September 29th, 2009 
Spooky 
On Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, ultra-Orthodox Jews use white chickens to perform the Kaparot ritual and get rid of all their sins.
The holiest of Jewish days, celebrated with 25 hours of fasting and intense prayer, offers ultra-Orthodox Jews the chance to make a year’s worth of sins vanish. All they need is a chicken, preferably white, and a simple blessing. The live chicken is waved above the sinner’s head as the blessing is recited and it is believed all his of the previous year are transferred into the chicken.
The new host of the sins is then quickly beheaded and its blood drained as young ultra-Orthodox boys watch. Pretty cool isn’t it? Just sin a way for an entire year and let a brainless chicken take the fall. These are the times that make me wish I was a Jew.
via Telegraph.co.uk
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Photo by EPA
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That’s a bit of a misrepresentation of kapporos. Not only do most Orthodox Jews these days(mea shearim ultra-Orthodox aside) use charity money(called tzedakah) in lieu of the chicken, but you’ve sort of misunderstood what Yom Kippur is. It is not ’sin for a year and then get a free ride’. On Yom Kippur, you have the hope that God will look at the past year and look at you favourably. Your sins aren’t washed away magically on Yom Kippur, Jews are given the chance to plead their case to God and PERSONALLY atone.
I would also like to say, Jews are required to atone for their sins against fellow man far sooner than they are to atone for their sins before God. You cannot be forgiven for a sin against man(embarrassment, slander, gossip, not paying wages, just to name a few sins) until that man has forgiven you for your wrong doing. Behead all the chickens you want, but you will not be forgiven.
And listen, I know that not everyone subscribes to religious, and not ever Jew subscribes to Orthodox Judaism, I just think it is perhaps not good to perpetuate false truths about Judaism.