Give your cat a cage of catnip

Every cat person knows how much kitties love catnip. But anyone who has every tried to grow it for them also knows how quickly they will crush the plants. Well, a couple years ago I hit on a solution that is not only useful, it’s fun for both cats and people:  Put a pot of catnip in a cage!

Any cage will do, as long as it is strong enough to support a cat or cats sitting on it. Because sit on it they will, as well as roll around in glee.  I found the one pictured here at a garage sale for $2 and it has served us well.

The catnip plant I got at a garden center. ( Previous attempts to start seeds indoors met with disaster, as cats ate the seedlings and knocked over the pots.) Plant it in a pot that fits in the cage. Cats will be able to nibble leaves that grow through the wire, but won’t kill the plant. Then sit back anf enjoy the fun!I

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Franken’s Apology: A Jewish Perspective

By now the whole world has heard about Leeann Tweeden’s accusation that, in 2006, not-yet-Senator Al Franken kissed her too aggressively during a skit rehearsal and later posed for an embarrassing “joke” photo where it appears he is groping her. There is plenty of discussion about these events all over the Internet, so I’m not going to go into more details here.

Rather, I want to look at the ethics of his apology from a Jewish perspective. Why Jewish per se?  Because Franken himself is Jewish and has said that his Jewish roots are part of his approach to public service. (Read more on that…)    Although I am not his rabbi, I did know Rabbi Shapiro of Temple Israel in Minneapolis (who was), and can attest that Al Franken grew up in a positive Jewish environment. So I think it is fair to look at the issue from the standpoint of Jewish law & ethics.

But first, three disclaimers:

(1)  I do not speak for Senator Franken, and I have not discussed religion with him.  Therefore,  all opinions in this post are my own.

(2)  I am not in any way, shape, or form trying to claim that what Franken did to Ms. Tweeden was OK.  If I thought that, there would be no need to discuss apologies.

(3) I have been a Franken supporter since his first campaign in 2008 and I still am.  However, this does not mean I am blind to his faults, or that I enjoy raunchy sexual humor (Not!)  No leader is perfect.  Even Moses made mistakes.

Forgiveness and apologies in Judaism

Judaism teaches that for sins between human beings and God, it is enough to simply pray to God for forgiveness.  So, for example, if I eat a ham sandwich, all I need to do is acknowledge the sin, ask God for forgiveness, and hopefully not do it again.  However, if I harm another person – whether physically, monetarily, or through embarrassment —  I cannot be forgiven by God until I have made amends directly to that person.  In this, Judaism recognizes the right of victims to have their pain and suffering directly acknowledged.

This is exactly how Franken has handled the Tweeden accusation against him. Within 24 hours of Tweeden stating her case on CNN, Franken issued a full public apology to reporters, as well as sending an apology directly to Ms. Tweeden, which she read and discussed on The View.  During that interview she said she accepted his apology and stated, “I sincerely think he took it in and realized that — man, he looks at it now and says ‘I’m disgusted by my actions’…” She also stated that it is not her intent to get him to resign, that the people of Minnesota should decide this.  All in all, she accepted his apology and change of heart as genuine. (Watch the full interview on YouTube)

Unlike Weinstein, Moore, Trump and others, Franken did not retreat into denial.  There was no degrading of Tweeden, no calling her derogatory nicknames, no threats of defamation lawsuits,  no Twitter storm attempting to divert attention from himself, no coverup.  Franken fully owned his guilt and manned up to apologize. Twice.  I respect that.

Publicly humiliating someone is a sin

Let me point out that Jewish law takes a very dim view of embarrassing someone in public; it is, in fact, a serious sin that the Talmud compares to shedding blood (Bava Metzia 58b).   So even if Franken did intend the now-infamous photo to be a practical joke, the fact that it humiliated her made it a sin that he must atone for.  The same goes for the kiss, about which he says, “I certainly don’t remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann.” Some people have nitpicked this statement, claiming that he is denying her story.  I don’t see it that way.  It is perfectly possible for two people to remember the same event in different ways.  What seems trivial in one person’s mind can loom large in the mind of another.  For him it was probably just a rehearsal.  To her, it was devastating and made her angry for years.

