This is a New Year’s greeting card with an illustration of a family performing the kapparot ceremony. The family is standing in their living room, dressed in their holiday clothing. The father is holding a chicken in his right hand and an open machzor (holiday prayer book) in his left hand. Two children, a son and a daughter, are standing in front of their father. The mother is standing behind the table and is holding an open machzor in her left hand and what may be a coin in her right hand. The family’s clothes, the furniture, and the items in the room suggest that they may be a prosperous family. The room is surrounded with wainscoting and red fabrics, and there is a decorative clock and an intricately framed painting on the wall.
Kapparot is a ceremony that is traditionally performed before Yom Kippur. In the ceremony, the sins of the family are symbolically transferred to coins or to a rooster which is then slaughtered and donated to charity.
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Kapparot – This ceremony takes place in the days leading up to Yom Kippur in some Jewish communities and involves the custom of swinging a chicken over one’s head to symbolically transfer one’s sins to the chicken. The chicken is then slaughtered, and the meat is donated to a needy family. An alternative option is to use coins wrapped in a handkerchief instead of a chicken and to then donate the money to charity. Over the years there has been much rabbinical discussion about to the performance of this ritual. There are those who object due to concern for the suffering of the animals; others worry that people will not truly repent if they know they can simply transfer their sins to an animal. While performing kapparot is not mentioned in the Torah or the Talmud, giving tzedakah (charity), especially during the ten days of repentance, is one of the three ways of doing teshuvah (repentance) along with prayer and fasting.
Shana Tova Cards - The earliest instance of a written “shana tova” greeting is a fourteenth-century letter written by the Ashkenazi rabbi known as the Maharil (Jacob ben Moses Moelin). This letter affirms the existence of this custom in German Jewish communities at the time. In the eighteenth century, the custom began spreading beyond the German-speaking realm to other large concentrations of Jews in Eastern Europe, especially Poland. By the end of the century, Shana Tova cards began to take on distinct characteristics, such as special writing paper, with the custom spreading throughout the entire Ashkenazi world during the nineteenth century. The postal service emerged around this time, and in the 1880s, Jewish entrepreneurs began to print commercial greeting Shana Tova cards. By this time, Shana Tova cards constituted the main body of postcards sent by Jews, and this would remain so for around 100 years.
Between the end of the nineteenth century and the end of First World War, a time known as the “Golden Age of Postcards,” the vast majority of the mail sent by Jews in Europe and America consisted of Shana Tova cards. Today, in the digital era, cards sent by post have given way to text messages and emails.
Yom Kippur – Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the Jewish year. The date of Yom Kippur is 10 Tishrei, and it marks the end of the ten-day period beginning with Rosh Hashanah which is called the High Holy Days and the Ten Days of Repentance. According to tradition, God evaluates each person’s life and writes their name in either the Book of Life or the Book of Death during the Ten Days of Repentance; on Yom Kippur, the books are sealed. While reflection and prayer take place throughout the ten days, Yom Kippur is the most solemn day, and it is traditional to pray, fast, and refrain from bathing and wearing leather shoes. It is also traditional to give tzedakah (charity), during this time period. Another unusual custom is wearing a tallit for all of the prayers, when it is usually only worn during the day, and in some communities men wear a special white robe named a kittel. There are five services on Yom Kippur, beginning with the Kol Nidrei prayer and the Maariv service in the evening. Prayers are resumed the following day with Shacharit (morning service) and the Musaf (additional service) which includes a description of the special ceremonies that took place in the Temple on Yom Kippur. Later in the day is the Mincha service, during which the Book of Jonah is read, and the day comes to close with the Neilah service, considered to be the final opportunity to ask God to be written in the Book of Life, which ends with the congregation saying the Shema and the blowing of the shofar.
