The heavy duty black garbage bag was filled about a third, and steam was gently rising from the top. Sitting on the end of a folding table in the shul garage, its sides were taut with the dull weight of its contents.
I had just come from the shul's Succah, where my father was paying me 10 dollars for the evening, to help people who were too squeamish to touch a chicken. At ten years old, I was tall, shy, awkward, and skinnier than a pencil, tomboy; and at that point in my life, my friends still found it hilarious to call me daddy long legs. I hated that! But today I reigned. All my school friends came with their parents to 'shlug kapores" and I was assisting my father, and he was running the show.
I had talked to the farmers and learned how to hold a chicken so that it would be comfortable, I was going to help people shlug. ...I even held a chicken for Shalom, the cutest, tallest bochur in the yeshiva! Double, triple, dare, I did it, while he wouldn't!
On the Eve of Yom Kippur in is customary to participate in an ancient, but somewhat controversial custom known as Kaparos, which is a bit like a sin offering: Say a prayer, take a chicken (or a fish), swing it around your head and say something to the effect of "I am about to kill this chicken because I've been a bit of a jerk this year, and instead of me dying, this chicken is gonna end up as some yeshiva student's dinner.
Disclaimer: No one Jewish really believes he/she can get off as easy as a mental sin transfer. Personally, God still makes me suffer for evils I committed as a tiny-tyke in preschool, and the karma/guilt will keep coming my way whether I remember to call my mother on a weekly basis, or not. If you are Jewish, sins do not ever really disappear, I don't care what they told you in Sunday school about forgiveness. I don't care how much you drown your sorrows in Crown Royal, you, like an elephant, will never forget, and nor will the original elephant, God.
Many Rabbis say that chicken replacement therapy is a pagan custom that somehow crept into the Jewish tradition (and is reminiscent of sin offerings in the temple http://www.bknw.org/pafiledb/uploads/The%20Minhag%20of%20Kaparos%20-%20new.pdf); but no one I know really believes there is any sort of atonement here, it's purpose is really to provide a graphic wake up call: Being confronted with a creature's mortality will give you some perspective before you start wagering with Big Bro in the sky the next day in synagogue).
When I was tiny, the Lubavitch community would gather in the Greenberg's house, and a white hen would be lifted from a cardboard box. Then, Rabbi Greenberg would make his way around the house passing the chicken over everyone's heads (watch your shaitel, mom!). The chicken would then be returned to the box; we wished each other a happy, healthy, sweet new year and went home for kreplach in chicken soup and homemade round challahs with honey. The 25 hour fast day would commence at dusk.
To this day, I do not know why my father thought our community needed something grander than this tame neighborhood gathering. My father was, is, and always will be a stickler for performing a Mitzvah to its ultimate potential, but the chicken thing really became something else. I think he, having experienced Kaparos in NYC, felt that one chicken for the entire community was a real cop out. If you were gonna do this thing right, for every man, woman and child, born or unborn, a chicken should be had (with his visions of equality, Ta should have gone into politics).
The following year, sometime in early July, my father called a local egg farmer. He ordered 200 chicks to be raised and cared for at the farm and brought to our shul on the specified morning. Waking up early that day, with the damp gray fall air, we were bundled into our jackets and escorted to our shteibel's parking lot where we were confronted with not one docile hen, but a flock of indignant birds. This year, the birds had presence.
I remember touching a chicken, staring at it in the eye, and ogling its leathery feet. Kids absolutely loved this experience, even the screamers, who were terrified, enjoyed being terrified. Young mothers halfheartedly chased their kids around the parking lot. One expectant mother had three chickens, a hen for herself, and a hen and rooster for her unborn child, as identifying gender pre-birth is bad luck and she wanted to have her bases covered. Her husband waved the chickens over her bulging tummy.
After this fun experience, moms and kids went home. Pre yom tov naps, Seuda Hamafsekes, the pre yom kippur meal, lacing man made sneakers, fussing over hair and bows, etc.