So why didn’t he apologize back in 2006?  Because apparently he did not realize the seriousness of its impact on her until she told her story last week.  Some people have implied that he only apologized because he got caught, but this contradicts her own story on CNN, where she says she saw the photo after they got back from the USO trip.  For whatever reason, she did not confront him about it back then.  What matters now is that as soon as he became aware of the impact on her, he owned it.

However, we should note that pillorying Franken  in a social media feeding frenzy is also wrong.  Ms. Tweeden has stated that it was not her intention to get him fired, she simply wanted to tell her story and get an apology.  She got that and has accepted it.  If the victim does not want to press it further, shouldn’t we respect that?  Must we continue to drag both of them through the media?

Is “joking around” an excuse?

This brings us to the question of whether “it was clearly a joke” could be an excuse. The Jewish answer is no, not if it causes harm to the brunt of the joke.  In a discussion about embarrassment and nicknames, the Talmud (Baba Metzia 58b) says that one who calls someone a derogatory nickname — even if he or she is used to it — will spend eternity in Gehenna.  This may be hyperbole, but it does indicate the seriousness of humiliating somebody in public. (President Trump should listen to this.  Although he is not Jewish, one would hope that his Jewish daughter and son-in-law would point out it him.  Maybe they have but he doesn’t listen?)

Humor is always tricky.  What is funny to one generation can be downright disgusting to another.  Even from group to group or person to person, what is acceptable can vary widely.  To be sure, much of Franken’s humor back in his Saturday Night Live (SNL) days was very raunchy and misogynist.  (Read more…)  SNL today remains a venue where comedy often crosses the line into offensiveness.  This is not to make excuses, it just is what it is.  Perhaps we should all take a long hard look at ourselves and how we feed into this national obsession with raunchy sexist humor.

Again drawing on Jewish thought, Psalm 1:1 tells us not to “sit in the seat of the scorners,” i.e., those who mock others. Good humor does not put others down.

Franken’s humor and the 2008 Senate race

Here in Minnesota, when Franken ran for the Senate in 2008, his humor became an issue during the campaign.  The Republicans jumped on various articles and skits he had written or participated in (or sometimes just pitched but never produced) as “proof” that he was morally unfit to lead.  Even among Democrats, there was concern about his public image . Focus groups said loud and clear that they did not want Minnesota represented by a clown, especially a raunchy one.

Here again, Franken looked at his behavior and sincerely apologized: “For 35 years I was a writer,” he said at his nomination speech. “I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren’t funny. Some of them weren’t appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that. And I understand that the people of Minnesota deserve a senator who won’t say things that will make you feel uncomfortable.”

So a lot of the bad comedy material from the past that his enemies are now dredging up is old news to us Minnesotans, who elected him in 2008.  In 2014 he won the Democratic primary with 94.5% of the vote and the general election with 53.2% of the vote.  So obviously Minnesota feels he has grown beyond his past off-color humor and is now doing a good job representing us.

Unfortunately, the rest of the country apparently hasn’t followed Minnesota politics that closely.  A whole new generation, who weren’t even born in 1975 when SNL began, are discovering anew that Al Franken the comedian wrote offensive jokes before he became a senator.  What they are missing is that during the campaign he promised to turn over a new leaf –and he did.  He went so far as to not tell jokes — even acceptable ones — suppressing his inner clown to take on the seriousness of governing in the Senate.  (Read more…)

Is Franken unfit to lead?

Now that the Tweeden story is out, certain people are calling for Franken’s resignation.  Abby Honold, the Minnesota rape victim who helped Franken craft a bill that would help train First Responders to better help victims of sexual assault, called Franken to say he was no longer fit to sponsor it.  For the good of the cause, Franken turned it over to Senator Amy Klobuchar.

But I find myself wondering if Honold is really right.  Is Franken really unfit to lead on women’s issues or anything else?

Recall again that the Tweeden case, as well as his sexist humor in general, occurred before he was elected to the Senate. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, 14 women staffers who worked for Franken signed a statement saying that he never acted inappropriately towards them:

“Many of us spent years working for Senator Franken in Minnesota and Washington,” their statement read. “In our time working for the senator, he treated us with the utmost respect. He valued our work and our opinions and was a champion for women both in the legislation he supported and in promoting women to leadership roles in our office.”

