Animals, Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Courts, Religion, Society

Federal Judge Lifts Injunction To Allow The Twirling and Killing Of Chickens To Take Away Sins During Yom Kippur

200px-kapparot_lithographyThere is an interesting ruling in Los Angeles where United States Judge Andre Birotte Jr. has lifted a temporary restraining order against a California synagogue performing Kapparot, a ritual where chickens are twirled in the air and then slaughtered. We previously discussed the controversies surrounding the Yom Kippur ritual.


With the approach of Yom Kippur, animal rights advocates and officials in California have long campaigned to end the ritual of Kapparot, where a fowl is held by the neck and swung around the head of a Jewish person. The sins of the person are then transfered to the fowl (usually a chicken) which is then sacrificed. The practice has been denounced as little more than animal cruelty and many have called for criminal charges under state laws.

Municipal Code SEC. 53.67 states:

“No person shall engage in, participate in, assist in, or perform animal sacrifice. No person shall own, keep, possess or have custody of any animal with the purpose or intention of using such animal for animal sacrifice. No person shall knowingly sell, offer to sell, give away or transfer any animal to another person who intends to use such animal for animal sacrifice. ‘Animal sacrifice’ means the injuring or killing of any animal in any religious or cult ritual or as an offering to a deity, devil, demon or spirit, wherein the animal has not been injured or killed primarily for food purposes, regardless of whether all or any part of such animal is subsequently consumed.”

That would seem to sum up the Kapparot pretty well. Many Jews oppose the practice as tza’ar ba’alei chayim (unnecessary pain to animals). Money is used by most Jews, which is waved around their heads and then given to the poor.

Any crackdown could force an interesting test case similar to the 1993 ruling in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc,. et al. v. City of Hialeah, where the Court struck down the city’s ban on ritual animal sacrifice as violative of the first amendment’s free exercise clause. Notably, the ritual could still be practiced at a slaughterhouse, an option chosen by some Jewish followers.

Judge Birotte had previously granted the order at the request of an animal rights group called United Poultry Concerns, but then lifted the order after an expedited hearing. The challenge will go on but the group was allowed to perform the ritual in the interim.

62 thoughts on “Federal Judge Lifts Injunction To Allow The Twirling and Killing Of Chickens To Take Away Sins During Yom Kippur”

  1. I neglected to mention that the animal sacrifice where people paint themselves in blood that I referred to was not Kapparot, but some holiday I read about, I believe in India.

    1. apropos crazy religious beliefs. Starving people and Hindus allow cows to wander freely unharmed, uneaten…

      1. Consuming meat is for particular nutrients and for enjoyment. For simple nutrition, grains are more efficient.

  2. Allow me to write an opinion from my perspective as living in a rural area.

    I personally disagree with animal sacrifice, unless the animal is consumed afterward, and is killed humanely according to our laws. Making an animal suffer, or killing it just to throw away its body, is cruel and wasteful. Otherwise, if you say a prayer over it, it’s a bit like Thanksgiving. That said, I find the animal sacrifices done where people paint themselves in blood to be horrid. But that’s just how I feel.

    I keep a flock of organic chickens, which I’ve named, made pets out of, and only use for their eggs. They come when I call them. Some of my neighbors raise a few chickens, geese, turkeys, and pheasants for their own consumption. They are then sure of the conditions in which their food was raised, what they ate, and how they were slaughtered. Some do it because they find factory poultry farms cruel, dirty, and unhealthy. Some do it to have organic meats. They either drive their birds to a local slaughterhouse, or they process them themselves. It’s my understanding that it’s such a mess and requires equipment so it doesn’t make any sense to do it yourself unless you have a bunch going into the freezer all at once. Again, I couldn’t do it.

    If a chicken is really sick or injured, sometimes the owner has to euthanize it themselves. I’ve had a bird that I probably should have put out of its misery, and instead tried to save it, only to have it die the next day.

