Practice
In the Jewish religious practice of Kapparot, a rooster literally becomes a religious and sacred vessel and is swung around the head and then sacrificed on the afternoon before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
The purpose of the sacrifice is for the expiation of the sins of the man as the chicken symbolically receives all the man's sins, which is based on the reconciliation of Isaiah 1:18 in the Hebrew Bible. The religious practice is mentioned for the first time by Natronai ben Hilai, Gaon of the Academy of Sura in Babylonia, in 853 C.E., who describes it as a custom of the Babylonian Jews with the practice also having been as a custom of the Persian Jews and further explained by Jewish scholars in the ninth century by that since the Hebrew word geber(gever) means both "man" and "rooster" the rooster may act and serve as a valid religious substitute and a religious and spiritual vessel in place of the man.
To the kapparot practitioner within this religious belief system, even as in other religious systems requiring forms of sacrifice, this religious and spiritual practice remains valid and necessary as "the sacrificial ceremony acts as a medium, a means of communication with the sacred, which enables him to create a link, a communion between him and the invisible powers".
In modern times, Kapparot is performed with a live chicken (rooster for men, hen for women), mainly in Haredi communities. In other communities who perform the Kapparot ritual, money may be substituted for the chicken and then given to charity.
The ritual is preceded by reading Psalms 107:17-20 and Job 33:23-24. While swinging the chicken or money, the following paragraph is recited three times:
- This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. (This rooster (hen) will go to its death / This money will go to charity), while I will enter and proceed to a good long life and to peace.
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