Before she went AWOL for the day, Amy Kellner had a little chat with her Jewish father for the Talking Issue about the Yom Kippur chicken-swinging ritual that has been baffling gentiles since time immemorial and on the general nature of their storied, bazillion-year-old faith. Click below for the scoop.Vice: Hi Dad. It's Yom Kippur today. Can you tell all the goyim who read Vice what that it?
Amy's Dad: It's the Day of Atonement, when you confess all your sins of the past year. On the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, your name is inscribed in the Book of Life—or not—and a week later, on Yom Kippur, that book is sealed. So Yom Kippur is your last chance to expiate your sins through repentance, prayer, and charity.
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You will die that year. Either by sword or plague or wild beasts or famine or earthquakes or war or… There's a prayer that lists all the possible ways.What's the deal with swinging the chickens?
It's a symbolic event for throwing your sins away. You cast your sins into the chicken and then you circle it over your head three times while you say a prayer.People get upset because they think it's animal cruelty.
Only if you consider eating chicken cruel. You're not supposed to cause unnecessary pain to the chicken, you're just supposed to hold it with both hands and circle it. Afterward, the chickens are killed in the same way that all kosher chickens are and then given to the poor to eat as their pre-Yom Kippur meal before the fast. The chickens are killed humanely because otherwise they aren't kosher—which, by the way, is why Jews don't hunt. Anyway, if you don't want to do the chickens, another alternative is swinging a handful of coins over your head and then giving the coins to charity. Or you can throw bread into a river.Why don't we believe in heaven and hell?
We do. We believe in Gan Aden [Garden of Eden, aka heaven] and Gehennem [hell], but the difference between us and other religions is that we don't dwell on what happens after we die. You're not supposed to do good in order to get to a better place, you're supposed to do good to make this world better.I like being Jewish!
Me too.