Kapparot

Kapparot (Hebrew: כפרות, Ashkenazi transliteration: Kapporois, Kapores) is a customary atonement ritual practiced by some Orthodox Jews on the eve of Yom Kippur.

On the afternoon before Yom Kippur, one prepares an item to be donated to the poor for consumption at the pre-Yom Kippur meal,[4] recites the two biblical passages of Psalms 107:17–20 and Job 33:23–24, and then swings the prepared charitable donation over one's head three times while reciting a short prayer three times.

After the kapparot ritual is concluded, the rooster is treated as a normal kosher poultry product, i.e., it is slaughtered according to the laws of shechita.

The Mishnah Berurah agrees with Rabbi Isserles, solidifying support for the practice among Lithuanian Jews as well.

[4] In the late 19th-century work Kaf Hachaim, Yaakov Chaim Sofer approves of the custom for Sephardi Jews as well.

Some Jews also oppose the use of chickens for kapparot on the grounds of tza'ar ba'alei chayim, the principle banning cruelty to animals.

[11] Jacob Kalish, an Orthodox Jewish man from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was charged with animal cruelty for the drowning deaths of 35 of these kapparot chickens.

Kapparot ritual on the eve of Yom Kippur
Lithograph of Kapparot, late 19th/early 20th century
The Shochet with Rooster by Israel Tsvaygenbaum , 1997
A vendor at Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem sells roosters for kapparot before Yom Kippur , circa 1983.
The original printing of Joseph ben Ephraim Karo 's Shulchan Aruch , Orach Chayim , ch. 605, states in the chapter heading that kapparot is a nonsensical custom that should be abolished. Later editions removed this. However, according to Samson Morpurgo ( Shemesh Tsedakah , 1:23), the chapter heading was not written by Rabbi Karo but was inserted by the publishers.