    If it’s legal to humanely kill chickens to either eat, euthanize because of illness or injury, or I’ve heard of really bad roosters being killed because of aggression, then how can they have a law prohibiting it for religious reasons? How can they require the animal be consumed? Yes, it’s wasteful, but can we make it illegal IF the animal is killed humanely? When my chickens die of old age or illness, I don’t consume them, so clearly consuming an animal is not required. I also have known people who raised goats to sell, live, to Muslims for Ramadan. There’s a whole goat season for producers. And the animals are sold live. (I love goats. Friendly little things if you can keep them from jumping on your car.)

    It’s not a practice I agree with. And depending on how the bird is twirled, it may break the law if the animal suffers or is killed inhumanely. People typically hold the bird upside down by their feet, or they use a killing cone. The blood rushes to the bird’s head, which makes them stop struggling. Plus, when they slit the throat, it bleeds the carcass out, which is required or else the meat will be tainted by blood left behind. But twirling it by its neck would hurt. I am unfamiliar with this practice. Do they do this to break the neck? Is it quick?

    This has always been a complicated issue for me. My own birds are pets, and I would be furious if one was killed or harmed. But under the law, they are a food animal, which have different protections. So I’m in the position of not condoning the practice at all, but wondering if we can legally ban it.

    1. Karen S

      If you don’t have a problem with your neighbors raising animals for consumption why would you have an issue with goats being sold to Muslims for Ramadan festivities. Muslims practice halal – similar to kosher – which means the animal is quickly killed by severing the juglar and then the blood is allowed to drain from it. Seems more humane than industrial factory farms or swinging an animal around by its neck.

      Also, Jamaicans and Mexicans love goat and buy them live. I eat goat whenever I’m in Vegas as it is prepared so wonderfully – a 24 hour process. Anyway, I digress into foodyism =)

  4. Lets see now..

    We used to chop the heads off and get chased by the headless beasts.
    After the fun wore off..a few chickens later…we would catch em then hang them upside down on the clothes line and slash their heads off so the blood would drain.
    Then gut and pluck them clean. Goodness fried chicken, mashed spuds, corn on the cob…heaven.

    Well…hopefully them thar dinners arent waiting for us “up there.”

    But then again, they lived a good life up to their sacrifice. Besides, ever watch a hawk on the fly or skunk in the hen house get a “take out” dinner?

    Aint the natural way grand?

  5. Sorry to double post. The State of NY also allows religious exemption to Judaic Rabbis, who fellate baby male Judaics during bris. In some cases Rabbis transmitted disease to the babies during briss (STD).

    Another Judaic religious practice: Judaic males sometimes have married adult daughter unable to bear child. The father seeks advice/prayer from his local Rabbi. Rabbis coerce, in some cases over $100k in cash, from the father, threatening the father his daughter shall never conceive unless the father pays.

    The above, plus countless other Rabbinical thefts (such as Kosher law), caused huge ratio of Judaics to turn away from the religion. History shows this occurred immediately prior to WW2. To this very day, even modern Rabbis state the so-called “Holocaust” was God’s punishing of Jews for turning away from the Rabbis.

    The results of the above Rabbinical threats had their desired positive results for the Rabbis. What “Jew” desires another holocaust? For decades now the fastest rate of growth for Judaic sects is the most rabid and blood thirsty Orthodox branches such as Chabad Lubavitch practiced by Michael Chertoff.

    Few here likely realize Allan Greespan took his oath of office on The Talmud, AKA The “Torah.” (FYI: Judaism has two “Torah,” one being the OT, the other being The Talmud, the oral tradition, comprising gems such as, “Even the best of the gentiles deserve only death.”)

    1. Someone else in the dayroom would like to use the computer, and it’s time for your thioridizine.

      1. Lol! He’s the resident loon, here. Get used to it. The mention of Judaism, Israel or rabbis creates convulsions in the nut.

  6. Another of hundreds of evil and bizarre religious practices by Judaics. The worst of course is the still pending Judaic threat to end the human race associated with the invention of Israel. Once they went fully nuclear, Israel’s then-leaders announced in the clearest possible language (that even a brain dead American can understand) that Israel would turn earth into a smoldering ruin if anyone threatened to take their dear little plot of once-Palestinian dirt from them.

    Judaics preach to the world that _od gifted Judaics the modern nation state of Israel, via an invisible Land Title Deed, as evidenced in _od’s alleged conversations w/Abraham in Exodus, etc.

