Shammai’s Jewish Standard Column (publishing date: September 20, 2024)

For Shammai’s previous columns, click here.

The ‘Atoning Chicken Ritual’ Must Go! Can anyone think of a better way to prepare to ask God to forgive us for our sins than by contemptuously demonstrating a total disregard for the laws God gave us? And what better way is there to demonstrate that contempt than by grabbing a live chicken by its feet, pinning back its wings, rotating the now panic-stricken bird seven times over our heads, uttering words transferring our sins onto it, and then sentencing it to have its throat cut in time for it to be roasted and served during the final meal before the start of Yom Kippur? How could our God, so full of mercy and grace, not look fondly on the Erev Yom Kippur atonement ritual known as kaporos (or kapparot, depending on how one pronounces Hebrew words)? Parashat Ki Tetzei, the Torah portion that was read last Shabbat, stands out when it comes to God’s commandments because, as Maimonides (the Rambam) counted them, there are 72 mitzvot lurking within its 111 sentences. That is nearly 12 percent of the 613 mitzvot supposedly found in the Torah. Among these 72 mitzvot are several that people, scholars included, mistakenly believe deal with the care and even respect we must give to animals (in this case, referring to all the so-called lifeforms on our planet—the ones that walk, swim, or fly, chickens included). Reading those laws could give a reader the wrong impression. He or she might get the idea that God would be furious with anyone who ill-treats a chicken at any time, and certainly on Yom Kippur Eve. Clearly, the opposite must be true because the atoning chicken ritual is an almost ubiquitous practice among those who are considered by so many of us to be God’s most faithful adherents, none of whom would do anything that would anger God. Also, it is a practice discussed in texts beginning in talmudic times, although the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds themselves do not mention it. To understand why anyone would think God would disapprove of whirling a live chicken seven times around our heads, let us consider some of these “animal rights and wrongs” mitzvot supposedly found in last week’s parashah, and elsewhere throughout the Torah. Deuteronomy 22:6-7 deals with a mother bird sitting on fledglings or eggs in her nest. Says the verse, “Let the mother go—yes, let her go—and then you may take her children for yourself.” By doubling up “let the mother go,” the commandment appears to be telling us that we must do whatever it takes to chase away the mother bird far enough so that she cannot see us taking her children. In 22:10, another commandment prohibits us from yoking a weaker animal to a stronger one, presumably because that could cause harm to the weaker one. In 25:4, yet another commandment forbids muzzling an ox when it is treading grain because its instinct would be to eat some of the grain. Preventing the ox from doing so presumably causes the ox psychological pain. Psychological pain is also said to be behind two commandments in Leviticus 22:26, which prohibits removing a firstling from its mother before she has weaned it. Verse 28 prohibits killing an animal and its young on the same day. Because eminent authorities over the last two millennia clearly had the wrong idea in reading these texts, that others today have that same wrong idea is understandable. Rambam, for example, viewed these commandments as reflecting concern for causing animals any kind of pain, including psychological pain. After all, he said, they are no different from humans when it comes to feeling pain. Female animals, he said, love their offspring the way human mothers do. (See his Guide for the Perplexed III:48.) The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks echoed the Rambam’s perplexing, misguided view in discussing the laws in Ki Tetzei. (See https://rabbisacks.org/covenant- conversation/ki-teitse/animal-welfare/#_ftn4.) Jewish law, he wrote, “regard[s] animals as sentient beings. They may not think or speak, but they do feel. They are capable of distress. Therefore there is such a thing as animal distress, tza-ar ba-alei chayim,” which is the title given to an entire body of Jewish animal rights law. Another prominent halachic authority, Rabbi David Bleich, wrote that in Judaism, “there is no lack of laws designed to protect and promote animal welfare.” This, he wrote, includes the Shabbat commandment, because it provides animals rest on Shabbat. (See his essay, Judaism and Animal Experimentation, in Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, Vol. 22, No. 1.) Another Torah law