Opinion | Not the right picture of Yom Kippur

My wife and I took issue with the photograph of people in Brooklyn practicing kapparah, an obscure, very controversial custom, to illustrate the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur [Digest, Sept. 30]. It was a poor choice at best. To begin with, the photograph was, to us, unreadable. At first glance, it appeared to depict a man whose black hat was emitting a cloud of smoke. Only after reading the caption did we begin to have an inkling of what we were seeing. The caption said the photograph depicted the practice of kapparah but offered no explanation of the practice.

Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, is the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Jewish tradition calls for a 25-hour period of fasting and prayer, devoting time to the public and private confession of sins, as well as honest atonement for those sins. At the end of the day, congregants hope all their sins of the previous year have been forgiven and the coming year will bring good health and happiness.

The custom of kapparah, dating back more than 500 years, is practiced only by ultra-Orthodox Jews. It entails the twirling of a live chicken three times above the head of a participant immediately before Yom Kippur begins. It is an archaic practice intended as an act of atonement for the sins of an individual and his community. After the chicken has been spun around, it is then sacrificed, its meat often donated to charity. The basis of this belief is that sins of the participants are transferred to the unfortunate chicken whose sacrifice then expiates said sins. This ritual is highly controversial. It has sparked numerous protests by Jewish leaders in the United States and Israel, as well as by animal rights activists. It is foreign and repugnant to millions of observant as well as nonobservant Jews. That none of this was explained in the caption was egregious. As a former newspaper photographer and writer, I know how difficult it can be for an editor to find a special photograph. Even so, if the editors couldn’t find an image that captured the spirit of this hallowed day, forbearance might have been a far better choice.

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