    It’s not bad enough the USA and its agent the UN granted, via military threat, then-Palestine to Israel. We still have to annually gift Israel, one of the wealthiest nations on earth, about $4-5B, for them to send back for military weapons to Lord over the ME.

    Israel currently debates weather to mandate every single citizen must swear allegiance to Israeli status as a Judaic religious State. One of countless American hypocrisies: we have alleged guaranteed separation of church and state, but fully support sending military arms and support of nations whose very foundation is an evil, and bizarre religious cult whose foundation is pure racial bigotry.

    America: you go girl!

    2. JJ,

      re: “It’s not bad enough the USA and its agent the UN granted, via military threat, then-Palestine to Israel. We still have to annually gift Israel, one of the wealthiest nations on earth, about $4-5B, for them to send back for military weapons to Lord over the ME.”

      The US taxpayer is, as you put it, “gifting” Israel $10.2 million per day! how many Americans are aware of this? I am quite certain they would not approve of this funding of a rogue state intent on wiping out Palestine.

      Source: ifamericansknew.org

      meanwhile our bridges crumble, children go to bed hungry, homelesness is up, VA is understaffed/underfunded, etc etc

      1. There is no such place as ‘Palestine’ and Israel is not intent on wiping out anyone or anything. Territory acquired by Israel since 1949 amounts to about 2,100 sq. miles. (St. Lawrence County, NY has in it 2,800 square miles) About 1/3 of that consists of the Golan Heights, over which Syria has been unwilling to bargain. About 25 sq. miles consists of that portion of greater Jerusalem on the other side of the 1949 armistice lines. About 1,300 square miles consists of portions of the West Bank (over which the Arab authorities have never bargained in good faith and in which live perhaps 100,000 Arabs). All of these territories were acquired more than 50 years ago in a war Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted (or was willing to risk).

        Progressive ceased being able to tell the truth about 25 years ago.

        1. Dance Squared:

          British Mandate of Palestine apparently wasn’t taught in your history class, but Britain allowed the massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians by Zionists to catalyze a mass exodus prior to 1948. Zionism was allowed to maintain a foothold for the West’s thirst for oil:

          2. I cannot figure out what’s in it for you trading in transparent fiction. It’s not difficult to research these questions cursorily.

            Mandatory Palestine was an assemblage of three Ottoman sanjaks which existed as such for 28 years. The Arabs resident there were loyal to lineage groups they were a part of, loyal to particular localities, and spoke a vernacular on a spectrum with the rest of the vernaculars spoken in the Levant. Some of them were loyal to a novel idea of an Arab nation. There was not any ‘palestinian’ people at the time, the use of the geographic term was a usage preferred by the Jews, and the notion of a ‘palestinian’ people was not prevalent among local Arabs until about 1968.

            The ‘palestinians’ have not been ‘wiped out’. There were about 700,000 Arab residents of the old mandate in 1946. As we speak, there are 1.7 million Arabs in Israel and another 2.6 million on the West Bank. Aside from the indigenes living in the Gulf emirates, the Arab population in Israel is the world’s most affluent and likely the Arab population with the largest quantum of actual human capital per person.

            A high-end estimate of the total death toll from the war in 1948 and 1949 is 21,000, of which shy of 30% were Jews. The Arab states’ militaries lost about 8,000 men, leaving 7,000 local Arab irregulars and Arab civilians. And, of course, it was a war the Arab states wanted to wage. And, of course, violence was part of the stock and trade of what there was of an Arab political leadership at the time (Hajj Amin al-Husseini, et al), and had been for 20 years or more at that point.

            1. Dance writes, “Aside from the indigenes living in the Gulf emirates, the Arab population in Israel is the world’s most affluent and likely the Arab population with the largest quantum of actual human capital per person.”

              Say what? Life in occupied Palestine is hardly affluent. I thought you were about a GS-18-level govbot, but I suspect you’re probably on Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff.