that is repeated three times (Exodus 23:19 and 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21) forbids us from cooking a young goat in its own mother’s milk. This law forms the basis for separating meat from milk, a “fence” our Sages of Blessed Memory built around the law to prevent any inadvertent violation. The medieval biblical commentator Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (the Rashbam) was very blunt when he wrote that to cook a kid in the milk intended for its nourishment “is a shameful, distasteful thing.” (See his comment to Exodus 23:19) Rashbam then noted several other Torah laws and concluded: “The Torah teaches you such things as a way of emphasizing…respect for life.” If such great ancient and modern Torah scholars all mistakenly saw in these laws a concern for non-human lifeforms, it is understandable that someone in our modern world would make the same mistake. Such a concern cannot possibly exist given the ubiquitous nature of the atoning chicken ritual among those who we know would never do anything to offend God. Besides, a Mishnah in two places—B’rachot 5:3 and M’gillah 4:9—states that Torah law has nothing to do with compassion on God’s part or any other reason. These laws are simply commandments God gave and must be observed for that reason alone. Curiously, Rambam would seem to agree with that. Said he in his Mishneh Torah, The Laws of Prayer 9:7, regarding the mitzvot mentioned here, they “are God's decrees and not [expressions] of mercy.” Rambam, however, was dissembling in saying that, as indeed I have been up to this point. In his introduction to the Guide for the Perplexed, he explains why such dissembling is sometimes necessary. Among his reasons is what we might call the Law of Unintended Consequences. If people believe that there is a rational explanation for a law, they might dismiss that explanation as irrational and cease to observe it. Sadly, that is something that is undeniably the case in our modern world. To avoid opening the door to such an unintended eventuality, he wrote, a teacher sometimes will resort to using “some device to conceal” a truth. I have been using sarcasm as my device here, but that ends now. The ritual of grabbing a chicken by the legs, pinning back its wings, and twirling it around the head seven times is grotesque. It violates everything in God’s law, as the Torah, in its narrow and broadest senses, reveals it. Rabbi Joseph Karo, the Sephardi author of the definitive law code known as the Shulchan Aruch, states in very precise language that it is forbidden to perform this ritual, adding that it must be stopped. (See the Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim, Siman 605:1.) Unfortunately, the author of the Ashkenazic gloss to Karo’s work, Rabbi Moses Isserles (the Rema), disagreed with him on this point, as have so many Ashkenazic halachists before and after him. Performing the kaporos ritual, the Rema ruled, “is a practice of the conscientious” and must continue. Today, an ever-increasing number of Ashkenazi Orthodox rabbis disagree with the Rema and are speaking out against the atoning chicken ritual. The nonprofit organization SHAMAYIM: Jewish Animal Advocacy, is affiliated with the Orthodox rabbinic social justice organization Uri L’Tzedek. On SHAMAYIM’s website, it lists the names of 123 Orthodox rabbis who want an end to the practice. Most of them are Ashkenazi, and some of them are nationally prominent. Instead of a chicken, they urge people to turn the ritual into the positive act of tzedakah, charity. As Uri L’Tzedek’s Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz explained it in a 2011 article, doing so is “a far more halachically acceptable manner” of seeking God’s forgiveness. Noting that tza-ar ba-alei chayim “is a Torah prohibition that requires that we cultivate virtue and that we prevent suffering,” he called the atoning chicken ritual “a cruel practice” and said that “harming an innocent creature has no place in Jewish life.” “At this time of year,” he wrote, “we should be cultivating mercy for all those who suffer and not be perpetuating pain on sentient creatures in the name of piety.” Substituting tzedakah for a chicken truly is not only the better way to perform the kaporos ritual as we prepare to ask God on Yom Kippur to forgive us for the sins we commit; it is the only halachically acceptable way. Atonement is easily achieved if we follow the advice Moses so often repeated in one way or another: “Do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God.” There is nothing in the atoning chicken ritual that is right in God’s sight—and, hopefully, after reading this column, not in yours.