send the sinful chicken to hell! take II

bounced up from october 1st, 2006 

swing the chicken three times around your head. pass to it your sins and cleans yourself.

and then, send the sinful chicken to hell!

don’t you feel purified now?

the innocence of children often seems wiser than the experience of their parents…

another two points for religion!

amended:

a year has past. yom kippur is once again at our doorstep, here in the jewish world.

karen horwitz recently commented on the original post: “Since I was a little girl my mother had me put a dime in a handkerchief and say the kaparot prayer three times and give the money to charity. My grandmother was orthodox and it was called caporah.”

yes karen, as a child that’s the way i remember it too. but the weird part is that the ultra-orthodox see it differently. can’t God be appeased without the slaughtering of a chicken?

what is yom kippur … the day of atonements? the central theme of this holy day is atonement and penance from sins, firstly against one’s fellow man and secondly against god. many traditions have evolved; fasting, prayer, wearing white, no bathing or washing, no wearing of leather shoes, oh! and no sex either! ”For on this day He will forgive you, to purify you, that you be cleansed from all your sins before G-d” (Leviticus 16:30)

so what do chicken have to do with it? maybe a trace of sacrifices in the ancient temple. maybe remnants of pagan practices. superstition. this is the prayer recited as the live chicken is waved three times above the head just prior to it being butchered: “This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. This chicken will go to its death while I will enter and proceed to a good long life, and peace“.

packed in small cages in the markets and main streets of many cities, if you look closely you’ll see they’re barely moving. they hold their beaks open from thirst, hunger and suffocation after many hours in the sun, sometimes days. eye movements are evidence that they are still alive. barely. on this the holiest of days, why is so much slaughter necessary? why is so much cruelty to animals necessary? butchering them without mercy as we ask for mercy for ourselves, for atonement, for forgiveness.

there’s another way – read the paper chicken

going back to the essence of yom kippur i am not going to slaughter a chicken but i ask you, dorit, uri, tamar and hila, for forgiveness. your forgiveness for moments of anger, for things i said that i shouldn’t have, for moments of impatience, for not always being attentive to your feelings and your needs, for not always fulfilling your expectations. 

i apologize and ask your forgiveness.

nir

amended september 21st 2007: 

a child of 3-4 months; how many sins has he accumulated to justify the slaughter of another chicken?

after less than half an hour of shooting the butchers began to get annoyed with me, worried i might harm their ‘business’. i welcomed their censure, it was a time to leave. i was sick to my stomach.

9-11

the shock and sorrow haven’t faded

not a happy birthday

gilad shalit is 21 years old today. this is gilad’s 2nd birthday in captivity, somewhere in gaza, ever since his abduction on june 25th 2006. a young israeli soldier waits in a dark damp cellar, deep underground, secluded from the world, counting the days. perhaps he does not even realize it is his birthday today.

   

gilad may be an out of the ordinary young man, but as a soldier his destiny matters hugely to all israelis. military service plays a huge part in every israeli life. in a small country with a large recruited army everyone has a close relative or friend serving in the idf. no israeli can fail to be moved by gilad’s smiling face on the front pages of israeli newspapers, calling for his release and remembering his birthday, and by the ordeal of his family.

father, noam shalit, stands by a table decorated for a birthday party for gilad in the rabin square in tel-aviv. hila and i drove to tel-aviv to show our support for the family. it was the saddest birthday party i have ever attended.

nir

malki

the following mail was forwarded to me by micahel levgur – thanks micha!

the letter and follow up reading i did on the malki foundation site deeply touched my heart.

published here with permission and thanks to arnold roth.

28th June 2007 

Dear friends,

Today’s New York Times carries a review of a film called “Hot House” that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We’re not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. You can see it here.

The film is produced by HBO. So it’s presumably HBO’s publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie. That female is our child’s murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates. The background is here.

Neither the New York Times nor HBO are likely to give even a moment’s attention to the victims of the barbarians who destroyed the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and the lives of so many victims. So we would be grateful if you would pass along this link to some pictures of our daughter whose name was Malki. She was unable to reach her twenties – Hamas saw to that.

Though she was only fifteen years old when her life was stolen from her and from us, we think Malki was a beautiful young woman, living a beautiful life. We ask your help so that other people – far fewer than the number who will see the New York Times, of course – can know about her. Please ask your friends to look at the pictures – some of the very few we have – of our murdered daughter. They are at http://www.kerenmalki.org/photo.htm

And remind them of what the woman in the Israeli prison – the woman smiling so happily in the New York Times – said last year. ” I’m not sorry for what I did. We’ll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison.

“With so many voices demanding that Israel release its terrorist prisoners, small wonder she’s smiling.

With greetings from Jerusalem,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
On behalf of Keren Malki

public transportation security

quoting from my own a lovely beginning … and then the end: ”recently i’ve been following several online discussions that have to do with restrictions on photographers. it seems that more and more photographic content is becoming off limits for commercial use; the louvre exterior, the lighting of the eiffel tower, municipal buildings ‘belonging’ to the city of london, n.y. subway and many other locations. that’s where editorial photo-journalistic photography has an advantage.”

for editorial use, as opposed to commercial  use (such as advertising), many of these subjects are indeed allowed. still, many locations, even public locations, try to ban photography using all kinds of strange excuses.

not too long ago i was hounded by jerusalem central bus station security personnel. i was shooting, in a documentary sense, the security procedures around the buses in the public street. the security guys weren’t happy and they rudely told me it was against their internal regulations. only thing is since i’m not an employee of their’s i could care less about their internal regulations (and they didn’t ask nicely either). they had a hard time understanding this. i invited them to call the police and went on shooting.

but, i do have to admit, the security people’s concerns are certainly understandable. their job is not one i would wish to do and seems almost impossible. one event, to which i was a witness of the outcome, took place on sunday, may 18, 2003, when seven people were killed and 20 wounded in a suicide bombing on egged bus no. 6 near french hill in jerusalem. hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

an israel police bomb squad expert searches for debris following the may 18th suicide attack.

the seven victims were olga brenner, yitzhak moyal, nelly perov, ghalab tawil, marina tsahivershvili, shimon ustinsky and roni israeli.

nir

niralon.smugmug.com

does God love gays?

the rabbis don’t think so! for the past two weeks they have been wreaking havoc in the streets of jerusalem. burning, rioting, throwing bricks at policemen, blocking traffic, threatening lives - they call it protest. they call it preservation of sacred values. they ‘speak’ in the name of God. do they really?

 

freedom of expression, democracy, abomination, sins – words being thrown around lately. are they important words, God? are they worth lives?

do you really love gays less than rabbis?

 

a compromise was reached. gays would not parade but rather hold a closed rally at the hebrew university sports stadium in jerusalem. everyone claimed victory, but it was a sad event. much less participants than in previous years. less colorful. jerusalem’s secular residents held hostage by a violent gang of hooligans backed by a copyright on God.

but still they come…

 

nir

niralon.smugmug.com

send the sinful chicken to hell!

swing the chicken three times around your head. pass to it your sins and cleans yourself.

and then, send the sinful chicken to hell!

 

don’t you feel purified now?

the innocence of children often seems wiser than the experience of their parents…

another two points for religion!

nir

niralon.smugmug.com