Kaporet is one of those Jewish rituals that I remember learning about, but had never seen or experienced or done – until today. Indeed, I have a feeling it is not done in seattle, and many Jewish communities and I had it as my mission to see it this year in Jerusalem. But due to the graphic nature of the ritual, I decided to forgo photos (but you can videos of what it is on you tube).
For those of you unfamiliar with Kaporet, it is a tradition of symbolically placing your sins on a chicken, waving a chicken over your head, then killing the chicken (and with it ridding yourself of the sins) and donating the chicken to Jewish families facing food insecurity.
So I went in search of kaporet to the shuk and found a corner of a parking lot taken over with cages of chickens, shochets, devices for defeathering chickens, people doing kaporet and a few impoverished looking elderly women waiting and grabbing the dead chickens after the feathers had been removed.
Without going into many details, it turns out they wave the chicken rather slowly over your head, and the slit to the throat is fast and then the chicken is put in a cone for the blood to drain in a bucket with earth and a bit more earth is sprinkled on top as that is a mitzvah to bury the blood.
I politely declined the invitation by the shochet for myself to do the kaporet ritual (or him on my behalf) and feel I have fully satisfied my desire to see this ritual.
I’ll happily stick with tashlich (which is much more difficult in this city without water where people just go to a place with a view of the dead sea and consider it good.)