So it would seem that he really has turned over a new leaf.  I find myself thinking about how, in many recovery programs, the best outreach counselors are those who have been there.  Ex-alcoholics, ex-addicts, ex-gang members, ex-convicts — the list goes on of people who can speak convincingly to offenders precisely because they once were offenders themselves.  In a follow-up interview on CNN, Tweeden herself blames our culture, and said that change is going to come “not from the victims coming out, and talking about it, I think its gonna come from the people who may be doing the abusing that don’t even realize they are abusing because it is so a part of the culture…” . (Watch the  video)

So why can’t  Al Franken be an advocate for women’s rights?  It would seem that a man who himself once degraded women on the stage and in his writing — but who has since repented and reformed — would be the ideal person to convince other men to do the same.  In other areas we support –even praise! — ex-offenders who do such education and outreach.  Why should  this be any different?

Take Alan Alda, for instance.  If  you watch the early seasons of M.A.S.H., there’s a great deal of material that comes across as sexual harassment.  Then, partway through the series,  Alda became a feminist. And if you watch the episodes in order, you can see the show evolve into a more respectful treatment of female characters.  Having followed Franken’s career here in Minnesota, I have seen a similar evolution in Franken’s attitude.  

As I write this, the news just broke that Senator Franken does not intend to resign.  Frankly (pun intended), I’m glad.  So far, he is the only one of the many powerful men recently accused of sexual misconduct who has had the guts to take responsibility and admit his mistakes.  That shows courage and strength of character. We need more of that kind of leadership.  

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Kabbalistic Musings on “Life of Pi”

On the first page of the novel, Life of Pi, the main character, Pi Patel, states that one of his two academic majors was in religious studies, with his thesis focused on “certain aspects of the cosmogony theory of Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed.”  Luria, also known as the “holy Sri” (Lion), is still revered as one of the greatest of all Jewish mystics.
In the movie, Pi does not mention Luria by name, but he does say that he lectures on Kabbalah at the university. Given this reference (and a few others I will explain below), I feel justified in assuming that there are Jewish mystical themes encoded in the story, even though they are presented mostly in terms of Hinduism.  As I am a visual-oriented person (one of my autistic gifts), I will focus primarily on the movie, while using the book for more background references as needed.
(Warning: If you read beyond this point, you will encounter spoilers, so if you have not read the book and/or seen the movie, stop here or proceed at your own risk!)

In both the book and the movie versions, Pi Patel’s father owns a zoo, so he grows up with a lot of practical knowledge about animals.  He is also very interested in religions. In addition to his mother’s Hinduism, he also explores Christianity and Islam, finding truth in all three paths and combining their practices in his daily life. His brother ridicules him for this, while his father tries to convince him that “religion is darkness” and that rational thinking — science — is the way of “the new India.”  Pi replies with the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “All religions are true.”
The book goes into considerable detail about the three theologies and the differences between them, while the movie relies more on visual scenes of worship to get this point across. The book has a poignant — if hostile — marketplace encounter, with Pi’s three religious teachers each claiming him for their own faith.  The movie leaves this scene out, perhaps because it might offend viewers, or else be over the heads of children in a PG audience.  It is well worth reading if you haven’t already.
Pi is especially puzzled by Christianity, because he cannot understand why God would allow his innocent son to suffer for the sins of the guilty.  To him this makes no sense at all. The question of suffering recurs throughout the story.  How can a God who loves us still allow us to suffer?
The shipwreck

Because of political changes in India (during the administration of Indira Gandhi), Pi’s father decides to close the zoo, sell the animals, and move the family to Canada. They will travel with those animals headed for North America on a Japanese-owned freighter named the Tsimtsum.  Which brings us to the second Kabbalistic reference in the story.  Although Tsimtsum might look like a Japanese name, it is in fact Hebrew, and means “contraction” or “withdrawal.”  It refers to the teaching of Isaac Luria which says that, before the Creation, everything was infinite God-essence.  In order for God to create the universe as we know it, God first had to create a vacant space — a void — for it to exist in.  God did this by withdrawing — contracting  — Him/herself.  Within this void, God is hidden, allowing for free will and for independent creatures like us to exist. 
That’s all very interesting, but why did author Jann Martel name the ship Tsimtsum?  

