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Chelsea Now photos by Clayton Patterson Out fowl sins! Kapparot, a ritual performed by some Jews between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, was held on the Lower East Side in a parking lot across from the Seventh Precinct one night last week. The ritual involves transferring a person’s sins to a live chicken — a rooster for a male, a hen for a female, preferably white, the color of purity — by swinging the chicken in a circle over the person’s head while reciting various selections from the Psalms and book of Job. For a pregnant woman, both a hen and rooster are used, since the unborn child could be either sex. Traditionally, the chicken is then killed and it — or its monetary value — given to the needy. In the top photo, Rabbi Azriel Siff of Congregation Chasam Sopher on Clinton St. and his daughter’s sins are absorbed by a chicken swung by Rachel Lazar. Below left, boys man the chicken cages. Below right, a girl’s sins are transferred to a hen. In the Lower East Side event, the chickens were not killed at the scene. However, critics, including some of the great Jewish scholars of yore, have noted that Kapparot isn’t mentioned in either the Torah or the Talmud, and some have called it “foolish.”
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