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Swinging Chicken Ritual Divides Orthodox Jewsby BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY September 26, 2009 Rabbi Shea Hecht in Brooklyn, N.Y., demonstrates how Orthodox Jews wave a chicken three times over their heads and say the prayer of Kapparot (or Kapparos, depending on heritage) in the days leading up to Yom Kippur.Rabbi Shea Hecht plucks a chicken off a truck parked behind a synagogue in Queens, N.Y., and demonstrates how to swing a chicken. "You take it by the wing," says the white-haired Hecht, careful not to get the chicken's feathers or anything else on his black suit and tall black hat. "You...

Brigitte Bardot fined for racism From correspondents in Paris June 03, 2008 11:19pm Article from: Agence France-Presse FRANCE'S 1960s screen icon Brigitte Bardot has received a 15,000 euros ($24,440) fine today for inciting hatred against Muslims. In December 2006, the film star-turned-animal rights activist wrote a letter to France's then interior minister, current President Nicolas Sarkozy, arguing that Muslims should stun animals before slaughtering them during the Aid al-Kabir holiday. She outraged anti-racist groups by saying: "I've had enough of being led by the nose by this whole population which is destroying us, (and) destroying our country by imposing their...

What does it take to get Reuters to defend the brutal slaughter of a rare endangered animal for superstitious reasons? Simple: the killers just need to be Palestinians.

The Stiletto is a committed carnivore (nutrition police be damned!), as anyone who’s clicked through her FAQs: The Spam Edition already knows. Having said that, she was horrified by the hundreds of thousands of calves, goats, sheep and other animals brutally slaughtered worldwide to celebrate Eid al-Adha about a week ago (second item, The Daily Blade, January 3, 2007). There is a difference between the state executing Saddam Hussein after a fair trial as opposed to a vengeful mob tearing him apart limb from limb. So too, there is a difference between an animal being slaughtered in humane, hygienic conditions...

The recent undercover operation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals at AgriProcessors Inc., a kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, was a public-relations coup for the militant animal-rights group. A volunteer who got a job at the plant used a hidden camera to videotape the slaughter of animals, which PETA posted on its website in late November. In one stroke, the activists simultaneously managed to sicken people with graphic images of animal carnage and enrage them about the practices of Jewish ritual slaughter, or shechitah. To boot, the group promoted itself as the fearless and innovative champion of animal...

AMSTERDAM—Novelist Yasmine Allas doesn't believe in happy endings. That's so despite her own unlikely road to success. The daughter of a wealthy army officer, she fled as a teenager from her repressive childhood in Somalia, where she had dreamed of becoming an actress, dating men, drinking wine and living the life she saw in movies. Now in the Netherlands, having gained an audience for her bleak stories of oppressed women and failed immigrants, she finds she still can't escape fear. Since the slaying of filmmaker Theo van Gogh last month in Amsterdam, there have been death threats against two prominent...