Kapparos

Kapparot (Hebrew: כפרות‎, Ashkenazi pronunciation, Kapporois, Kappores) is a customary Jewish atonement ritual practiced by some Jews on the eve of Yom Kippur. This is a practice in which a person waves a chicken around his or her head. The chickens are then given to the homeless or poor as an act of charity (tzedakah).

Kapparah (כפרה‎), the singular of kapparot, means "atonement" and comes from the Hebrew root k-p-r, which means "to atone".

On the afternoon before Yom Kippur, one prepares an item to be donated to the poor for consumption at the pre-Yom Kippur meal, recites the two biblical passages of Psalms 107:17-20 and Job 33:23-24, and then swings the prepared charitable donation over one's head three times while reciting a short prayer three times.

In one variant of the practice of Kapparot, the item to be donated to charity is a rooster. In this case, the rooster would be swung overhead while still alive. After the Kapparot ritual is concluded, the rooster would be treated as a normal kosher poultry product, i.e., it would be slaughtered according to the laws of shechita. It would then be given to charity for consumption at the pre-Yom Kippur meal. In modern times, this variant of the ritual is performed with a rooster for men and a hen for women.

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