Need a chicken to purge your sins but can’t leave the house because of Covid-19? Crown Heights has got you covered.
A Brooklyn-based, Chabad-Lubavitch-run charity is offering home delivery of chickens needed for the pre-Yom Kippur ritual of kapparot. Practioners symbolically transfer their sins to the birds, which are later slaughtered or sold for charity.
“If people are nervous about going out we’ll bring the chickens to their homes,” said Rabbi Shea Hecht, chairman of the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education (NCFJE), a charity that “provide[s] fast, discreet and dignified service to all sectors of the Jewish community,” according to its website. The Crown Heights-based organization has been “sponsoring kapparos for 40 years,” said Hecht.
According to a Google Doc sign-up form circulating among community members, NCFJE is offering a “home delivery (limited supply) Service, for CH residents,” Customers can order male or female chickens. (It is customary for a man to use a rooster and a woman to use a hen, which they swing above their heads.)