              1. I specifically distinguished between Israel and the West Bank. And you knew that.

                As for the West Bank, the portions administered by Israel have an Arab population of about 100,000. The bulk of the Arab population lives under an Arab authority which functions as a collection of rackets, gets scads of overseas development aid, and doesn’t produce much. Israel’s extended a unilateral autonomy to the Arab population because that population’s leadership would not negotiate in good faith, as seen in the Oslo catastrophe which played out during the year’s running from 1993 to 2000 (and ended with the 2d Intifada). Anyone who has examined public opinion surveys of the West Bank and of the Gaza UNRWA welfare dump understands that about 30% of the population therein will endorse a political solution which includes a long-term modus vivendi with their Jewish neighbors. North of 35% think a ‘solution’ requires dissolution of the Jewish state Another 30% insist it’s non-negotiable that a 7 digit population of Arabs be allowed to settle in Israel at their own discretion. No one would ever maintain such a stance unless they were in a position to dictate a peace to their enemies. The Arabs on the West Bank and in Gaza are not and never have been, but they’re determined to play make-believe.

                If the Arab population on the West Bank wants a better standard of living, they have to produce goods and services. As we speak, about 13% of their territorial income consists of overseas development assistance and another 11% consists of remittances. Nominal domestic product per capita is about $3,000 per annum; over the river in Jordan, it’s $4.500 per annum. And, while we’re at it, the life expectancy at birth of Arabs on the West Bank and in Gaza is 72.9 years. That across the river in Jordan is 74.1 years.

                For chrissakes, pick a decent cause for once in your life. And quit lying.

      2. Malnutrition is not a problem in this country, vagrancy exists only when you have a Republican president, and the ‘infrastructure’ has been ‘crumbling’ for about 35 years now, because local politicians and construction companies want the business.

  7. There is no reason to treat animals with cruelty. Every living thing will die and life depends on the death of life even for a vegetarian. Nevertheless, cruelty is never necessary and should not be practiced for any reason. This kind of ignorance and harm should stop immediately.

  8. Maybe if the chicken lived a great life before being ritually killed, pampered, fed really good food, etc. The ritual should start with the egg. A sacrifice to be a real sacrifice has to be of someone you love. Read your Greek, Iphigenia. A bull that is raised for beef lives a pretty sad life, eating crap, crammed into cramped dirty quarters, then zap after five years of ignominious treatment, hamburger, steak, and sausage. A bull raised to fight and die in the ring lives the life of a god, open pasture, no contact with humans, the best food, peaceful, boinking whenever he wants, and then his deepest urges are satiated with a good fight and a noble death after the same five years. The bull in the ring sometimes, albeit rarely, gets off and returns to the pasture to boink to his heart’s content. There is more to life than mindless correctness.

  10. I’ll begin to care about this practice just as soon as there is universal outrage over the slaughter and dismembering of human babies.

  11. If we kill chickens via lethal injection then we can’t fry and eat them.

  13. I’m glad that sacred rituals of chicken-twirling, snake handling and dwarf-tossing are allowed. Whatever it takes to keep evil spirits at bay.

  14. It’s just chickens. How many farmers have “wrung the necks” of chickens by spinning them around and fracturing their spines in a similar manner as do these individuals who use this as a form of devotion?

    Given the Court’s interpretation of Lukumi Babalu Aye, I doubt much this prohibition will survive on appeal.

    The city should actually better choose its battles. Saving the citizens and taxpayers resources should be a better approach than worrying about a few chickens.

            1. I suspect if we could talk with land animals we would have become vegetarian or pescetarian long ago.

            2. For all the johnny come latelies who doesn’t think every last one of us is just another animal on this rock:

              We’re not ‘just another animal’, except to cretin who fancy they aggrandize themselves with dumb taunts.

    2. Not just farmers, but I know city dwellers who keep chickens as well who do the same thing.

    3. As a part time farmer who raises chickens for food, I can say I have never “wrung the neck” of a chicken. It is much better to hang the bird upside down in a cone and then slit the artery in the neck to let them bleed out. This gets most of the blood out of the bird and prevents bruising when the chicken bounces around my plucker. This is not very different than the way they do it at slaughter houses except they usually stun the bird with an electric charge before cutting them so they don’t need a cone; I don’t have the ability to do that, hence the cone to restrain them.

