Letter of apology
-
- February
- 6
The story about county health department fines for a mess left at the former Rockland Drive-In in Monsey after a religious ceremony (Kapparot) stirred up scores of comments on the LoHud.com forums and lots of letters to the editor.
Today, we published, this letter from the coordinator of the Kapparot ceremony. The custom is performed by some Jews in the days before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when a live chicken is held above a person’s head and moved in a circle three times. The chicken is then slaughtered (according to kosher law) and the meat donated to the poor. (This description is just point-of-information.)
Moshe Lefkowitz’ letter is worth a close read. Especially noteworthy are his comments that the “burgeoning population” of the religious community presents special challenges to the county government, and he sees their efforts as “kind.” He readily states that county officials were fair to fine him $3,000 for the mess left at the site, and takes responsibility.
Thoughts?
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 11:07 am by Nancy Cutler.
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Gee, sure sounds like animal cruelty to me ;-]
Animal sacrifice I thought we had laws preventing many people from performing such customs???
Its amazing how some people’s form of worship or practices are more allowable than others.
So, with this , I should be allowed to go by a live animal parade it about kill it and give it to the butcher correct? and i wont get arrested correct? oh which means I can also do this not just on my property but an abandoned piece of property not too far from my house. Since these worshipers were allowed.
Amazing. I applaud the right they were allowed, however, I wonder if anyone else would be allowed to do it.
(Argh, the subheads in lower case [improper capitalization] drive me crazy! Please don’t do it! C’mon, kids look up to you folks…)
I wonder what he thought of the Journal News’ coverage.
On other sites, people have knocked the paper for being anti-Semitic… perhaps because this was splashed on the front page? I doubt this is actually the case. If there was any kind of motivation, well… it’s the kind of headline that would get someone to stop and pick up the paper.
Richard! I agree; the lowercase subheads on LoHud versions bug me, too. I have been meaning to ask if we can alter this (it began after a major conversion on LoHud that’s been, er, interesting. Great new stuff, but, well, change is hard.)
I’ll try and post a followup Monday. Thanks for the feedback. I wondered if I was the only one who noticed the lower-case switch. I figured I was just being a grammar-square (you know, “verse” as a verb, “liase” etc. Ick.)
OK, Richard. Here it is: It is a style element (the lowercase subheads) and is here to stay. So many changes, so much for us traditionalists (no, I did not say stick-in-the-mud) to get used to.