In a blog article on this topic, David Sanders quotes Martel on this question: “I wanted a representative scoop of religions in the book – Hindu, Christian, Islam. I would have loved to have Pi be a Jew, too, but there are no synagogues in Pondicherry [where the family was from in India]. So I chose Tsimtsum as the name of the Japanese cargo boat because, although it sounds Japanese, it is a Hebrew word.”

So my intuition was correct:  Martel wanted to include Jewish mysticism in the mix, but like God in the cosmic tsimtsum, it is hidden. However, I think the symbolism goes deeper than that.  Genesis says that the world was “void and formless,” with the spirit of God moving upon “the deep,” often visualized as a vast ocean.The Zohar describes Creation as beginning with a primal point (singularity?) within the void, which then expanded.  When the ship sinks, Pi’s world is contracted into a single point — the lifeboat — on a vast formless ocean, reversing Creation to chaos, so to speak. The graphics in the movie show this in several scenes, with Pi’s boat a mere speck upon the ocean. 

“As above so below” — the clouds reflecting in the water
make it appear  as if the boat is in the sky
The movie also uses another common kabbalistic theme: “As above, so below.” This is the idea that the physical world “below” is a reflection of the higher spiritual world “above.”  In numerous scenes we see the sky reflected in the water to the point that there is no horizon, no differentiation between the two. In the contraction of Pi’s world, everything blends into one.

In one scene, Pi looks into the ocean and sees the whole universe reflected — reminiscent of a childhood story told earlier by his mother, about how the Hindu god Krishna opened his mouth and the universe was seen within it.  (The CGI graphics of the two scenes are very similar.)   Once again, we are reminded of the spirit of God moving upon the waters in Genesis. 

The voyage

Pi makes it to the lifeboat, along with four animals: a wounded zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a tiger named Richard Parker, a name he got through a mix-up of paperwork.  There is a lot of focus on names in this book.  Pi’s first name is Piscine, from the French. But the bullies in his school take to mispronouncing it as “Pissing,” so he re-names himself Pi. The Tiger was supposed to be called “Thirsty,” but ended up as Richard Parker instead. In both cases, a less dignified name was replaced by a better one.  In the Bible, a number of characters are given new names to reflect a new status.

The zebra and orangutan are killed by the hyena, which in turn is killed by the tiger.  This leaves Pi alone with a vicious, hungry predator.  At first Pi is terrified, but he soon realizes that he and the tiger must co-exist.  He therefore works to establish his dominance and define their territories, using the methods of a circus trainer.  Various interpretations for this relationship have been put forth, most centering on some form of the tiger being his animal self.  This also fits with Jewish thought, where we have both a good side (yetzer tov) and a bad side (yetzer ha-ra.)  One cannot destroy the bad side, but one can learn to control it, as Pi does with the tiger.  In the book he considers various ways to destroy the tiger, but comes to realize that they need each other to survive.  “My fear of him keeps me alert, tending to his needs gives my life purpose,” he explains. 

The carnivorous Island

One of the strangest episodes in Pi’s voyage is the floating island full of meetkats.  Safe by day, the island becomes carnivorous at night.  This is so weird that many readers see it as pure fantasy.  I would like to suggest it is a combination of reality and imagination.  No, there are no ecosystems like the one Pi describes. However, there are many small islands in the Pacific, and floating islands of volcanic pumice — some with trees — have been reported. (Read more…) Carnivorous plants also exist in some places. So these elements do have a ring of truth.

By the time Pi gets to this island, he and Richard Parker are so close to death as to be delirious. In the movie they have just gone through a terrible storm where Pi cries out to God, “I lost my family, I lost everything. I surrender. What more do you want?” He has reached the depths of despair, the deepest dark night of the soul.  He fully expects to die.  So why couldn’t there be a real island with some sort of animals on it, that Pi mis-remembers in this state of confusion?  If you compare the images of the island trees with the banyans he walked among back in India, they are very similar.

Screen shot of The Island, enhance by me to make the
reclining Vishnu shape stand out more clearly. 
Another aspect of the island is mystical. In the beginning of the movie, we are told that the Hindu god Vishnu “sleeps on the boundless ocean of consciousness” and the universe is his dream.  After Pi learns about Christianity, he thanks Vishnu for leading him to find Christ, and touches a small statue of Vishnu reclining.  When we see the island from afar, it had this same shape, formed by the outline of the trees. This suggests the possibility that the island may be some form of miracle, that God is watching over Pi and Richard Parker even if hidden.

