Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC - 2024
Kapporot, or Kaporos, a ritual practiced by some sects of Orthodox Jews, prior to Yom Kippur, in which a chicken is swung over the head of a practitioner three times while a prayer is recited and the sins of the practitioner are symbolically transferred to the chicken. The chicken is then handed to a Schochet (person certified to kill the chicken in accordance with schechita law) and the meat is either donated or eaten at the Yom Kippur meal. This ritual is obviously controversial, not without it's detractors, and only observed by certain sects. In fact, due to protests from animal rights groups et al, these occasions are becoming more difficult to witness in public - occurring in more out of the way places, behind closed doors, or with heightened security. These images were taken in Williamsburg (2024). I also visited and documented some of the gatherings in Brooklyn's Crown Heights. In both cases, I was looked upon with some suspicion but, generally, participants were friendly or showed little interest in my presence and process of documentation.