Back at shul in an alley, the chickens were ritually slaughtered by a shochet. My father had a brood of yeshiva bochurim who, keen to see some of their halacha classes come to life, volunteered for the experimental Koshering experience. That year, it was the blind leading the blind, and although they managed to kosher 20 chickens, by the time the day was done, due to error and inexperience, they did not produce a single, kosher, ready-to-eat chicken. Chicken carnage.
It's a good thing we do not remember everything from childhood: I have no memory of the following year when my mother decided to take matters into her own hands; hiring a team of Russian immigrants to deal with the heavy processing, she koshered the chickens herself. My mother frequently found herself in Minhag catch 22: Don't do it, failure as Jew, disappoint husband or, take it upon yourself, and.. ...rant #345: "Is there ANYONE else in this community who has to PUT UP with what I have to PUT UP WITH?!"
Unfortunately, this memory is as vivid for her as ever, like labor. She remembers being so tired that night, she was unable to serve our highly distinguished houseguests our pre yom kippur meal. She also remembers the entire process as a haze of obscenities: Imagine an instillation at a formidable art museum: A young woman in housecoat stands under a spotlight; she is repeating the word "shit" as an under-the-breath mantra as she guts hundreds of dead birds, and picks off endless pin feathers, her hands slick with blood, up to the wrists...).
The next year, dear old dad got it right. At this point, we were up to 400 chickens. He ordered bright yellow T-shirts and baseball caps that said "I shlugged Kapores" with the silhouette of a chicken printed on the side. He partnered with a large shul in town which had a high capacity succah, an outdoor gazebo space for the ritual slaughter, and a massive garage for processing the chickens, to be overseen by a butcher. The local Jewish press was called and Jews from all walks of life showed up and were thrilled with their pictures that appeared in the paper the next week. The chickens became the Shabbos meals of various youngsters in various yeshivas, and my mother was able to show up with her kids and parents and leave the mess to others.
It was the following year that I found myself standing in the garage facing the steaming black garbage bag. Earlier that evening, I had held Shalom's chicken, assisted an elderly woman with the prayers, sold a T-shirt, and had even walked down with a group to the slaughter's gazebo, so that they could watch and get the extra Mitzvah of covering up the spilled blood with dirt.
Only a few hours earlier, I had never see anything larger than a spider killed, and while I was somewhat nauseated by the experience of ritual slaughter, I also was fascinated and proud. The slaughterer, an extremely serious and methodical Rabbi, had a quiet grace and a soft almost inaudible voice, though he commanded authority. He would take the chicken and hold it in his arm, like a baby, where the bird would quiet. He would then pull its neck back, hold the feathers back with his finger and quickly draw the knife over the bird's neck. He then would turn the bird over, opening and draining the slit throat and drop the dead bird into an industrial sized garbage can, where the chicken would flap around a bit, the noise and feathers ricocheting around the sides of the bin.
I was pleased to witness Shchitah. Even then, experiencing the death of dinner was profoundly impactful. I felt, even with the gore, that the process was humane; and if I could bear to watch it, I deserved to eat it. I felt connected to my forbearers, who undoubtedly knew the animals they ate, and were intimately connected to their births, lives and deaths. I also felt proud of my father who provided this opportunity for the community to witness the gaps in the loop of life, to become acquainted with their part in the food chain and to experience nature, if at all for a few minutes as part of religious experience. I felt this then, even if I couldn't articulate it.
But back to the garbage bag. It was after accompanying this particular group to watch the slaughter that I decided to check on the processing of the slaughtered birds out back in the garage.
Climbing up a small hill behind the synagogue an efficient system was in place, complete with buckets of birds, an industrious assembly line of pizza store guys (every orthodox community has a slew of "pizza store guys" ready for odd jobs), good knives, rubber gloves, hoses, plastic bags, kosher salt, soaking pails, boards, and racks. The young men, directed by a professional, were diligently butchering these birds. On one end, bloody dead birds, at the other, recognizable dinner. I was fascinated and terribly revolted, and watched for a while, the workers too busy to notice.