But although the island suggests sweet repose, it is a false peace.  All that the island gives in the daytime, it takes away at night.  And it is lonely.  Pi could have stayed there forever, eating plants by day and sleeping with the meerkats in the trees by night, but it was an empty existence. When he finds a human tooth embedded in a fruit (which opens like a lotus in the movie) and realizes that some previous castaway had died there, he decides to leave and takes the tiger with him.

The two stories
Richard Parker walks off into the junge


After 227 days of survival on the high seas, Pi is washed ashore in Mexico.  As he lies exhausted on the beach, Richard Parker walks off into jungle without even looking back  The tiger is never seen again. This deeply saddens Pi, who even years later wishes there had been some sort of final look or growl in parting.  

In the book, during the first part about life in a zoo, Pi told the story of a black panther that escaped the Zurich zoo in winter and survived on its own for several months.  Now we know this was to lay the groundwork for the possibility that Richard Parker also survives in the South American jungle. Still, Pi misses him.

Once back in civilization, parts of the voyage sound too strange to be true. The two Japanese insurance investigators don’t believe him, and ask for an ordinary story to put in their report, one that their company will believe. So he obliges them and tells a more common lifeboat survival tale, one of treachery, murder and cannibalism, in which only he survives. In this second story, the zebra is a wounded sailor, the hyena is a barbarous cook, the orangutan is his mother, and he is the tiger.  In its own way this tale is also hard to believe, because his mother and father can’t swim, his brother refused to get up to investigate the loud noise, and all three were down below when the ship sank. Only Pi was on deck because he went up to see the storm.

So which story is true?  In both stories the ship sinks, he loses his family, suffers for 227 days at sea and is the sole survivor.  In the end, neither story explains why the ship sank. Neither explains Pi’s suffering. Neither can be proven true or false. 

Pi asks, “Which is the better story?” The writer who is interviewing him says that the one with the tiger is better.  The Japanese insurance men apparently agree, because in the end, they include the tiger story in their report. 

As Rebbe Nachman of Breslov once said, “Not all the stories are true, but when the people tell them, they are holy.” One cannot prove religion one way or another. Is rationalism really better than mysticism? What if life really is a random jumble of meaningless events?  Can we live with that?  It is the nature of human beings to seek meaning in life, to bring order out of chaos.  Whether or not Richard Parker was real, without the tiger Pi would not have survived.

“Above all things, don’t lose hope,” said the survival manual in the lifeboat. 

“Nver despair!” taught Rebbe Nachman. 

The better story is the one with hope.


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Guest Column: “To Save a Life” by Rocky Schwartz

Editor’s Intro: Each year I write a column about why I oppose using chickens for Kapporos, the pre-Yom Kippur ceremony practiced by some Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. I have written about it from the standpoints of history, of Jewish mysticism, of public opinion, of culture wars and politics.  In all of those stories, the chickens themselves were anonymous, suffering en masse in the background. This year, I received this story about one individual chicken whose life was spared at a Kapporos site, and the compassionate way that came about.  I was deeply touched by this true tale, and so I offer it to here, my readers. Perhaps seeing one chicken as an individual life will help you to see all of them as God’s creatures, each with his or her own story to live. (Rabbi Gershom) 

*  *  *  *  *


To Save a Life

by Rocky Schwartz

On a Monday night in October, we walked into hell. We had come to protest an Orthodox Jewish ceremony called Kapporos, in which chickens are slaughtered before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  Although I myself am Jewish, I am not Hasidic and did not grow up practicing Kapporos.

Kapporos chickens in a crate

On a busy street corner, men were grabbing six-week-old baby birds, flipping them upside down and slicing their throats. Behind them, a truck sat on the sidewalk, filled with crates stacked upon crates of more babies.

When I immediately began sobbing at the horror of the sight, a dozen little boys gathered around me, mocking and laughing. Someone shouted, “Kill it right in front of her!” He swung a young peeping chicken by her wings.

I was horrified that such young people could be so callous toward baby animals suffering before them. The adults present either did not see what was happening, or they did not care.

