Kapparot HP

For kapparot, we had heard about two or three different options. One was in Gilo, where apparently they do everything for you, for 40 shekels. One was with Y.'s kollel, where they had a stand by the shuk, and they did everything (shchita, melicha, feathers, etc.) for 55 shekels. Then there was one in Bayit Vegan that only cost 30 shekels, but they only shecht it for you - you have to do the feathers, melicha, etc. Of course, you can always go to Meah Shearim and take a look around, but you have no guarantee of what you'll find....

Anyways, even though most people don't do this, you're supposed to eat the chicken you did kapparot with. Then Y. got it into his head that it would help his understanding of the halacha, in addition to being really cool, if we did the melicha ourselves. I told him that he can do it, and count me out. "But don't you want to understand the halacha?!" All I had to do was ask if he wanted me to start throwing up again - and he gave in.

He asked a rav and found out that everything he needed to know about it was in the KS"A. We have a bucket for use in mopping the floor, so apparently all we needed were a few boards, kashering salt, and a knife that we could make treif. However, by oversight, these things were not bought before Erev Yom Kippur, and therefore, buying them would mean that we would be doing melicha all afternoon. Not a good idea.

So, with Meah Shearim and Bayit Vegan out, because they don't do melicha, we were left with either Gilo or the shuk. But, apparently, no one knew where in Gilo to go...so for lack of time, we went to the shuk and spent a total of 30 more shekels. (However, being that there was a minyan to make, we did not spend the extra two hours necessary in order to get the chicken back after it was kashered. So no, we did not eat the chicken that we did kapparot with, much to our dismay. Next year, I think Y. is going to kasher them himself. Without my help, I think.)

We had gone with friends of ours (neighbors also, and they had a car), and sometime in the late morning, we discovered that we had 2 honey cakes. Why? Because the store had a "buy one, get one free" deal - so why not take the second as a freebie? Anyways, I offered it to the friend we had gone with, and she was very happy to take it, since she hadn't had time to bake. So we met, and then she mentioned that the kapparot in Gilo had canceled at the last minute, and they hadn't notified anyone who had ordered chickens there. Anyone who was planning on doing kapparot in Gilo had ended up doing it on money instead.

Well. I guess it wasn't an extra 30 shekels after all. If we'd gone to Gilo, we wouldn't have had time to go anywhere else in time to do kapparot before Shacharit. Good thing none of us knew where it was, huh?