Spot the difference.
Jewish Ultra-Orthodox media do now show women in their papers as it is considered immodest.
Sometimes I really wish Judaism was a more animal-friendly religion. And by sometimes, I mean all the time.
This day needs to come again quickly. I’ve got a lot I need to atone for, yo.
No one likes to talk about ‘the rooster/cock/chicken thing’, but it’s Ashkenazic to the core.
Kaparoth (Hebrew: כפרות, Ashkenazi pronunciation, Kapparos) is a controversial Jewish ritual practised by some Jews on the eve of Yom Kippurim. The person swings a live chicken or a bundle of coins over one’s head three times, symbolically transferring one’s sins to the chicken or coins. The chicken is then slaughtered and donated to the poor for consumption at the pre-fast meal.
In modern times, Kaparoth is performed with a live chicken (cock/rooster for men, hen for women), mainly in Haredi (Ashkenazic) communities. In other communities who perform the Kaparoth ritual, money may be substituted for the chicken and then given to charity.
The ritual is preceded by reading Psalms 107:17-20 and Job 33:23-24. While swinging the chicken or money, the following paragraph is recited three times:
This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. (This rooster (hen) will go to its death / This money will go to charity), while I will enter and proceed to a good long life and to peace.Kaparoth was strongly opposed by some rabbis; they considered it a non-Jewish ritual that conflicted with the spirit of Judaism, which knows of no vicarious sacrifice outside of the Temple in Jerusalem. I disagree in one sense, as King David and others before him definitely sacrificed acceptable kasher animals on alters of unhewn stones.
However, it was approved by Asher ben Jehiel and his son Jacob ben Asher. The ritual appealed especially to Kabbalists who recommended the selection of a white rooster as a reference to Isaiah 1:18 and who found other mystic allusions in the prescribed formulas. Consequently, the practice became generally accepted among the Jews of Eastern Europe.
In the Shulchan Aruch, Rabbi Yosef Karo discouraged the practice. According to the Mishnah Berurah, his reasoning was based on the fact that it was similar to non-Jewish rites. Rabbi Moses Isserles disagreed and encouraged Kaparoth. In Ashkenazi communities especially, Isserles’ position came to be widely accepted. The late 19th century work Kaf Hachaim approves of the custom for the Sephardic community as well.
Some Jews also oppose the use of chickens for Kaparoth on the grounds of Tza’ar Ba’alei Chayim (the principle banning cruelty to animals).On 2005 Yom Kippurim’s eve, a number of caged chickens were abandoned in rainy weather as part of a kapparoth operation in Brooklyn, New York; some of these starving and dehydrated chickens were subsequently rescued by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Jacob Kalish, an Orthodox Jewish man from Williamsburg, was charged with animal cruelty for the drowning deaths of 35 of these kaparoth chickens. In response to such reports of the mistreatment of chickens, Jewish animal rights organizations have begun to picket public observances of kaparoth, particularly in Israel.
(via fuckyeahjewish)
Tel Aviv Pride: melding the holy and the queer.
"The story is told of the scantily clad young woman on a Tel Aviv bus who has an apple shoved in her face by a Haredi man and is told to eat. She takes a bite, and then asks why he had demanded this of her. He replied, “because when Eve ate the apple, she knew she was naked.” The young woman then demands of the Haredi man that he take a bite; he does so and asks why. And she says, “because when Adam ate the apple, he knew that he had to go work."
