[EinNYC]

No, you do not understand why this custom is done. It is done so that you FEEL the danger that your life is in, for the sins you have committed during the year. You are holding a living, breathing creature whose life will soon end. Just as this chicken will lose its life to become a meal for a poor person, YOU could lose your life just as easily if G-d decides your sins outweigh your deserving life for another year. There is nothing funny about it. It is supposed to be a solemn ritual and it is supposed to be done as humanely as possible. In lieu of using a live chicken, it is acceptable to place money in a scarf or similar cloth and wave that around your head instead.

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.

[onedoug]

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?

[Yaelle]

I ears on KFI that the charity that they said they gave the chickens to received nothing and that most of the dead chickens went into the garbage.