9 08, 2017

The Non-Jewish Origin of Kapparot

By |2017-08-09T09:00:27-07:00August 9th, 2017|Thoughts|

  On Sunday, I posted remarks about the horrible practice of mistreating chickens. The following is a shortened version of what I wrote about kapparot generally in my book “Maimonides: The Exceptional Mind.” Many Jews recognized that the kapparot ceremony was based on superstition, that waiving a chicken over one’s head a magical number of [...]

3 09, 2013

More on “The Mysterious Origin of the Monthly Sanctification of the Moon Ceremony”

By |2013-09-03T03:58:29-07:00September 3rd, 2013|Thoughts|

                                            By Israel Drazin                 In my essay “The Mysterious Origin of the Monthly ‘Sanctification of the Moon,’” I showed that the practice is based on an ancient fear that the moon that had disappeared and is now seen as only a sliver, might disappear entirely. To forestall this disaster, those who recite this [...]

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