Tag #120698 - Interview #87387 (Rifca Segal)

After the New Year, before the Great Day, which is called Yom Kippur – the Day of forgiving –, people go to a course of water. In Sulita, we went to the lake after the meal, to the Dracsani lake. But I never did this here in Botosani. You go there, and you turn your pockets inside out, and you shake yourself free of all sins. Also, at the synagogue, you pound yourself with your fist on the wall, and say: “Al het hudusi” – “hatati” in this modern language, but I knew the “hudusi” variant, and you ask God to forgive you for the mistakes you committed. On the second day after the New Year, which is to say a day before Yom Kippur, you take a fowl – a rooster in the case of men, a hen in the case of women, and in the case of children it depends, either a rooster or a hen –, you spin it above your head, and you say: “Zot – it is zot in Ivrit, but it is zois in Hebrew – capurusi, zot halifusi...” I know the whole prayer. “This is the human being that dies instead of me, passes away instead of me.” For God writes your name in the book on New Year’s Eve, and on Yom Kippur, on the 10th day he announces the verdict, whether or not you will live. You spin while holding this hen… The Jewish name for it is kapores, but it is called kaparot in Ivrit. I never liked it. I wasn’t afraid, but I felt ill at ease. The whole family did this, turn by turn – we, the children, as well. They used to buy a chicken for me and a small rooster for my brother – they bought young chicken for the children. And all these were slaughtered at the hakham, and were eaten at the family table. We observed this tradition in Botosani as well, but ever since there is no hakham, you couldn’t do this anymore. We gave them to charity after that. For giving a poor man some money is the same thing. Not to the effect that – God forbid –, the poor man should die instead of you, but you give something to charity.