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Captain Paul Watson observes the Nisshin Maru.
It’s the end of an era in animal activism. After 12 years confronting and disrupting the activities of Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean, Sea Shepherd says it is calling it quits.
“What we discovered is that Japan is now employing military surveillance to watch Sea Shepherd ship movements in real time by satellite and if they know where our ships are at any given moment, they can easily avoid us,” Captain Paul Watson said recently on the Sea Shepherd website. “We cannot compete with their military grade technology.”
In the last two years, Sea Shepherd ships have only caught glimpses of the Japanese whaling vessels. “Every time we approached them, they would be just over the horizon,” Captain Watson told The Washington Post. “They knew where we were at every moment. We’re literally wasting our time and our money.”
Moreover, Japanese authorities escalated their resistance this year with the passing of new anti-terrorism laws and said they might even send the military to defend their illegal whaling activities for the first time ever.
Captain Watson said his organization will continue its efforts against whaling around the world. “We will never quit until the abomination of whaling is abolished forever by anyone, anywhere, for any reason.”
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A few years ago, as I was researching animal abuses for my book Bleating Hearts, I learned of a Jewish “religious tradition”* known as kapparot (also spelled kaparos, kaporos, or kapores), which is observed during the High Holy Days, the 10-day period between Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). The ceremony, practiced by Orthodox Jews, calls for a live rooster (for men) or hen (for women) to be swung in a circle three times above the practitioner’s head while he or she declares, “This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. This rooster/hen will go to its death while I will enter and proceed to a good, long life, and to peace.” The bird is then killed, and the animal’s flesh is supposedly donated to the poor, though some witnesses have seen the chickens simply thrown out with the trash. Kapparot is repeated in public spaces and outside synagogues throughout the world.
Most Jewish literature is careful to avoid using the word “sacrifice” when describing kapparot—preferring to call it “a symbolic act of atonement,” “a ceremony of expiation,” or, even more accurately, “a ritual slaughter.”
Whatever one calls it, the result is suffering and death for countless animals. Packed into small cages with other birds, chickens are routinely transported long distances and denied access to water and food. Karen Davis, founder of the non-profit United Poultry Concerns (UPC) and a longtime advocate for chickens and other domestic fowl, is particularly sensitive to the abuse these animals suffer during the High Holy Days. “The birds used in kapparot are sometimes sitting for as long as week without food or water, usually exposed to the elements,” she told me. “Whole flatbed trailers bring the chickens in to places like Brooklyn and the Bronx, where they just sit stacked in crates or cages before the actual ritual takes place. They’re being starved and dehydrated and left out in the rain. The birds are treated like rag dolls, like objects.”
With Rosh Hashanah approaching, UPC and other animal advocates are once again asking Orthodox Jewish leaders to embrace “compassionate kapparot” (a nice explanation of what this entails from Rabbi Jonathan Klein is here, even if he disses veganism) by replacing birds with bags of coins.
What You Can Do:
1. Sign the UPC petition (warning: graphic image of a dead chicken).
2. Contact the following Orthodox organizations and ask them to promote the use of money instead of chickens for kapparot ceremonies:
Orthodox Union
Attn: Mr. Allen I. Fagin, Executive Vice President
11 Broadway
New York, NY 10004
Phone: 212-563-4000
Email: afagin@ou.org
All OU executives, titles and email addresses are listed here:
Rabbinical Council of America
Attn: Rabbi Elazar Muskin
305 Seventh Avenue, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10001
Phone: 212-807-9000; 212-741-7522
Fax: 212-727-8452
Email: RabbiMuskin@gmail.com
Email office@rabbis.org
Vaad Harabonim of Flatbush
Attn: Rabbi Meir Goldberg
1206 Avenue J
Brooklyn, NY 11230
Phone: 718-951-8585
Email via this website: http://www.vaad.org/contact
The New York Board of Rabbis
Attn: Rabbi Joseph Potasnik
Executive Vice President
136 East 39th Street
New York, NY 10016
Phone: 212-983-3521
Fax: 212-983-3531
Email: jpotasnik@nybr.org
Email: info@nybr.org
Agudath Israel of America
Attn: Rabbi Shia Markowitz, CEO
Attn: Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Executive Vice President
42 Broadway
New York, NY 10004
Phone: 212-797-9000
Email: news@agudathisrael.org
Email: dzwiebel@agudathisrael.org
Rabbinical Alliance of America
Attn: Rabbi Mendel Mirocznik
Executive Vice President
305 Church Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11218
Phone: 212-242-6420; 718-532-8720
Email: rabbi@igud.us
3. Support United Poultry Concerns’ efforts to win a legal victory for the birds by making a tax-deductible donation to help with their mounting Court of Appeal costs. Please donate by check for “Kaporos” to: UPC, PO Box 150, Machipongo, VA 23405, or by credit or debit card to their Alliance to End Chicken Kaporos Fund by clicking on http://www.endchickensaskaporos.com/donate
*According to Jewish leaders, animal sacrifice as a tradition in Judaism ended with the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE.
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