An abandoned U-Haul truck packed with crates of chickens turned up on a Flatbush street Friday night, and by the time animal rights volunteers finished sorting through it, they had rescued 83 live birds — and found dozens more already dead. The NYPD confirmed the discovery happened around 8:30 p.m., just ahead of Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown on Sunday.
The rescue was carried out by the Kaparos Compassion Project, a group of about 15 activists who drove in from Long Island and New Jersey, according to Gothamist. The volunteers arrived at the scene roughly two hours after setting out, after John Di Leonardo, executive director of Humane Long Island, received a call from an NYPD officer around 6 p.m. alerting him to the truck and its cargo.
Di Leonardo told the outlet that dozens of dead chickens were found crammed inside crates in the truck bed, alongside birds suffering from dehydration and weakness. The truck itself carried a sign reading “Kaparos to Go,” a reference to the pre-Yom Kippur ritual the chickens were destined for. The NYPD is now looking for whoever abandoned the vehicle, the report notes.
A Second Truck, More Dead Birds
Di Leonardo also reported finding a second Kaparos to Go truck nearby in Brooklyn, this one containing both dead and dying chickens, per the same account. The surviving 83 birds were removed to an undisclosed sanctuary in New York City; Di Leonardo declined to share its specific location, citing safety concerns.
The group's outreach in the neighborhood didn't start with the truck. On Thursday, Humane Long Island reported on Facebook that volunteers were feeding watermelon and water to caged chickens in Brooklyn while negotiating with local butchers and community members to surrender live birds ahead of the holiday. The Kaparos Compassion Project told Gothamist it planned to visit a Kaparos ritual in Crown Heights Saturday night, where volunteers intend to feed the chickens strips of watermelon through their crates before they are sacrificed.
What Kaporos Is, And Why It's Contested
Kaporos is an ancient Jewish custom practiced by some ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects, in which a live chicken is circled overhead during prayer and then slaughtered. Rina Deych, a Jewish animal rights activist from Borough Park, has spent 30 years working in Brooklyn communities to raise awareness about the ritual, the outlet reports. The practice dates back to at least the 9th century, though many Jewish scholars and contemporary rabbis advocate substituting money for live birds — waving a bag of cash overhead during prayer and donating it to charity instead, according to Brandeis University. That alternative is meant to fulfill the same spiritual purpose of atonement without animal slaughter, honoring the Torah's mandate against unnecessary animal suffering.
Legal efforts to force the city's hand have already run their course. In November 2018, the New York Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed dismissal of a lawsuit seeking to compel the NYPD to enforce animal cruelty and public health laws during Kaporos, ruling that police enforcement of discretionary laws cannot be ordered through a writ of mandamus, according to Justia Law. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review that decision in 2019, closing off federal avenues to compel police intervention, per Americans United for Separation of Church and State. That legal reality means enforcement now hinges on discretionary police action — like the current search for whoever left the U-Haul on a Flatbush street.
Abandonment Carries Its Own Penalties
Whoever left the truck behind could face charges under New York Agriculture and Markets Law Section 355, which makes abandoning an animal or leaving a disabled animal in a public street for more than three hours a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison and fines between $500 and $1,000, according to the New York State Senate. Separately, state law defines aggravated animal cruelty — intentionally causing serious injury or death to an animal in an especially depraved or sadistic manner — as a felony carrying up to two years' imprisonment, though prosecutors would need to prove that heightened intent to pursue such a charge.
This isn't the first time Kaporos has ended in mass chicken deaths on a Brooklyn street. In 2005, more than 300 chickens intended for the ritual were found crammed into wooden crates in a vacant lot on Coney Island Avenue, and about 35 of them drowned; an Orthodox Jewish man was charged with animal cruelty in connection with the deaths, and the surviving birds were taken to an animal sanctuary in upstate New York. The scale of the ritual each year is significant: an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 live chickens are transported into Brooklyn neighborhoods during the week before Yom Kippur, according to We Animals Media, turning parts of Hasidic Brooklyn into some of the largest temporary live-poultry markets in the country for a few days each fall.
