absolves them of their sins, which are transferred to the chickens.

The slaughtered chicken can then be donated to the poor or another worthy cause if not kept for the family.

But with public health and animal welfare in mind, Israeli authorities are encouraging the religious to opt out of using chickens in the ritual and simply donate money instead.

Many Jews, particularly among the non-ultra-Orthodox, prefer to donate money.

Schwartz is part of a crowd of ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighbourhood gathered next to stacks of plastic cages holding chickens for the ritual, white feathers fluttering in the air and littering the ground.

He holds a chicken under its wings and lifts it over the heads of his three young children – a male for the two boys and a female for his daughter – and moves it in a circle as the ritual demands.

While doing so, he recites the prayer that goes with the custom.

Schwartz, in town from London for the holiday, then walks over to the open-air slaughtering station just steps away, where chickens’ throats are slit before being hung upside down on a carousel and later butchered.

The process plays out over and over again, both there and at another location under a tent in Jerusalem’s most iconic ultra-Orthodox district, where signs call on women to dress modestly and Jewish law is scrupulously observed.

At the second location, a man in a blood-splattered shirt methodically hangs bleeding chickens on the carousel, cutting off the ends of their wings before sending them on their way.

The custom is thought to have developed as an imitation of the ritual sacrifice of animals at the biblical-era first and second Jewish temples.

But the agriculture ministry has been running a campaign for the last three years to encourage the use of money instead of chickens, a ministry official says.