It was 2:00 AM and the joint was jumping. Men in suits bustled through the crowded street. Here and there, small pockets of girls were gathered as well. In the snippets of overheard conversations, I picked up Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. Everywhere, an overwhelming, unfamiliar, and putrid smell, the source of which was also the reason we were all here.

The late-night Crown Heights chicken party | Photo courtesy of Simi Lampert

Chickens. Crates and crates of chickens stacked up high as a truck. Once you got over the sight of this hopping party of Hasidim in the middle of Crown Heights in the dark, you started to notice that they were all carrying live chickens, who looked pretty unimpressed being carted around by their wings as casually as a pocketbook.

As my friend, her family, and I entered this National Geographic-worthy scene, I tried to take in all the details: the chickens circling the heads of groups of people, the squawks at random intervals, the father teasing his daughter by shoving the chicken in her face, the discarded rubber gloves littering the whole street (calling to mind the balloon turkeys I made with them as child), and everywhere, men asking for money for their particular tzedaka organization.

We formed separate lines to get our chickens – a rooster for the men of our group, and a hen for the women – and our sheet with the prayer and blessing to say over the mitzva of kapparot. “This is our exchange, this is our substitute, this is our atonement. This hen will go to its death while we will enter and proceed to a good long life, and to peace.” I bonded a little with my hen, who I named Jesus (after all, she was dying for my sins).  I kept apologizing to her – I wasn’t so okay with having this innocent bird die because of me. I suppose it helped a little that she would be going to feed poor people in her death.

After taking more than a few pictures with our sin-hen, we moved on over to a stage on the side that I hadn’t noticed in all the brouhaha. Once again, there were separate lines for men and women. I noted with satisfaction that the line for women was for once shorter than the men’s (a small but exciting victory in the life of someone subjected to endless bathroom lines). A man with a sharp knife sliced the necks of chicken after chicken and dropped them into upside-down traffic cones. Blood splattered the shirts of everyone around him. Younger men picked up the slaughtered chickens and dropped them into trash bags. One of these men was casually smoking over the dead chickens, which got to me more than anything else I saw.

I had proudly announced earlier in the evening that I, unlike the girl who came with my friend’s family last year, would not become vegetarian after this experience, but that avowal was put strongly to the test. I love me my meat, but watching an animal die is still flinch-inducing. I reflected that this is perhaps the whole point of the experience: watching the bird die is supposed to remind us of what sinning can do, and thereby make us repent. Or, in the words of the nearby policeman who I interviewed, “What I understand is that your sins go into the chicken when you wave them, and then they spill the blood to let the sins out.” A slightly more mystical approach, and not quite accurate, but representative of  how a lot of people view kapparot.

The whole idea is somewhat debated. Some criticize it for the animal cruelty aspect, although the chicken are not treated any worse than they would be in a regular slaughterhouse. Others say the ritual is too superstitious and shouldn’t be believed in. However, the idea that we are meant to be inspired to teshuva from the experience is one I can understand, having taken part in this most unusual evening. Waving a check for tzedaka over my head while we mumble the words just doesn’t quite hit home in the same way.

We wrapped up the night with my friend’s family tradition: ice cream at a kosher candy shop, open late for the occasion. When a little boy walked in with dried blood speckling his white shirt, no one blinked an eye.