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.
Some folks think that's in the Constitution.
Most US officials are into beheading infidels instead.
Interesting comment.
I wonder if these officials ever visited a chicken killing operation of a chicken meat packing plant.
Just another way of government to "control" religion in the US. Now if the mussies had the same ritual imagine the hue and cry of anti-islam they'd hear. (yes, I know those words should be cap's but I wouldn't give them the satisfaction)
Reasonable anti-cruelty laws are, well, reasonable.
But yeah, there are probably worse transgressions they could be going after.
Interesting.
Well, libs are losing the battle on circumcision, so now they’re going after chicken swingers. Typical.
What’s wrong with killing an individual chicken by cutting its neck with a sharp knife or whacking its head off with an ax than putting it upside down in a metal tube on an assembly line with thousands of other chickens to have their heads cut off mechanically? Which is less cruel or more cruel?
I agree with that.
The swinging it over your head three times before the kill, however, is gratuitously cruel IMO.
I’m most concerned that the chicken would defecate while being whirled overhead.
Huh? They do.
“Swing the chicken and please my god!”
This has comedy and tragedy all over it.
Was being fatuous ......
Got it.
How many babies die from abortion each day? And they are worried about chickens?
as a religious practice it is protected from governmental intrusion, providing for food enters health law and rules. when the animal has a brain the size of a democrat it probably thinks its last ride was fun.
Even as a religious practice it should NOT be exempt from animal cruelty laws.
Chickens are sweethearts and birds are smarter creatures than many people give them credit for.
Where is the Biblical basis for this?
Sounds like a live-birth in an abortion clinic!
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