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.

Parashat Ha'azinu: The Power of Listening

"Give ear, O heavens, let me speak!"  (Deuteronomy 32:1)

During the Ten Days of Repentance, we seek to make amends for all our transgressions of this past year.  The hardest and the most important place to do this is in our relationships with others.

When we have a disagreement with a colleague, when we distance ourselves from a friend, when a family feud develops with a relative; we form a narrative in our own mind.  This narrative tells us what happened and why we are angry or hurt but it rarely tells us why the other person is angry or hurt.

Relationships break down, crimes are committed and wars are fought because everybody walks around with a set of narrative so strong that it leaves no space for alternative versions.

Some Toilet Talk for Parashat Ki Tetze 2011

There is a Jewish custom that one does not think about God or sacred things on the toilet.  As far as I know, however, the custom does not work both ways and it is permissible to think about the toilet in God's sacred spaces.  So I will proceed with caution with my sermon.

As far back as I can remember, I have been aware of the battle of the toilet seat.  My mother used to chastise my father and later on my brother for leaving the toilet seat up!  At university, we lived in a mixed house in our second but we made sure there was a girls' bathroom and a boys' bathroom to avoid an inevitable conflict over the positioning of the toilet seat.

For many years, I only lived with female flatmates and was surprised and quite put-out every time a male visitor had the audacity to leave our toilet seat in its upright position.  It is, it would seem, an unwinnable battle that began when the modern toilet was invented by Thomas Crapper in 1861 and will continue for as long as we continue to need toilets (which, I assume, will be forever).