After I composed myself (read: put up all the mental walls so as to not truly see the reality in front of me), I joined about 50 activists who stood protesting the slaughter. Tensions ran high on both sides, but I tried to remain calm. I walked among those who were swinging the birds, telling them:

They feel.


They feel pain.

They want to live.

They are fighting for their lives.

*You* have a choice.

Some people responded, “Yes, I have made my choice,” meaning that they had decided to have their bird slaughtered. I told them the birds didn’t have a choice in having their lives taken from them. Most ignored or mocked me, but one young girl, maybe 12 years old, spoke with me. She told me her name was Rose, and said a lot of people were listening to us and and having their minds changed, even if they did not say so in public.  She herself was torn. Should she follow the lead of her parents or not?

I asked her if she would do it if the animals being used were cats or dogs.

“Definitely not,” she answered.

I told her the birds are no different, that they, too, feel pain and fear. I showed her the background on my phone, in which I’m hugging my late love, a rooster named Tabitha. I told her he was my best friend, but he died in January.

“And tonight,” I told her,you have the choice not to take someone else’s life.”

“But what do I do?” she asked. “I already have a ticket!”

A fellow protester named David instructed me to ask her to still use her ticket to get a bird, but give the bird to me after the ceremony, instead of having her killed.

“I’ll give her a safe home,” I assured her.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll find you.”

I returned to the group of protesters, hopeful but not optimistic that the child would actually return and give me the chicken.

To my surprise, only five minutes later a young figure ran toward me through the crowd and shouted, “Here!”

Rose the hen at about six weeks old,
soon after she was rescued

It was the same girl. She quickly pushed a live hen into my hands. Then we ran in opposite directions, she back into the crowd and I toward the safety of my fellow protesters Vanessa and Steven’s car. As I ran, I called out a stunned “thank you,” clasping the trembling, feathered body in my arms.

On the way back to the car, I hid the small survivor behind my protest sign, shielding her from the crowd filling the street, who were killing her kin. I was also afraid someone might grab her from me. Once in the car, the chicken continued to tremble in my lap, but slowly accepted gentle petting and some water. I decided to name her Rose, after the little girl who had spared her life.

While I was sitting in the car, my partner Jay spoke with the girl. He told her how brave she was and asked if she wanted to be an animal rights activist. She told him her parents are extremely protective, that she doesn’t even have a cell phone or email address. She wasn’t able to protest publicly, but she did care about animals. I wondered how many others in the crowd didn’t want to kill their chicken, but were not as brave as this child.

Vanessa and Steve returned to the protest, managed to convince one more man to spare a baby rooster, and then drove us home.

*  *  *  *  *

Rose today, as full-grown adult

Safe at home, Rose the rescue hen sits contented in my lap, preening herself and my arm. Out in the expanse of our backyard, she chooses to stand beside me. When I go to put her to bed at night, she cries out in panic and runs after me toward my bed, until I sit with her as she falls asleep.

She still bears the marks of the life she escaped. Badly infected feet from days spent in filth and crammed into a crate. A too-big body for a six-week-old, still-peeping chick, the result of over-breeding for the meat industry.  Anxiety from her history of trauma.

But she is one of the lucky ones. Though she was specifically destined to be part of a religious ritual, her fate was to be no different from the 263 baby chickens killed for food in the United States each second, an incomprehensible 52 billion globally each year. The only difference for her? She was seen as an individual. And a child had the power to save her life.

The author, Rocky, and her new friend Rose

*  *  *  *  *

Editor’s postscript:  Rocky refers to the birds being sacrificed as babies.  These are not fluffy baby chicks, but six-week-old broiler chickens who have been artificially bred to grow and gain weight as fast as possible.  It is not that the Hasidim purposely choose to use babies as such; rather, it is that these are the type of chickens now available from the meat industry.  If you eat chicken, the likelihood is that the bird on your plate was also a juvenile bird only a couple months old.  They go to their deaths peeping in panice, never living long enough to cluck or crow.

For more on this issue read my previous 2013 post, Kapporos Chicken’s Don’t Sing!  about the peeping chickens, and why Hasidim do not understand that they are crying. 

See also: The Baal Shem Tov did it with a chicken, so why are you telling me not to? — my answer to this Frequently Asked Question I often get from my fellow Hasidim.

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