Joseph

“and out-of town don’t have the discriminating mind set.”

cherrybim: I cannot be mekabel such lashon horah regarding out-of-towners!

What’s a tuxedo?

You can’t check it out unless you are the keymaster and change the number of posts per page — which HAS happened several times in the past, and DID break links.

Feif: The day you become the Posek Hador or the Godol Hador, you’ll tell us all about it.

modernorthodox: The Reform agree with you!

Feif: So you shouldn’t take people away from the Torah.

Joseph: It’s funny but a little too “gruesome” to be posted

I thought it was gruesome but a little too “funny” to be posted. YW Mod-Joseph

When we can do that, I’ll agree that chickens are the way to go.

Your agreement isn’t necessary for the minhug.

Welcome to the CR bupkiss.

cherrybim: The Pri Chodosh, Beis Yosef, Rashba, and perhaps Ramban (on second read, I’m not sure what his bottom line is.) In fact, some (or all?) of them seem opposed to any custom, including doing it with money. But of course my point above was to defend the heilige minhug (not that it ultimately needs my defense), rather than to engage in a halachic discourse upon it.

The Arizal brings the Kabbalistic ideas of this minhug down.

squeak, You shouldn’t be teaching Gemorah to a girl.

Ah kasha oif ah goyisha kup.

And out hatched swine-flu free baby chickens, which mepal and her 1 day old still uncircumcised son used as kapporos, with the Admou”r wildly swinging the chickens over their heads.

mybat: Yes! Search Amazon. Dr. Pepper is quite famous:

“Who on Earth Is Dr. Pepper? – That’s a Good Question”

646, Much of what the Greeks got right, they got from us. This is as clear as day. See what Rav Chaim Kanievsky points out in Kiryas Melech (Yesodei Hatorah 3:1).

Here’s how this works: The Rishonim will quote something from the Greek philosophers but which really comes from Kabbalah. They do this because when citing Kabalistic ideas, they often try to conceal them as much as possible. Therefore, if something is well known as a Greek philosophical concept, they will quote it as such even though its source is Judaism. Example: The Ramban’s hyly (hiuli?) at the beginning of Bereishis, which he notes and sources as Greek. Both the Satmar Rebbe (Divrei Yoel Bereishis p.61) and Rav Elya Lopian (quoted by Rav Scwardron) say the hyly is a Kabbalistic, spiritual idea, which the Greeks took from us. The Divrei Yoel explains that the Ramban quoted this in the name of the Greeks because it is the derech of the Ramban to camouphlage such sodos in physical terms – the same as Chazal often did. (see also Rama Toras HaOlah on Boruch Sheamar). Another one of these concepts is the 4 elements (fire, waster, air, and earth), which is quoted all over by the Greeks but comes from Kabbalah – they took it from us.

The idea that the Greeks took their philosophical ideas from us is all over the Rishonim and Achronim, including the Ramban himself (Toras Hashem Temimah p.162). He says that they lifted their knowledge from the Jews, and eventually it got distorted by them. But the source is Judaism. The Kuzari says the same thing (2:66 – see also 2:19 and 1:62) as does the Shevili Emunah (nesiv 8) the Rama (he brings that Socrates got his wisdom from Asaf and Achitofel (Toras Haolah 1:12), and Chosid Yaavetz (Ohr Hachaim 6). The Chida (Midbar Kadmos – Sheva Chachmos) says this in the name of the Rambam (se alos Moreh Nevuchim 1:71).

Basically what happened was, people like Shlomo HaMelech and the Neviim had this chachma, the Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle learned from them, we went into Golus and a lot of it got lost, while among the Greeks it got grotesquely distorted. So youll find Torah and Kabbalistic concepts among the Goyim but kind of in a messed up way. Sometimes Rishonim such as the Ramban will identify some crumb of truth among them that comes from us and he will quote it from them if it is known as such.

Regarding Ptolmey himself, the Abarbanel (Shmos 12) quotes Ptolmey as being so impressed with the Jews’ astronomical calculations, that he said it proves the Jews had prophecy. In the Sefer Eretz Zvi (by Rav Aryeh Zvi Fromer ZTL, Rosh Yeshiva in Chachmei Lublin), quotes more such sources about Ptolmey.

It turned out Joseph was the FBI Mastermind who discovered everything. Sir Editor appointed him as his private eye.

So the Sir Editor hired a private detective to do FBI background check’s on all posters.

mepal applied for the first voucher for a family of 3.

