ALEC TABAK FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Members of The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos pose with photo exhibits outside 71 Thomas St. on Tuesday in New York. The group of Brooklyn
residents is suing four rabbis, several Hasidic congregations and the city to stop an annual religious ritual that involves chicken flying and slicing
chickens' necks on the sidewalk. – New York Daily News, Aug. 25, 2015
On July 10th, the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos, a New York based organization, along with 20 additional plaintiffs, filed a lawsuit in the New York
Supreme Court New York to issue an injunction against Hasidic rabbis and synagogues in Brooklyn from participating in Kaporos. The case also names the
NYPD, NYC Department of Health and the City of New York for failing to enforce city health laws and animal cruelty laws, among others. Tuesday, August 25,
2015, the case was heard in the New York Supreme Court, NY County. Oral arguments were presented from all sides. The judge reserved decision until
September 10, 2015.
The New York Daily News covered yesterday’s hearing including powerful photographs. Read the article here:
Jewish chicken slaughter sidewalk ritual is debated in Manhattan court; lives of 50,000 birds at stake
What Is Kaporos?
Kaporos is a ritual practiced by some Hasidic Jewish communities (not all) in various parts of the world including New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, and
Jerusalem, as part of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. The ritual involves practitioners grasping live chickens by their wings and swinging them above the
practitioners’ heads while reciting a chant about transferring the practitioners’ sins and punishment to the birds, supposedly absolving the
participants of their sins.
In New York, Kaporos practitioners erect makeshift slaughterhouses on the public streets and sidewalks. Dead chickens, half dead chickens, chicken blood,
chicken feathers, defecation, toxins and garbage consume the public streets. There is no oversight or remedy for cleanup. There is no food, water, shelter
or compassion for the chickens who typically sit for days locked in filthy transport crates unable to move. 50,000 chickens are trucked to New York each
year for this needless ritual which can be practiced with coins or other non-animal tokens and is not required by Jewish law. Plaintiffs in the New York
lawsuit maintain that operating such illegal public slaughterhouses creates a public health risk, a public health hazard and a dangerous condition while
violating the state anticruelty law. We will keep our readers informed on the progress of this landmark lawsuit.
— Karen Davis, PhD, founder, Alliance to
End Chicken as Kaporos.
ALEC TABAK FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Alliance member Dawn Ladd holds up a photograph of Brooklyn Kaporos at the Aug. 25 hearing in New York. – UPC editor
The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos is a project of
United Poultry Concerns.
Formed in New York City in June 2010, the Alliance is an association of groups and individuals who seek to
replace the use of chickens in Kaporos ceremonies with money or other non-animal symbols of atonement.
The Alliance does not oppose Kaporos per se, only the cruel and unnecessary use of chickens in the ceremony.
