Kaparot, or "Atonement" is a custom performed by Orthodox Jews during the days approaching Yom Kippur. A live chicken is taken and swung around one's head while the appropriate prayer is said. The chicken is then slaughtered according to Kosher law and either donated or eaten.
The idea behind this practice is that the sins of the practitioner are transfered into the chicken and the animal dies in the person's stead. Kaparot is said to have its origins in the destruction of the Holy Temple when a goat was chosen by the High Priest and slaughtered on Yom Kippur to absorb the sins of the entire people of Israel.
Often a source of controversy, the custom has been targeted by PETA and Rabbis alike as unethical.
Thousands of chickens are consumed in this manner in Brooklyn every year during the holiday.From the HuffPo 28.9.09
Here's wikipedia's entry : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapparos
Having grown up in Brooklyn it is interesting to see that this is being done in plain sight with a certain pride of privilege I don't feel was possible for the Caribbean community other than the annual Labor-day West-Indian Carnival Parade
Here's a 3min YouTube Vid in Crown Heights where the "citizen-journalist" is pursueing (with futility) asking the practitioners about the welfare of the chickens.
What is equally interesting is how the citizen-journalist uses the video-recording as a threat of captured testimony and in turn one of her "subjects" uses an iPhone-camera to document her documenting them. Perhaps a bluff of bluffs but it's certain that cyberspace is a terrain of ideological battles as well. "Perhaps" the videographer's image/portrait is on a "watch" list. This currently is happening in Germany, where neo-nazi's video record their anti-nazi critics and place their portraits online -along with other personal data, thus allowing the anti-nazi's to be pursued and harassed anonymously. This has provoked the anti-nazis to cover their faces during anti-nazi protests, but places the anti-nazis at legal risk because it is illegal to demonstrate in Germany while obscuring one's identity.
So again, on the subject of "equity", I ask myself would Haitians be allowed in plain sight to ritually sacrifice "poultry" (as is done) for the sake of religious purposes (with a permit) as we see in the video "link" on the streets of Brooklyn?
My personal history of experience tells me NO.
Though I image Haitian-free masons are OK given its shared usa histories
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