To this day, I'm not really sure how I found myself volunteering to dispose of a particular black garbage bag, but it somehow happened. Maybe the monotony of the labor had desensitized the guy who made the request, or maybe he and a few friends thought it would be funny to dare a scrawny ten year old to take the bag to the dumpster, but in any event, I volunteered, thrilled to be included and in my view, taken seriously. The next thing I knew I had my hands wrapped around the bag, twisted it closed, never peeking at its intimidating contents (which were warm, almost hot, to the touch). I proceeded to carry the bag down the hill to the dumpster.
My next memory is of feeling the bag in my hands, but it feeling terribly... weightless. I look down and gasp. In the orange glow of the outdoor driveway light, under a full harvest moon, are the contents of the bag, slick and slung on the sparse gravely grass, the bag, giving way under the wieght and heat of its contents. Chicken entrails.
The run-away mass was a gelatinous mess of glistening yarns of chicken intestines, replete with the greenish bulbs of chicken gall bladders, yellow and orange lumps, red and purple strands, wet, stinking and hot. Steam rose from the mass, like a lumpy cholent, gone terribly wrong. My mind jumped to images of demons, imps, dybbuks and the angel of death whose vividness had been amplified by my voracious reading of Isaac B. Singer addictive children's stories--the netherworld and its beings quite possibly inhabited the shtetles of Eastern Europe--but never until now, could they ever possibly exist in the vapid and outright pareve sprawl of suburban Michigan. The sight at my feet washes over my five senses. I am staring at a demon's lair, I am smelling the fowlest, foulest, scent that is so rich I can taste it, my eyes watering; I am holding a slick and gently waving plastic trash bag; and I hear the pulsing of my own blood in my ears. I have been carrying a compact travel size variety of hell.
Quickly Rabbi Someone (details fail me), grabs a crate, grabs a bag, lines the crate with the bag, grabs the ropey entrails and puts them in the reinforced bag with, as I remember correctly, bare hands. His expression is one of utter and complete disgust. I watch, sort of numb. When the entrails have all been safely placed back into the crate, I carry it to the dumpster. I dump it in. I go to the shul's bathroom and wash my hands, and then return to my father and continue helping him as if nothing has happened.
There is something about childhood that shielded me from that experience that night. Kids often fall on the pavement, skin their knees and get back up again, resume their play. And that day, I did the same thing, I shook off the nasties; forgetting about it.
The next year I did the chicken thing with my father, as well as the year after. But each year I grew a bit more squeamish. By the time I was in high school I could barely manage to shlug for myself, leaving the job of assisting my father (and the pocket money) to my younger siblings. I had had enough. Apparently, so did my sister, who became vegetarian shortly after one yom kippur and didn't touch meat, chicken or eggs for almost a decade.
A few years ago my father located a Muslim halal butchering facility that could be used to kosher chickens for our one night chicken extravaganza. This separated the chicken swinging experience from the chicken slaughtering experience. It also made really great press: Orthodox Jews and observant Muslims in a win-win arrangement, and not for secular, but for religious purposes.
I have since left home, moved out of state and needless to say am happily avoiding this custom. The chicken thing continues to grow in Detroit, thanks to my father's continued commitment. This past year, my father ordered 1,200 chickens. Over 2,000 Jews from all walks of life came to the succah this year to shlug kapores. The birds, which are organic and free range are sold at a low rate to local institutions, and are also sought after by many local families (and if I remember correctly, taste pretty amazing). My father also imports evergreen boughs and people can purchase fresh schach for their succahs.
This year, my father ordered a lamb along with the chickens, which was purchased by five families as an experiment in local, free range organic Kosher meat. It was not a cost effective venture but made for some pretty interesting discussion at this year's event.
This year, I am spending this holiday with my grandmother in Philadelphia. In lieu of chickens, I wrote a check to a local charity that helps children with special needs and swung some quarters over my head, wrapped in a handkerchief. I helped my grandmother with the prayers. We said it first in Hebrew, than in English and we giggled at the pristine substitute of a few coins replacing a squawking bird.
