Have a Happy and Holy Yom Kippur~
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 22, 2007; A09
JERUSALEM "Mommy, what happened to the chicken?"
For an instant, the question hung in air rank with the smell of animal pens, dirty feathers and blood.
The young boy with looping sidelocks looked up at his mother. She maneuvered a baby stroller through a gaggle of teenage American tourists gathered at the gate of a downtown parking lot, which on this day was among the most dangerous places in the world to be a chicken.
"They killed it," she said, as sweetly as possible.
In a city where the rituals of the Information Age and Biblical times exist in surreal close quarters, the chicken slaughter that precedes Yom Kippur, the high holy day when Jews ask forgiveness for their misdeeds, is something to behold for the religiously devout and the strong of stomach. It brings poultry and sinner together in a gesture of absolution -- a hopeful, sanguinary, cacophonous event witnessed over an afternoon hour on the eve of the most solemn day in Judaism.
The ritual, among the more awesome features of the Days of Awe -- the period of reflection between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur -- works like this: A person buys a chicken for about , then waves it in clucking circles above his head or enlists an on-site rabbi to do so. A prayer is said, symbolically transferring the person's sins to the chicken, whose throat is then slit. The meat goes to the poor.
The ancient practice is not a hit with modern animal rights groups, which condemn it. Some rabbis have also characterized the ceremony, which transpires over a few slapdash seconds, as a pagan relic. One senior Sephardi rabbi recently hinted that a monetary donation to charity might wash away sins equally well. That secular alternative is one that a growing number of Jews have embraced, though tens of thousands here still prefer the poultry.
At 3 p.m., a thick crowd eddied around the covered stalls of the Mahane Yehuda market, a frenzy of last-minute shopping before Yom Kippur shut the city down. Tucked behind stone walls, the sacrificial site could be smelled long before seen. Shoppers hurried past, leaving a group of tourists standing outside the entrance.
The group filed into the transformed parking lot. Yellow crates of live chickens -- 2,500 in all -- lined the sides. Set among them were several low metal tables, each with a half-dozen large funnels poking from the top. Thousands of white chickens -- raised for slaughter, ritual or otherwise -- would end up head-down inside them before the twilight start of Yom Kippur.
"Okay," one of the teen tourists said breathlessly into a Nokia. "Guess what I am doing right now?"
Among the brave was Rebecca Greenberg, an 18-year-old from Philadelphia. A burly man with short sidelocks and a black skullcap handed her a chicken, instructing her to clutch the wings before raising it above her head. Her friends clicked photos with cellphones. Greenberg shrieked and stamped her feet.
"I'm never eating chicken again," she shouted, handing the fluttering bird back to the handler.
Behind one of the low tables, Rabbi Yaakov Cohen prepared for visitors, whose ranks swelled as the day of atonement approached. The old and infirm, young and grossed out, giddy tourists and watchful rabbis, generations of pious families and silent solo worshipers -- all filed through the frequently hosed-down parking lot.
With a bushy white beard, rimless glasses and bloodstained blue smock, Cohen is a 30-year veteran of the chicken sacrifice. He wielded his straight razor with the deftness of a sushi chef, running it quickly over the chickens' throats, then tossing the birds headfirst into the funnels.
"Who else, who else?" Cohen called out.
Rabbi Zakaria Fedley, a short man in a broad-brim hat, watched Cohen at work. Fedley, an inspector on the lookout for dull blades, asked Cohen to hand over his razor after several minutes.
Slowly, Fedley passed his fingernail along its length, nodded and handed it back to Cohen, who turned back to the growing line in front of him. At its head was Oimer Furmanski, 46, with six of his eight children in tow.
A rabbi himself, Furmanski pushed the sleeves of his white shirt and black coat up to his elbows; he was another veteran and it showed.
Furmanski handed a bird to Cohen, who drew his razor across its neck and tossed it into a funnel. Only it popped out, flailing for a few moments on the asphalt.
A 5-year-old boy stared at the bright patch of red on the wet asphalt, a few tears of fear on his face. He calmed down quickly until Cohen, a chicken in hand, appeared from behind his table with bloody baggies over his shoes, a stained smock and a "What are you afraid of?" smile on his wide face.
The boy burst into tears again, consoled quickly by his smiling mother.
Nearby, another mother and her three daughters prayed together, lit by the amber sun. A young man rocked in prayer beneath a dangling chicken along one table, and through the gate a fresh batch of tourists appeared, boys with "Abercrombie" T-shirts and skullcaps. Cellphones flipped open, photos shot and sent.