BTW, if the CR ever changes the number of posts per page before the end of the “year”, many links will no longer be valid. It may be useful to post a copy of the text of the post in question.

In any event, I hereby submit my early vote, and vote for this post as Post of the Year.

Yasher koach YWN!

Pashuteh Yid – Nishtanu Hativ’im.

starwolf – The Torah provides an accurate timeframe from creation until now. Additionally, I referenced the Gemorah and Rashi who explicitly state (Chagiga 31a) that the 6 days were 24 hour time periods.

I already clearly explained the fallacies of how “scientists” count historic time.

Who do you claim argues on this Gemorah? Where can this claim be referenced? How does he interpert the Gemorah. Only an Amorah can argue on a Gemorah, and only a Rishon can argue on Rashi.

Even if semi-humanoid life forms existed, it does not prove in the slightest that they were our ancestors. Perhaps they existed, as ape-like mamals, with more similarity to humans that the apes with which we are familiar. Fine. But what says they are our ancestors? Nothing at all.

Second, there is no evidence at all that those fossils are indeed of ape-humans. They don’t even have proof that those creatures even existed. Any shred of a fossil that they find that gives them an opportunity to speculate about what kind of creature the fossil came from, they latch on to and built mountains out of molehills, and produce theories about what the creature was. This happens constantly:

Zinjanthropus Man, a humanoid race touted as being 600,000 years old based on “fossil evidence”, was not even based on one body, or even an entire skull. They found one skull with the lower jaw missing. The skull was not found in one peice – it consisted of 400 fragments, found distributed among tons of debris, and put together at the discretion of the people who stand to gain the most by such a “discovery”. The entire episode was totally biased, and they still have zero evidence that this creature was anything but human, with, at most a perhaps slightly deformed skull.

And how do they know how old this creature was? Because of the fossils that they found in the same strata with his fossils. And how do ythey know how old those animals were? Because of the theory of evolution which says that such animals should be that old. There is no evidence of anythign here – just theory and wishful thinking.

Every such “discovery” has had opposing scienists who declare them to be nothing. Java and Peking Man were declared by the prominent evolutionist Weidenrech to be plain humans, nothing more and nothing less.

E.E. Stanford, (“Man and the Living World”) declared that Nenderthal Man lives with us today. In “The Fossil Evidence for Human Evolution”. W.E. LeGros Clark declares that Neanderthal Man existed at the same time with regular human beings.

All these types of ape-humans are nothing but apes or humans that can be seen among us today. At hte London meeitng of the Congress of Zoology it was revealed that the nuseum exhibits of Neanderthal Man walking hunched over like an ape was a regular human who had arthritis. Only 13 samples of Neanderthal Man have ever been found – ever! – every one of them incomplete, yet the evolutionists built on them an entire mythical “race” of ape-men.

Procunsul Africanus, touted as the ancestor of “both apes and humans” was declared at that same convention to be nothign but a plain ape.

Java Man was represented by a skull cap, a left femur, a small peice of a jaw, and 3 teeth. Nothign more. And they were found not together but about 50 feet apart, over the span of a year, among many many other bones and devris. Based on this “evidence” they created an entire era in history. Laterthey found more skulls, more bones etc. Everythgin was the same as human remains except forthe teeth, and evolutionists claim that those teeth are the teeth of a plain monkey.

Peking Man has nothing that cannot be found in normal men. Cro-Magnon Man was, evolutionists admit “fully developed” and intelligent as any man today. He was about 6 feet tall, with a regular forehead, full chin and large brain. he is no more proof of evolution than we are.

But do the math: Even according to the most stubborn and irraitonal evolutionists, for every single fossil of normal humans and apes that they find, they should be finding billions upon billions of in-between fossils. The steps between ape and human included tons of in-between creatures, and mutant cxreatures who were not fit for survival. Yet no such fossils have been found. Even the little that they desperately squirm to concoct is pitifully useless compared to what should exist out there. Yet fossils of regular men and apes exist in abundance – in a bundance! – and only once in a blue moon do they even clima to find an in-between fossil. And incidently, the fossils of normal men are found in the same strata as those of the “ancient” and prehistoric men. Go figure.

The fossil record is the biggest proof against evolution. Not that proof is needed – the entire idea is a baseless hteory, the only reason they cling to it is because they have nothign better to cling to, if they dont want to admit the obvious – that the world was created by G-d.

