Known as kapparot, this ceremony involves people purchasing chickens, swinging the birds over their heads while reciting prayers, and then having butchers slice their throats open. This custom is said to transfer the supplicant’s sins into the chicken’s body, thereby extinguishing them (along with the bird’s life), but is of great controversy among Jews, the majority of whom engage in the same ritual using bags of coins (that are then donated to a charitable cause), rather than live chickens.
Still, thousands of birds are killed in public rituals each year in major U.S. cities like New York, from which one young chicken narrowly escaped with his life on the night of Yom Kippur while hundreds of others painfully perished. The tiny chicken, later named Chesed (meaning mercy or loving-kindness in Hebrew), was saved by Brooklyn resident Wayne Johnson, who was passing through the borough’s Crown Heights neighborhood when he saw a large gathering at a local seminary and a truck pull up to unload approximately 2,000 frightened chickens, packed four to a crate. The crowd soon formed lines to purchase the birds for $13 apiece — and then the ritual began.
Johnson voiced his disapproval of the killing in light of viable humane alternatives as people brought the chickens over to a butcher table where their throats were slit. At around 11 p.m., his protestations breached the conscience of at least one man, who declared that he no longer wanted the chicken he’d purchased to die, and handed the bird over to Johnson. On the subway ride to Johnson’s Brooklyn Heights home, a grateful Chesed gradually relaxed in the cradled arms of his kind rescuer, who called Farm Sanctuary to ask that we give his new feathered friend refuge at our New York Shelter.
