Spirituality

Chicken Slinging

PETA, Chasidim at odds over kapparot swinging ritual.

Ben Harris
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

New York

0

n the night before Yom Kippur
last year, animal rights activist
Philip Schein says he was physi-
cally threatened when he showed up in the
Crown Heights section of Brooklyn for the
annual kapparot ritual.
An undercover investigator with People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
Schein long has been concerned about
kapparot — also known as kapporos
— in which chickens are swung over one's
head in a symbolic transferring of sins a
day before Yom Kippur (many Jews use
money in place of a live chicken).
Schein says he identified himself as a
PETA member and was filming the cer-
emony when several people physically
harassed and threatened him.
"It was just fortunate that there were
police around:' Schein told JTA.
"They said I have the right on a public
street. I wasn't disrupting anything. Who
knows what would have happened if they
weren't there?"
Fearing a repeat, Schein grew a beard
and donned a cap in an effort to bet-
ter blend in with the Chabad-Lubavitch
Chasidim who mount a massive kapparot
operation each year in Crown Heights.

The Setting
Last week, shortly before 10 o'clock on the
night before Yom Kippur, Schein and his
wife, Hannah, also a PETA investigator, set
out to monitor this year's kapparot.
To the uninitiated, the Oct. 8 scene in
Brooklyn and the ritual at its center may
seem inhumane and somewhat bizarre.
Amid a carnival-like atmosphere featur-
ing food vendors and street sellers, the
largely Chasidic crowd lines up to pur-
chase live chickens from a truck. With a
wing and a prayerbook in their hands, the
Chasidim shlug, or swing, the birds around
their heads while reciting a prayer before
lining up to have the chickens ritually
slaughtered.
It's all in full view of Eastern Parkway,
a teeming thoroughfare that is the head-
quarters for the Chabad movement.
Organizers estimate upward of 10,000
chickens are slaughtered in the street

during the ritual, which winds down at
sunrise.
Chickens are placed in inverted red
traffic cones after they are killed so their
blood can run down. Once the chickens
stop moving, which can take several min-
utes, they are transferred to garbage bags
and piled on the sidewalk.
Processing takes place in a cramped
alley behind the Hadar Hatorah
Rabbinical Seminary on Eastern Parkway.
With an electric saw, the birds' heads and
legs are removed. A group of yeshivah stu-
dents then pull off the feathers and pass
the chickens to the mashgiach, or kosher
supervisor, who removes their intestines
for inspection.

Enter PETA
Those deemed kosher — the vast major-
ity — are then soaked and salted and
placed in a freezer. All the chickens are
then given to char-
ity, says Rabbi Shea
Hecht, a prominent
figure in the Chabad
movement and one
of the main organiz-
ers of the kapparot
event in Brooklyn.
Hecht's prominent
role in organizing the
kapparot has made
him a target of PETA.
After years of
investigating kappar-
ot, PETA asked the
New York State Kosher Law Enforcement
Division in August to open a fraud inves-
tigation against Hecht. As Yom Kippur
approached, PETA also issued an action
alert to its followers, which led to a flood
of e-mails and faxes to Hecht's office.
Hours before the ritual was set to begin,
Hecht issued a statement condemning the
PETA campaign, which he claimed had led
to some "threatening" and anti-Semitic
e-mails. New York City Police reportedly
opened an investigation.
The Scheins' specific objections to
kapparot concern the treatment of the
birds, which are transported in plastic
crates stacked on large trucks and kept
without food and water for hours. Though
rabbis have urged kapparot centers to have
adequate food and water on hand, they
weren't in evidence on the night before

Yom Kippur.
The Scheins also claim that the volume
of birds slaughtered far outstrips process-
ing capacity, resulting last year in some
two-thirds of the birds being discarded
in trash bins. Organizers are violating
two Jewish injunctions, the Scheins say
— against causing unnecessary suffer-
ing to animals and against wastefulness.
Hecht adamantly denies both charges and
says Schein made up the two-thirds figure.
"He's a liar," Hecht said.

At Issue
Schein claims that at 7:15 the morning
after kapparot last week, more than 100
crates of live chickens were still on the
sidewalk. A driver told Schein they were
being taken to a Chasidic community in
upstate New York.
Schein says subjecting the birds to 24
hours without water on stressful trans-
ports in cramped,
feces-covered cages
violates Jewish law
by causing unneces-
sary suffering.
During the
kapparot ritual,
Hannah Schein
dressed to blend in
with the Chasidic
crowd as she
searched for evi-
- PETA's Hannah Schein dence of animal
cruelty. She found a
seemingly forgotten
crate in which several birds that appeared
to be dead shared space with other live
chickens. She covertly documented it.
PETA is frequently accused of pursu-
ing a radical — and possibly anti-Semitic
— agenda because of its criticisms of
kapparot and Agriprocessors, the coun-
try's largest kosher meat producer.
The Scheins, both of whom are Jewish,
reject that accusation, saying their work
stems directly from their Jewish values.
"I feel like every ethical step I make
forward in my life has a Jewish root to it:'
Hannah Schein said. "Being kosher, grow-
ing up, I was trained to look at labels and
always think what's in this product and
where does it come from!'
Hannah Schein admits that PETAs ulti-
mate goal is to abolish animal slaughter.
She also believes that humans have no

"I want kashrut to live
up to what its sup-
posed to be, and to be
this model, the whole
`higher authority.'

right to kill animals for food or clothing
— and certainly not to expiate one's sins.
She says she takes what steps she can to
minimize animal suffering.
"PET& a pragmatic organization,"
she said. "We want incremental welfare
improvements. Otherwise we're never
going to get to abolition!'
The Scheins met while they were work-
ing for Hillel, the Jewish campus organiza-
tion. Hannah says she used to pray at the
Chabad synagogue in Norfolk, Va. on the
High Holidays.
"I want kashrut to live up to what it's
supposed to be, and to be this model, the
whole 'higher authority:" Schein said. "It's
been very frustrating. It's been a real sort
of embarrassment to see how the kosher
industry has conducted itself. As a Jew,
that impacts on me."

Concern Lingers
Yet even among those Orthodox Jews who
claim to share PETA's concerns about
animal treatment, there is a widespread
view that the organization has pursued an
unfair and misleading campaign against
Jewish ritual slaughter.
"Their agenda is to wipe out shechitah
— period;' Hecht said last week as hun-
dreds of chickens sat in crates on the side-
walk behind him. "No. 2, their agenda is to
hurt Torah-observant Jews!'
As evidence, he cited PETA's targeting
of him as the most visible proponent of
kapparot. "If they take me down, everybody
else is going to stop doing it," Hecht said.
Hecht's view is mirrored in the Chabad
community, where many believe that
PETA has a radical and fundamentally
anti-Jewish agenda.
Isaac Hurwitz, a Chabad follower and
attorney whose father wrote a monograph
on Jewish treatment of animals, told JTA
he performed kapparot at Hecht's facility
on Eastern Parkway this year specifically
because it has been targeted by PETA.
Hurwitz admitted that keeping chick-
ens in "little cramped boxes" made him
uneasy, but he said it's no worse than how
birds are normally treated during trans-
port to the slaughterhouse.
"I'm more uncomfortable with my
own sins of the past year than these
few moments of discomfort for the bird
while I'm swinging it above my head,"
he said. ❑

October 16 • 2008

A39