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Sep 28, 2017

embrace your chicken

Kapparos is a weird enough ceremony that it always is good for providing weird experiences, and even some controversy.

Sarah Chandler of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center has come up with a new procedure for kappparos. Instead of grabbing the chicken and whipping it through the air, as she says, one would say the kapparos and then embrace the chicken while confessing the sins. A hug solves all ills.

Just to be fair, I would protest the use of the terms grabbing the chicken and whipping it through the air. I rarely see people whip it through the air. Most people wave it gently and uncomfortably. Also the grabbing it is unusual. Most people pick up the chicken very hesitatingly and cautiously.

Back to the hugs, even though hugging the chicken is not the Standard Operating Procedure, I don't think hugging the chicken is really any weirder than waving it over one's head. Or any weirder than waving palm fronds, confessing sins over a body of water with fish (and throwing crumbs in or not), eating a fish head or any of the other symbolic customs we perform on our holidays...

Still weird. I am not hugging a chicken, though I am also not waving it over my head...


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