I would suggest, if you want this information in detail, to read Rabbi Avigdor Miller’s Sing You Righteous and Awake My Glory.

Carbon-14 dating rests on two assumptions. (a)that the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere has always been constant, and (b) its rate of decay has always been constant.

Neither of those assumptions has been proven or clsoe to proven. And sicne the world was created in six days, who knows how the cosmic radiation in the atmoshphere was fluctuating then.

There is another issue that makes the carbon dating useless. WHen th e world was create, it already had an age. In other words, when Adam for instance was created, he was an adult, even though he was one day old; there were fully grown trees; the sun’s light already reached the earth; an entire world existed, full-blown and OLD. How old was the world at the moment it was created? I dont know — it doesnt say. But we do know that it didnt sdtart fomr scratch. And so lets say someone would chop down a tree 1 week after it was created and find maybe 50 rigns insude – would that prove that the tree wa 50 years old? Nope – it owuld only prove that when it was created it was created as an adult, 50 year old tree.

So even if dating would be accurate, it still doesnt prove that the world was not created 6,000 years ago – because when it was created, it already could have been thousands of years old.

Pashuteh Yid: Nishtanu Hativ’im.

How to – and how not to – learn Science

Chazal’s understanding of nature was vastly superior to that of the scientists. While the scientists get their understanding of nature through observation, and thus only know the surface-level facts, Chazal got their knowledge form the Torah, which describes nature in its deepest, most realistic level. All of reality, in fact, is just a reflection of the Torah. Knowing about nature from science is like knowing about an object through its reflection, whereas knowing nature from Torah is knowing something by knowledge of its every facet.

When we learn science, we need to learn it with that foundation already understood. When we learn science we need to understand that it is only a secondary source of knowledge of nature — that Torah is first. If you obtain knowledge of nature after you already have a strong Emunah in supernature, your knowledge of science can fall into proper perspective.

The Alshich, quoted in the Siach Yiztchok in the Sidur HaGra in Ashrei, writes that the proper way to learn science is after you have learned the Torah principles of science, and have instilled Emunah into your heart. First learn abotu miracles, then learn about science. After a person has acquired a proper background of Emunah and understanding of the true nature of physicality, that is, it is all Hashem’s doing, it;s all a miracle, then, against that background, learn whatever science you wil learn. The knowledge of Hashem is necessary to properly digest and get into properly use the knowledge of science.

–

Torah is to the natural world what a bluprint is to its edifice, or what DNA is to an organism. Histakel B’Oraysa Ubara Alma – Hashem looked inot the Torah, and created the world as a relfection of it. This happened because the very reason – the only reason – the world was created in the first place was as a tool to fulfill the Torah. How can you fulfill the Mitzvah of Pri Etz Hadar without an Esrog tree? How can you fulfill the Mitzvah of Kibud Av Va’em if you dont have parents? How can you make Kiddush Friday night without such things as night, or wine, or words?

How can you fulfill the Mitzvah of Pri Etz Hadar without an Esrog tree? How can you fulfill the MItzvah of Kibud Av Va’em if you dont have parents? How can you make Kiddush Friday night without such things as night, or wine, or words?

Those are easy examples. But Hashem does nothing without a reaosn, and creates nothing without a reason. And if Hashem created it, it has one reaosn and one reaosn only: to facilitate the fulfillment of the Torah. Because without that reason, the world whad no reason to exist.

So everything in the world – every little detail, every little subatomic particle, every litttle spec of space dust – is here to somehow faciliatate the fulfillment of the Toah. Just as every part of a car is to faciliatate the comfortable and efficent transportation of humans from one place to another, so too every part of the world is to faciliatate the transportaiton of humans to Gan Eden by way of Kiyum HaTorah.

But a differnece between a car and the Torah is, whereas there may have been several possible version of how to make a car, and several possible alternatives to the actual car that was created that would have facilitated juts as well the goal of transporting people form on place to another – differnet typoes of cars, trucks, planes, bicycles, etc – there was only ONE possible way to facilitate the goal of getitng people into Gan Eden, and that was by creating this particular world. No other world, not even in te slightest detail, would have done the job.

