Posted on 09/14/2013 7:06:54 AM PDT by BenLurkin
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Two operations in the Pico-Robertson area were ordered Friday by the Calif. Department of Food and Agriculture to shut down a traditional Jewish ritual involving slaughtering chickens.
Bait Aaron, a Sephardic Orthodox outreach group, and Ohel Moshe, a synagogue, were performing kaparot, which is practiced by a small group of Orthodox Jews on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.
Kaparot is an ancient ritual in which a person swings a live chicken overhead three times and recites a prayer. The bird is then slaughtered and given to the poor.
“It’s not meant to be to hurt these animals in any way, not anyone can slaughter these animals,” Ohel Moshe congregant Omid Dayan said. “It has to be a certified person there. The whole purpose is to sacrifice the chicken in the least harmful way as possible.”
Rabbi Jonathan Klein of Faith Action For Animals, an animal rights group, shot video outside a synagogue Thursday that outraged his membership.
“This is a ritual that has no obligation for any Jew to do,” Klein said. “I think Kaparot as a concept is wonderful, but when it involves using chickens, and it causes mass slaughter then we have a real problem, and it’s a problem for the whole community.”
Ohel Moshe congregants believe the ritual is misunderstood.
“They’re not just doing it and throwing it in the garbage can. They’re using this food; they’re giving it to poor people and they actually eat it,” Fred Cohen said.
But Klein’s group captured video of dozens of trash bags being loaded into trucks.
“We have visuals with the bodies of chickens in bags being thrown into a truck,” he added.
State officials said they are willing to work with the two locations cited for not having a proper license for killing the animals.
This is a totally humane way to give thanks to God and the chicken for it’s life and nurishment.
Reminds me of when I was a kid and we use to kill our chickens and rabbits.
We took great care to kill the animals quickly, efficiently, calming them before the act, so as not to spoil the meat.
It pained us greatly when we didn’t get it right the first time, which was rare.
In the case of the rabbits we would pet the rabbits and when they were calm wold take them by their hind quarters, hang them upside down and again calm them.
When they were finally calmed whoever was the henchman would use the Louisville Slugger #36 with great force downward and accurately.
This would kill the animal instantaly and the blood would let and no thrashing taking place as the animal was dead.
Personally, I never understood why people hang and animal upside down when gutting and skinning and gutting.
We hung it with the head up and let gravity help us out.
Dunno makes more sense to me.
Same thing with skinning fish. Most people will gut it and scrape it, which is fine if you are going to cook the whole of it. But, most just want the flesh for baking or frying and it made more sense to decapitate it, cut the meat from the top of the spine along the ribs and turning it over to repeat.
From there it’s simple to remove the innards and then cut what’s left in half.
If you need to skin it that’s simple enough but, when it comes to trout or small scale fish I just leave it on and eat the whole thing.
Of course with catfish or largemouth it’s probably best to remove it.
Yo Dos Centavos...
I’ve been to chicken and Turkey operations in Oklahoma and Arkansas.
They are efficient and though less humane than how we harvested, I have no problem with the process and the birds don’t complain....
America’s chickens comin’ home to roost...
They are both efficient and humane.
Though the process done manually is more humane and less efficient.
I got no problem with either and if the consumer understood what happens to meat that is harvested in an inhumane manner they would agree.
In fact, I think it would be an object lesson to place to identical pieces of meat, processed, prepared and cooked in identical manners.
They will understand what the animal goes through when they bite the meat that was not harvested properly. Sucks, both in flavor, texture and one’s rightness for respecting life.
Now with these "humane" groups you'd practically have to hold and pet and calm the animal before killing it. You really have to think of the expression "humanely kill" ....
Beheading chickens—bad.
Beheading PEOPLE by Muslims- ‘cultural diversity.’
There ya go ....
Thanks BenLurkin.
Read the old testament. Animal sacrifice was done on a regular basis. But hey this is California where anyone can do abortions now. So it’s okay to kill unborn babies, but don’t touch the chickens,
When i was about six years old my mother would just twirl the chicken and off would come its head, that scared the hell out of me so i used an axe and a chop block.
This pseudo-rabbi who videotaped and publicized this has committed sins I won't even go into here. He is a reformed Jew who is as far to the left as is possible, and quite possibly not even a Jew according to Jewish law. His wife is (giggle, giggle) a "rabbi" of another local congregation.
This guy is on interfaith councils and is buddy-buddy with his local Muzzie clergy. He is more eager to please his environmentalist leftie loon masters than he is to observe Jewish law. So let him cease misleading his gullible congregants and turn to chicken farming, where he can do less harm.
When you are more concerned with chickens' welfare over that of peoples' souls, you are just pond scum.
I repeat from #19, Where is the Biblical basis for this?
I thought there was to be no more animal sacrifice until The Temple is restored?
This is not under the category of animal sacrifice. The chickens are not consumed by Heavenly fire, they are to be consumed by the poor. The whole point is feeling the living bird under your hand, being that close to the vital living organism, only to see that life taken from it and realizing it could be YOUR life being snuffed out so easily by G-d if you ignore His ways and commit more sins.
I understand that, and sympathize with your POV, but only to that extent.
I’m an Old Testament guy, reasonably conversant in Torah having been through the parshiot and haftoros about 13 times now.
I think the same perspective could be obtained by visiting any kosher meat plant where conditions may be a tad more humane. As for the frailty of our lives, I think of the several million microbes I send down the drain each time I wash my hands. As biological are they not also creatures of God?
Not to make light of it though.
Israel means “struggle with God”. Islam means “submission”.
I’ll struggle. And some of that struggle has me wrestling with forms of primitivism in what I otherwise believe is a God given concept.
I think sometimes there’s too much modernity in there as well...which really makes me uncomfortable.
I’ll through some bread in water and make donations, thank you.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Do the California officials understand that wringing a chicken’s neck is a rather traditional way of killing the bird?
Swinging a chicken by its neck over your head DOES kill the chicken. That is the traditional way that chicken were killed before dunking them into boiling water and plucking them for food! My father used to do it and I watched.
That is not what is going on at these ceremonies:
http://www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/989585/jewish/Kaparot.htm
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