Yom Kippur 2011 - Room to Swing a Chicken!

"The homes are unusually noisy.  The fowls, their legs tied, cluck and crow at the top of their voices.  It generally happens, too, that a rooster gets excited and begins to run and fly all over the house, despite his bound feet, and there follows a long struggle to subdue him.

First the fowl is held in the hand and everyone read selections from certain Psalms, beginning with the words, "Sons of Adam".  Then the fowl is circled above the head nine times, the following being recited at the same time:  "This is instead of me, this is an offering on my account, this is in expiation for me, this rooster, or hen, shall go to his, or her, death and may I enter a long and healthy life.

The greatest ado is in the yard of the shochet, the ritual slaughterer, where the Kaparos are taken to be slaughtered after the above ceremony has taken place.  Only the poorer Jews carry there Kaparos to the shochet, however.  The well-to-do have the shochet call at their home and dispatch the fowls there.  For there should be no time lost between the Kaparos ceremony and the slaughtering of the fowl."

(Hayyim Schauss, The Jewish Festivals, p.150)

Hard though it may be for us to believe, this ritual, described here by Hayyim Schauss, is a Jewish ritual for Yom Kippur.  The Kaparot ritual originated in Babylonia in the tenth century and was particularly popular in Eastern Europe in the late middle ages and, although frowned upon by Progressive Jews and many Orthodox Jews too, it is still practiced today in certain communities.

Kaparot is just one of many rituals that have been part of Jewish High Holy Day customs throughout history.  We are familiar, of course with fasting and abstinence; as well as the blowing of the shofar and the lighting of the memorial candle.  More traditional communities also encourage members to go to the Mikveh, the ritual bath, before Yom Kippur; to wear a kittel, a white shroud-like garment, to Synagogue and to beat their breasts when reciting the confessionary prayers.  In certain communities, particularly in the middle ages, people would even engage in self-flagellation or communal flogging on the day before Yom Kippur as a physical symbol of their penitence.

In Temple times, there was the ritual of the scapegoat who assumed the sins of the people and was promptly driven off a cliff to fall to his death and take the sins with him.  The Kaparot ritual may, in part, be an echo of this sacred drama but its origins and symbolic significances are actually quite diverse.

The belief that it is possible to transfer illness, pain or sin to an animal or an inanimate object is quite common in many primitive cultures.  Since a pre-scientific understanding of the world does not differentiate between the spiritual and the physical, it follows that one can transfer sin from a person to an animal just as you can pass a stick from one person to another.  In prehistoric cultures, everything was attributed to spirits and demons that influenced our behaviour, our fate and our relationship with the divine.

Anthropologists have discovered magical procedures in many cultures that aim to disturb, move or stop evil spirits and avert misfortune or punishment by transferring them to another being or object.

A fowl is used in Kaparot for a number of symbolic reasons.  It was very important that the chosen animal had no connection whatsoever to the ancient Temple practices since any attempt to resurrect the Temple cult was strictly forbidden.  In addition, it was a common superstitious belief that rooster were particularly good at scaring away evil spirits since they herald the morning light and evil spirits are afraid of the sun.  The ancient Persians believed that the rooster was created for the very purpose of driving away demons.

Even the bird's colouring is significant.  Jews, who practice Kaparot, try to use a white fowl to contrast the devil's darkness.  And red, which is a colour that is thought to ward off evil spirits and is often worn for this reason as an amulet by Kabbalistic Jews, is also present in the form of the bird's red comb.  The idea of spinning the Kaparot fowl around one's head more than likely stems from the popular ancient belief that the devil fears a closed circle.

As a Yom Kippur custom, Kaparot presents those who believe in the power of ritual with a way of casting off sin and culpability; and the fear of Divine punishment.  On a psychological level, Kaparot is an effective and powerful method of letting go of one's guilt and anxiety and of creating emotional space for a fresh start.   Much like the Tashlich ceremony, it is an external expression of an internal process.

Now, I am not, for one minute, suggesting that we should reinstitute the enactment of Kaparot in our Liberal Jewish communities.  But I do think that there is something to be learnt from this bizarre and slightly disturbing practice.

Ritual is a powerful tool for personal transformation.  Physicalizing one's intentions, thoughts and desires can be a profound and evocative way to create the changes that we wish to see in our lives.

While we may not wish to swing live chickens around our heads or drive a goat off the nearest cliff; perhaps we could consider ways to introduce ritual into our festival observance; ritual that accurately represents and bring to life our own Liberal objectives and beliefs.

Reflect for a moment on the core values of the High Holy Days.  What are the most important concepts that you take away with you from the Yom Kippur services?  Based on these core values, what internal processes do you hope to achieve in coming to Synagogue today?  How could these processes be best expressed through ritual?  What would a modern ritual look like that profoundly and evocatively helped you to affect your personal Yom Kippur intentions?