I was discussing kapporos with a non-Jewish friend the other day:Me: so you swing the chicken around.
Her: right...
Me: And you transfer your sins to it.
Her: What?
Me: I know, I know.
Her: How the Hell does that work?
Me: I don't know if they explain it all that well.
Her: Could you transfer your sins to something else, like a guinea pig? Or a vegetable?
Me: I think it's supposed to be an animal, except of course when you just subsitute money. Anyway, then they slaughter it and you give the meat to a poor family.
Her: WHAT? Why would a poor family want to eat your sin-filled chicken?
She has a point. No one wants a chicken with SARS or bird flu, but someone else's sins are somehow supposed to taste great with matzoh balls? And why a chicken? And why do women need to use hens, and men roosters?
Incidentally, this Village Voice piece had a comment that made me wonder: " Sacrificial birds sell for between $8 and $10, but it's not uncommon to spend up to $100 each. The money goes to charity."
Charity's great, but what's with this bizarre oneupmanship thing? A similar thing happens during Sukkot, where some people seem almost desparate to get the best lulav and etrog. (There was a great example of this in Ushpizin, which taught us the valuable lesson that if you're totally destitute and about to be evicted, and somehow you miraculously get some money, you should immediately go out and buy a 200-dollar etrog.)
Or am I just imagining this?
4 comments:
You do not understand what kappores is all about. You don't transfer your sins to the chicken.
Let me guess, you also think that tashlich consists of transferring your sins to breadcrumbs and feeding them to the fish, right?
Kapparot is about getting in one last great mitzva before the day of judgement/atonement. Charity is that mitzva. When you do it with a chicken, you're recalling atoning sacrifices from the Beit Hamiqdash. When you do it with money, you're doing charity directly.
Chaim- So educate me. And educate the many other folks, such as the NY Times, who keep giving the practice that drash.
Steg- Interesting. I wonder why some people continue to go for the middleman? Nostalgia? Chicken hatred?
Her: How the Hell does that work?
Like holy water, presumably.
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