Introduction to Yom Kippur

The five years old boy was playing in the back yard when his father came out and said:" Let's go to the Shuk (market) and buy ourselves a Kaparah (atonement) for Yom Kippur." The boy held his Father's hand as they walked to the open market that assembled once a week on the soccer field in the middle of the Moshava (a large village). (all this happened many, many years ago in Israel which at that time was still Palestine).

The Shuk was something to behold. People came from the neigbor Moshavot, and from the surrounding Arab villages, to sell vegetables and fruit they were growing, and many sold livestock, roosters, hens, Chickie's, Calv's, and a cow or two. At that time they did not have yet supermarkets as we have today where one can buy poultry, and meat all nicely wrapped and frozen. To make chicken soup a woman had to buy the chicken live, go to a shochet to slaughter it, pluck all the feathers off it, and then cook it from scratch. After a few rounds among the sellers, the father found a nice fat chicken and announced to the boy, "we got our kapara." The boy was ecstatic, he had a new friend, a chiken named Kapara

As they got home, the boy observed his father takes a rope and tied one of Kapara's legs to the kitchen table leg. Put two bowls in front of her, one with grains, and the other filled with water. It was a few days before Yom Kippur so the boy got to play with Kapara in the kitchen treating her as his pet.

A few days passed. The kid was playing in his room when he heard his father calling him to come to the kitchen. As he entered the kitchen, the boy saw his father holding Kapara with her neck bent backwards in one hand and a razor knife in the other. In one move of his hand, over the kitchen sink, the father proceeded to slash Kapara's neck, the kid watching in horror as the blood was gashing out. The father, then proceeded to wave the rooster around his head as he was chanting the זו חליפתי-זו כפרתי "this is my substitution, this is my atonement, this rooster will go to death and I will enter long, and good life and peace."

By that time the kid was in an advance stage of panic and horror screaming at the top of his lungs: "He killed my Kapara," "he killed my Kapara!!" and then ran to his room to hide.
By now you probably figured out, the young kid was me. The year was 1947. You see, my parents came to Israel in the 30's as חלוצים-pioneers. They came to built up a land for the Jews, but they did not come for religious reasons, their reasons were nationalistic. They, and thousands like them did not have time for God, their task was to built a nation. But somehow, as Jews do for generation all over the world, my father, who smoked on Shabbat, who never went to Shul, somehow, in his own way tried to keep the traditions. Right way or wrong way he knew that keeping tradition is the Jewish way, as secular as he was.

Today, so many years later, looking back it is a bitter-sweet memory, my first introduction to Yom Kippur, and Judaism.

May you all have an easy fast.