Just as the Torah is infinitely precise in its details, so does the natural world reflect the infinite precision of the Torah. When Hashem created an Esrog, which shaken in the proper manner, would connect the shaker’s soul to Hashem Himself in the particular way that the speciifc Mitzvah of velkachtem lachem pri etz hadar does, He created the Esrog, the jointsand limbs of the person shaking it, the water and soil and sunlight and gasses that the Esrog consolidates, the mind and body of the perosn shaking the esrog, the circumstances surrounding the buying of the esrog – its value, its purchase price, the precise difficulty invovled in obtaining it, — every single factor that comprises the act of the mitzvah, its nisyonos, and its ramifications — were created with infinite precison, down to the sub atomic level in order to best produce the desired effect.

Because the world itself – the entire universe – is desgined to be the place where, when Moshiach comes, the spiritual energey that was emitted upon the performance of the Mitzvos, combined with Hashem’s revelaiton ofHis Oneness, matures into the spiritual environment Olam Habah, which is en enternal conneciton betwen the Mitzvah-doers and Hashem Himself, the entire world, every molecule and sub atomic element it consists of, every single segment of time and space itself, every sub-sub-sub atomic component of every single square micro-inch of the entire universe, was created in a way that it will fulfill its spiritual purpose – of ultimately connecting humans to Hashem through its being used bu humans to be turned into a connection between the human body-and-soul, and Hashem.

That was the only single solitary idea that Hashem had in mind when creaitng the world. That was the only single solitary reason the world was made. And just as Hashem is one, and the Torah is one, and could not e any other way, the world, in order to fulfill its purpose as becoming the connection to Hashem was created in the only way it could have been, using the Torah as its blurprint, as its DNA. ANd that mean not only the physical shell of the world, but every single nuance of every single sub-atomic detail of the world, was created using the Torah as its bluepirnt. The Torah and nothing else is what the world reflects, on an infinitely sublime level.

This is why the Rambam states (Yesodei Hatorah 2:2) that the natural world contains “wisdom that has no measure and no end”. Because juts as the Torah has infinite wosdom, so does the world, which is a reflection of it.

The calculations and details that went into this world are bottomless. And its nature reflects the nature of the Torah itself; is details reflect the details of the Torah, in the same way that the details of the organizsm reflect the details of the DNA molecule.

So far we know that nature and Torah relate in that the Torah actually dictates what goes on in nature – histakel b’oraisa ubarah almah – just as the blueprint of a building decides how the building will be built, the Torah, in the same sense, decided how nature works. And just as the DNA controls the structure and makeup of the organism, so too it is the Torah the controls the structure and makeup of the world. There is not a single spec of the natural universe that is not ruled and determined by the Torah. As Rabbeinu Bachyai writes in the Introduction to Chumash, all wisdom and science in existence is contained in the Torah.

And the opposite is true as well – the Avos knew and fulfilled the entire Torah even though it had not yet been revealed by Hashem. Avorohom Avinu made and donned a pair of Tefillin. Now there are maybe 10 or so Halachos L’Moshe Misinai invovled in making a pair of Tefillin. How did Avrohom Avinu know how to make a pair of Tefillin?

The answer is that Hashem looked inot the Torah and based on it, deciphered nature; Avrohom reperformed that process the other way: He looked inot the Tevah, the natural universe, and deciphered the principles upon which it was based, the reasons wy it was created in precisely the way it was, and, with preision accuracy, the details of that Torah which is reflected in nature. He looked, for instance, at his own body, and he deciphered from his 248 limbs and his 365 sinews, the 248 Mitzvos aseh and the 365 mitzvos lo saaseh. He deciphered the Torah by studying its reflection – the universe – the same way a skilled architect can decipher the blueprint of a building by studying the building.

So he made a pair of Tefillin.

Nature is created by, from, and as a reflection of Torah. Nature follows Torah law, not vice-versa. And although nature, on the surface, follows surface-level physical laws, on a deeper level, on the deepest, deepest level of science, all of nature, all of the universe, follows a system of laws that are designed to facilitate the purpose of Creation, namely, its enetual maturation, nutured by the study of Torah and performance of Mitzvos by the Jewish nation, into a spiritual entity known as Olam Habah.

In a nutshell, those Laws of Nature are simply a reflection of the Laws of the Torah itself. When the physical universe, which is a reflection of Torah, is nurtured by the Torah-acts of the Am Segulah, it becomes a vessel for the conneciton of the souls and bodies of the Am Segulah to the Creator of the Torah.

That is the cosmology of the world in a nutshell.

