[Avodah] Trashing Kapporos - Kapporah Gain, or Kapporah Deficit?

[Zev Sero]

On 30/09/17 16:35, Ben Waxman via Avodah wrote:
> If I can mix actuality with the idea below:
> http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/236149
> 
> What is the story a scandal? If the minhag has nothing to do with 
> tzedaka, why the need to redo it? OK, I understand that it isn't nice or 
> honest that someone made a buck with these chickens but why should that 
> affect the people who did kaparot? Given that this scandal happened in 
> Chabad communities, it only emphasizes the question.

The problem had nothing to do with someone making a buck.  There's 
nothing wrong with a yid making a parnassah:-)  Especially on Erev Yom 
Kippur one should not begrudge a yid his parnassah.   The scandal is 
that they were not shechted, which *is* the kaparah.  If they shechted 
them properly and *then* sold them to the arabs nobody would have cared.


[Email #2]

On 30/09/17 21:03, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 04:33:13PM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
>:> Well, let's pull up the mar'eh maqom I cited, BH OC 605:4, d"h "bemamon".
>:>      And this is better than giving the ani a rooster, for he will
>:>      be mevayeish (Shelah, Maharil). And he should be nizhar to give
>:>      maaser; he shouldn't take this pidyon from maaser money, rather
>:>      from his own money. (Shelah)

>: As I pointed out before, that is not talking about how to do
>: kaporos, it refers only to what to do with the chicken afterwards.
>: Kaporos cannot be done on money.  The idea makes no sense.  Kaporos
>: is done on a chicken, and then there is a separate minhag to give
>: tzedaka, and it's better to give money than the chicken.

> Only because you think we're switching topics from the pidyon of the person
> to the pidyon of the person's pidyon.

We clearly have switched topics.  There is no other way to read the 
Rama.   The Mechaber says what the minhag of kaparos is: to shecht a 
chicken and say pesukim over it. No mention of tzedaka.  The Rama says 
that we should not change this minhag.  Then he says how it should be 
done, with a bird of the appropriate gender, and preferably white.

*Then* he introduces a completely new minhag, that *after* doing kaparos 
we give the bird to the poor, or we redeem it and give the money. The 
Rama's word is "lifdosan", to redeem *them*, i.e. the birds, not the 
person.  and the Baer Hetev refers to this money as "pidyon kaparos", 
not "kaparos" itself, or "pidyon ha'adam".  It's a pidyon just like 
pidyon maaser sheni; since there is a minhag to give this bird to the 
poor, we buy it back from tzedaka.

>:> Actually, the tzedaqah of the chicken that the BH he tells you is
>:> inferior to giving money, is the meilitz yosher mini elef we refer
>:> to in the text of kaparos. Right before YK we do one last mitzcah as a
>:> meilitz yosher before going into din.

>: Since when?  Where did you get that idea?  The language of the Rama
>: and the nos'ei kelim is very clear, and there is no mention at all
>: of a connection between kaparos and tzedaka...

> The Be'er Heiteiv assumes that if you're not giving the poor
> person the money, you'd be giving them the more embarassing chicken.

Yes, of course he does; that is what the Rama writes explicitly.  The 
minhag is that once we're done with the bird we give it to the poor 
rather than keep it for ourselves, *or* we buy it back and give them 
money.  On *this* the Baer Hetev says the second option is preferable.

See the next paragrah, about the minhag to go to the cemetery and give 
tzedaka there, that this tzedaka is the pidyon hakaparos mentioned 
earlier.  So these are two different customs, kaparos and pidyon 
kaparos, and the pidyon kaparos is done at the cemetery.

See Siddur R Yaacov Kopel, which says explicitly that after it's 
shechted it remains in its kedusha and there is no need to give it to 
the poor.  (Not that he objects to giving it, but that's a separate 
minhag, and failing to do so doesn't invalidate the kaporah.)

> (We also know from the line said immediately before kapparos are about
> a meilitz yosher testifying that the person isn't all bad, which makes
> no sense of this minhag weren't all about doing a mitzvah.)

Where did you get this idea?  There's nothing about it in the source 
we're discussing, or in any source that I've seen.   The pasuk from Iyov 
is said because it says "I have found a ransom", which is the "gever" 
that we will shecht instead of this "gever".  It has nothing to do with 
doing a mitzvah.  Indeed the whole thing is based on this pasuk in Iyov, 
which is why we say from Tehillim 107 only the pesukim about a prisoner 
and a sick person, and not those about a traveler or a seafarer, because 
only those two are mentioned in that section of Iyov.

> As you yourself write, epmashsis added:

>: The chicken is the pidyon of the person.  Zeh chalifasi.   Later,
>: instead of GIVING THE CHICKEN TO TZEDAKA AS IS THE MINHAG, one can
>: buy it, like pidyon maaser sheni.

Yes, but I don't see how you find support in this.  Giving it to the 
poor is a separate minhag.

BTW the embarrassment to the poor is not that you're giving them a 
chicken, it's that you're giving them your kaparah, and they feel like 
you don't want to eat it because it's tainted with the averos it carries 
or something, but you think it's good enough for them.  This isn't a 
logical thing, it's a feeling that the aniyim have, so giving them money 
prevents it.  On the contrary, if they see that the rich and important 
don't disdain to eat their own kaporos, then they know there's nothing 
wrong with it, so they won't be embarrassed to take chickens from those 
who do give them (whether because they can't afford to buy them back, or 
because they don't want to deal with cleaning and kashering on this busy 
day).

>:>: No, it isn't.  "Minhag vasiqin" doesn't mean an old minhag, it means
>:>: a minhag of the ancients.  He's not appealing to its age but to its
>:>: pedigree....

This whole discussion got off on a wrong track, because I assumed you 
were at least right in associating the word "vosik" with age, and that 
had it says "minhag vosik" you'd have been right to translate it as "an 
old minhag".   But I suspected something was wrong, and then I realised 
what it was.  "Vosik" does not mean old.  You're confusing it with 
"`atik". "Vosik" means, as Jastrow renders it, "enduring; trusty; 
strong; distinguished".  "Talmid vosik" is "a faithful student; a 
distinguished scholar".   "Vosik nesaticho bo'umos" is "I made thee 
distinguished among the nations".  "Esp. Vethikin (ancients), the 
conscientiously pious men of former days."

So "minhag vosikin" is not at all an appeal to its age, but to its 
pedigree as a minhag of distinguished people who knew what they were 
doing, just like saying krias shema "kevosikin" means like the 
especially scrupulous, not like the elderly people who are up at dawn 
because they can't sleep anyway:-)


[Email #3]

PS to my last post, I just looked "vosik" up in Ivrit, to see whether 
its meaning has perhaps changed over time, but it appears not really.
https://he.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A7  defines it in 
leshon Chazal, as "trustworthy", and in Ivrit as "experienced".  So even 
when it's used in its modern sense it refers not to the passage of time 
itself but to the experience gained over that time.   The etymology is 
not clear, but it's close to an arabic word meaning "trustworthy".  It 
does offer the English words "old, senior" as a translation of the 
modern definition, but again it's clearly not "old" in the sense of age, 
but of experience.

-- 
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
zev at sero.name           be a brilliant year for us all