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

[Zev Sero]

On 28/09/17 15:03, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> Teh Be'eir Heiteiv (#4) prefers using money (citing the Shelah and the
> Maharil), as giving an ani money is less humiliating than giving them
> a chicken. He also write that the Shelah says you can't use ma'aser money.

No, he doesn't.  The idea of using money is extremely recent, and it 
would never have even occured to the Baer Hetev, let alone to the Shelah 
or the Maharil.    The central point of kaparos but that a life is being 
exchanged for a life, so it makes no sense to do it with an inanimate 
object such as money.

You have confused how one does kaparos with what one does with the 
chicken afterwards.   Kaparos has nothing to do with tzedaka., but the 
Rema, citing the Maharil, says that there is a minhag that after 
kaparos, instead of eating the chicken, one gives it to the poor, or 
else one exchanges it for money and give that to the poor.   The Baer 
Hetev, citing the Shelah, says the latter version is better, since it's 
less embarrassing to the recipient.


> Also, the Rama's only reason for keeping the minhag going is its age --
> we shouldn't drop a minhag vasiqin just willy nilly. 

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.  The vasiqin instituted it, and they knew what they were 
doing, so we should not change it just because we don't understand it; 
we should trust them and do as they taught us.

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