So the natural world and the Tprah are inexorably connected. The Torah is the blueprint of the natural world, and the natural world is a reflection of the Torah. Avrohom, Avinu, or someone on his level, could look into nature and discover how to make a pair of Tefiillin; and Chazal were able to loo inot the Tora and discover things about nature. [Rabeinu bachya, Ramban].

But there is a reason that the natural world was tied to the deepest levels of the Torah. G-d could have made a world whose blueprint was physical laws or someother system of rules. Why did Hashem chose the Torah as the blueprint of creation?

And that is how Avrohom Avinumade a pair of Tefillin by looking into the natural world with the eyes and understanding of the Avos, and saw how the world needs Tefillin in order to fulfill its purpose, and how exactly those Tefillin need to be made. By seeing the sleeve, oyu can understand the shape pf the arm, and by seeing an arm you can understand the design of the sleeve.

That is the relationship between Torah and the natural world.

lesschumras:

The Gemorah and Rashi (Chagiga 31a) explicitly state the 6 days were 24 hour periods. See my earlier messages.

BTW Rav Chaim Kanievsky shlita paskened that if a non-Jew wants to convert, and he is 100% committed to accepting Torah and Mitzvos, but he believes the world is billions of years old, it is prohibited to convert him, and if you did convert him, the conversion is possibly invalid altogether (“yitachen d’afilu dieved lo mahani, vtzarich iyun”).

Additionally, regarding answering scientists and those who have blind faith in them about the age of the world, first, just like the flaw in their “vestigial organ” logic, the entire concept of measuring the age of the world the way the scientsts do is based on the assuption that the world was not created by a Creator. But if you say that the world was created the way the Torah tells us it was, that is, a full-blown world, complete with stars visible in the sky, full-grown trees and animals (and a human), a totally, fully developed and mature world, then their logic falls apart.

Because wHen the world was created, it already had an age. In other words, when Adam for instance was created, he was an adult, even though he was one day old; there were fully grown trees; the sun’s light already reached the earth; an entire world existed, full-blown and OLD. How old was the world at the moment it was created? I dont know — it doesn’t say. But we do know that it didn’t start from scratch. And so lets say a “scientist” would chop down a tree 1 week after it was created and find maybe 50 rings inside – would that prove that the tree was 50 years old? To the scientists it would, and the “tree ring” concept is used as one of their “proofs” that the world is over 6,000 years old. But the truth is it prove no such thing, becuase when the tree was created it was created as an adult, 50 year old tree.

So even if dating would be accurate, it still doesn’t prove that the world was not created 6,000 years ago – because when it was created, it already could have been thousands or millions of quardrillions of years old.

That is the first thing to understand when dealing with the “true believers” of science. But even if they will come up with something that cannot be explained by the above, there is a Torah principle that you must know that has been used long before any of today’s scientists or their grandparents were born, that tells us that although the world was in fact created 6,000 years ago, we know that it possesses all and every characteristic of a world that is much, much older. The Torah actually expects scientific measurements of the age of the universe to return an age of much, much more than 6,000 years. ANd we have known this for centuries.

[this star]

The Divrei Chaim does not tell us the location of the Yaaros Dvash. But the Divrei Yoel (Simchas Torah p.613) identifies it as being in 2 places: Vol. I, Drush 1 and Drush 15. There, it quotes a Medrash (Rabbah 10:4) that before the Sin of Adam the Mazalos operated much more rapidly. After the Sin, the Mazalos operated much slower and longer. With this Medrash, he explains the fact that we pasken that both the opinion that the world was created in Nisan, and the opinion that the world was created in Tishri, are true. Says the Yaaros Dvash: because the Mazalos operated much more rapidly before the Sin, between the time the Mazalos were created on the 4th day, and the time Adam was created, on the 6th day, the Mazalos had already run their course from Nisan to Tishri.

The mistake in their system is that they are not measuring the amount of time itself that occurred. They are identifying various events that already happened and are saying:

1) We measured the amount of time it would take this event to occur

2) And this event has already occurred

3) Therefore, the amount of time it would take to make it occur has already elapsed.

The flaw on that logic is that they only measured how much time it would take if those events would happen NOW, in the post-chet world. But since those events took place before the Chet, they took much less time, and so the occurrence of those events does not indicate the elapse of nearly as much time as the scientists think.

If they would find a way to measure time itself, meaning the amount of moments that transpired during the course of history, they would come up with 6,000 years.

