Letting chickens atone for your sins

A CRUEL ritual, said to date back some 800 years, involves ultra-Orthodox Jews swinging chickens above their heads to absolve them from their sins. The ghastly spectacle takes place to mark Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – and the birds are slaughtered afterwards.

But now some concerned rabbis, according to this report, are condemning the practice as inhumane, saying the ritual, along with the cruel conditions in which the chickens are kept, violates Jewish law, which has strict rules on the care and slaughter of animals.

Jerusalem rabbi, Meir Hirsch, began having second thoughts about the practice, known as kaparot, or atonement in Hebrew, when he noticed chickens squawking in distress in plastic cages near his house.

--snip--

Most opposition to chicken kaparot has come from progressive Jewish circles, and modern Orthodox worshippers shun the practice, though Friedman said “there are sprouts of an awakening” now among the very religious.

Still, the vast majority of the ultra-Orthodox continue to transfer their sins to chickens ahead of Yom Kippur, he said.

One young chicken swinger, Moshe Friedman, 21, bought a bird and gripped its wings with his left hand while he held a laminated prayer sheet with his right. Then he swung the chicken above his head, muttered a blessing, and took the bird to be slaughtered.

http://freethinker.co.uk/2011/10/07/letting-chickens-atone-for-your-sins/

Yikes!

my Torah.

It is 100% against the rabbinical law for kosher slaughter, which is meant to spare the animal as much suffering as possible.

I despise fundamentalists of ALL stripes.