  15. Religious practices that break generally applicable law should not be permitted. Religious privilege in this country must end and that includes tax exemptions for religious institutions and entities.

    1. What’s the generally applicable law that permits chickens to be debeaked, and kept in filthy, tiny, disease-ridden cages for months and months and months to be slaughtered for food, but then does not allow the chicken to be twirled overhead for a few moments?

      1. “for months and months and months”

        Actually, the chickens you get at the store are about 6 weeks old. The chickens I raise (same breed as the factory farms) are only about 8 to 9 weeks old and may weigh as much as 8 pounds when I butcher them. Mine are raised on pasture in pens that get moved daily and are open to fresh air. The difference is amazing! I can’t eat factory farmed chicken or eggs anymore.

        1. Jeff: Interesting post. Thanks for it.

          I wonder if you might be able to answer a question for me. The chicken breasts I usually see in the supermarkets here in San Diego nowadays are about the size of what I would see in a turkey on Thanksgiving back in the day.. Any idea of what breeders are doing these days in terms of food additives which result in these Arnold Schwarzenegger-sized chickens? I assume it’s some sort of growth hormone or steroids.

          And also, how do you go about killing them? I can’t imagine it being anything other than traumatic for them unless perhaps they’re gassed.

    2. Religious tolerance is tolerance of various levels of mental dysfunction. Religion/mental dysfunction is not a valid excuse for hating people who are different, nor for committing acts of violence and depravity.

      1. What Doglover wrote. Further, I recall a Rehnquist court case about peyote being used up in Oregon by some dude who said it was religious and therefore protected by the First Amendment. While I don’t argue that peyote isn’t a colorful, if not religious, experience, in that case SCOTUS held essentially that the First Amendment’s freedom of religion doesn’t trump laws of general applicability and therefore the use of peyote was criminal under state law. (*I don’t have time to further delve into that ruling this morning, but perhaps someone else could update whether that case is still valid law.)

        The point is what some legal commentator said recently about the the Supreme Court, which should also apply to the federal district court: Suck it up and follow precedent.

        Abusing animals for religious or any other reasons short of sustenance killing should be dealt with harshly in the criminal courts.

      2. Religious tolerance is tolerance of various levels of mental dysfunction. Religion/mental dysfunction is not a valid excuse for hating people who are different, nor for committing acts of violence and depravity.

        Only in the minds of adolescents and arrested-development cases. Many adults do not ponder anything metaphysical, or they build their identity around notions that they’re superior to conventional people. That’s their problem, not a dysfunction on anyone else’s part.

    3. Religious privilege in this country must end and that includes tax exemptions for religious institutions and entities.

      Except that’s not a ‘privilege’, except in the addled heads of juvenile Dawkins types who despise the churches. Philanthropic institutions are generally tax exempt. There’s a reason for that: their employees do pay taxes and Social Security contributions on their wages and salaries, philanthropic institutions undertake little in the way of commercial activity that one might tax, and they’re often quite real-estate intensive. All church’s have been built and maintained in a regime wherein church property was not taxed. The people who wish to tax church property wish to destroy the church’s, something they don’t think of doing to state enterprises like the public schools or to the Red Cross.

    4. What Justice Holmes said. John Oliver set up a church called “Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption” – hilarious.

      1. Do you honestly think John Oliver lists neither exemptions nor deductions on his tax return?

  18. Whoever wrote that bit of law has not read the Constitution. I see no difference than congregating for a rubber chicken dinner or getting a ‘parts is parts’ take out. Did the citizens of California under the 9th Amendment give the State of California who has it seems never heard of the 10th Amendment the right to circumvent the First Amendment or did they confuse ‘life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — etc. as applying to chickens? Not to mention all those turkeys being sacrificed on Thanks Giving Day. How do they think chickens are killed before Tyson’s mutilates them into packages for your dinner table? And do not all good Christians both Protestants and Catholics offer a prayer at each evening meal if not all meals?

  20. All along I was told “chocking your chicken” was a sinful act but this is just the opposite. I’m not sure if I can do the twirling around the head thing that has to hurt.

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