The Rosh (Yoma 8:23), the Mordechai (at the beginning of his notes to Masechet Yoma), and the Tur (Orach Chaim 605) record this practice (mentioned in the aforementioned Rashi on Shabbos 81b) with approval. They, however, mention that the usual practice is to take a chicken and slaughter it. They also note that the ritual is performed on Erev Yom Kippur. The Rosh explains that the Gemara sometimes refers to a chicken as a Gever (see Yoma 20b), which also means man. Thus, a chicken is an appropriate substitute for man. He also offers a pragmatic explanation: that chickens are readily available and less expensive than larger animals such as a ram.

The Rashba does acknowledge that all of the Ashkenazic rabbis of his time practiced Kapparos and that the practice is recorded in the writings of Rav Hai Gaon. The Rama notes that this practice is recorded as early as the Geonic period and is the accepted practice in all Ashkenazic communities. The Rama regards the practice as a Minhag Vasikin, a venerated practice that one must not neglect. The practice recorded in the Rama is to slaughter a chicken for every family member.

The Ben Ish Chai (Parshas Vayelech 2), Kaf Hachaim (605:8), and Rav Ovadia Yosef (Teshuvot Yechaveh Daat 2:71) record that Sephardic Jews have adopted this custom despite the opposition of Rav Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulchan Aruch. An explanation for this change is that the Ari zt”l enthusiastically embraced this practice (as noted by the Magen Avraham 605:1) based on his Kabbalistic approach. The Ari zt”l has an enormous impact on Sephardic practice in a wide variety of areas.

The Mishna Berura cites the Pri Megadim who rules that Kapparos may be performed throughout the Aseres Yemai Teshuva. Indeed, Rashi records that this ritual is performed on Erev Rosh Hashanah. Accordingly, the Mishna Berura suggests that Kapparot be performed a day or two before Erev Yom Kippur to relieve the stress on the Shochtim. Rav Ovadia Yosef writes that Kapparos may be performed throughout the entire Aseres Yemai Teshuva.

Rashi mentions a custom mentioned by the Geonim that “twenty two or fifteen days” before Rosh Hashono people would take baskets – one for each child – and plant legumes and the like, and before Rosh Hashono would wave them around their heads and say, “This should be instead of this [person], and it should be my exchange, and it should be my substitute.” The baskets would then be thrown into the river. In this Rashi we find the concept of saving oneself from a harsh Heavenly decree by it being effected on another object.

The Maharal writes that the Gemoro implies the same. The Gemoro brings the story of Rabbi Akiva who was travelling with a donkey, and rooster and a candle. Upon being refused entry to a certain city, Rabbi Akiva had no choice but to sleep overnight in the woods outside the city. During the night a lion killed the donkey, a cat devoured the rooster, and a wind extinguished the candle. The next morning he learned that the city had been attacked by murderous thieves and he had been miraculously saved. The Maharal explains that the same terrible fate that the townspeople had suffered, was to befall Rabbi Akiva as well. However, he was substituted by his donkey (representing his physical body), his rooster (instead of his soul) and the candle (instead of his intellect). The Maharal concludes that from this Gemoro we have an “absolute proof to take a chicken for a kaporo for the soul on erev Yom Kippur.”

The Remo brings this custom in Shulchon Oruch and writes that it is a custom of pious people and should not be disregarded.

In addition to the aforementioned dimension of kaporos being a “substitute” for the individual (as the Mishna Berura writes that the individual should imagine that all that is transpiring to the chicken should in fact have happened to him), there is another reason which is brought down in Eliya Rabo, that the kaporos is an atonement for the sins of the person. This being the case, it is likened to an obligatory sacrifice that each individual has to bring. (The halachic implications of these opinions will later be discussed.)

However the Kitzur Shulchon Oruch writes that the individual should not think that the chicken is literally his atonement. It should merely serve as a reminder that all of these things should have happened to him, thus arousing him to repent fully.

It is obvious from the authorities that the main part of the custom of kaporos is the slaughtering of the chicken. Especially considering the abovementioned objective of kaporos, that the individual realise that everything happening to the chicken should have happened to him.

Furthermore one of the criterion mentioned with regards to kaporos is that it should be conducted in the early morning. Both these points are evident in the words of the authorities.

In Shulchan Aruch the mechaber writes that this which they are accustomed to do kaporos on the eve of Yom Kippur to slaughter a chicken etc. Similarly in the Mogen Avrohom in the name of the Arizal and the Shalo.