ShalomNewYork.com

n [the expiation ceremony known as] kapparos,[444] one reads the passage from bnei adam until u’k’shalom three times, each time turning the chicken around [- and higher than - one’s head] three times, [as one says zeh chalifasi, zeh temurasi, zeh kaparasi] for a total of nine rotations. On the [morning of the] eve of Yom Kippur each person asks another for a piece of lekach [Yiddish for ‘cake’, traditionally honey cake], and eats it.

On erev Yom Kippur it is the custom of the Rebbe Shlita to hand a slice of lekach to each of the people [who file past the door of his study], and to bless each individual with the words, leshanah tova u’mesukah (”a good and sweet year”). At this time the Rebbe Shlita wears his Shabbos silk coat and a gartl.[445]
[The nominal flogging called malkos[446] precedes both immersion in the mikveh and Minchah.] Accompanying the thirty-nine stripes of malkos on erev Yom Kippur, the verse[447] beginning v’hu rachum is said three times by both the one administering the lashes and the one receiving them.

It is customary on erev Yom Kippur to eat krepchen [or: kreplach; Yiddish name for a kind of cooked pastry pocket filled with ground chicken].[448]

After Minchah on the eve of Yom Kippur the Rebbe Shlita blesses all the Jewish people wherever they are with the blessing of chasimah ugmar chasimah tovah (”May your inscription for a good year be sealed and affirmed”), and with a blessing that Jews around the world be aroused in true penitence.445

After the seudah mafsekes, the last meal before the fast, one blesses one’s sons and daughters.

Before Kol Nidrei the Rebbe Shlita gives his blessing to the current students of the Tomchei Temimim Yeshivah in the words of Bamidbar 6:22-27: vayedabeir… yivorechecha… avoracheim.445 SichosInEnglish.org