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INKEDblog takes you beneath the skin of today's tattoo culture. Our mission is to celebrate tattooing as a modern art form which incorporates art, fashion, style, and pop culture. While paying homage and respect to the past, we look to present a contemporary take on the present and future of skin art.
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Friday Jun 24, 2005
Why no tattoos for Jews?
INKEDblog contributor Jessica Lund continues to look into a range of issues and myths related to tattoos. Today's topic: Jews and Tattoos
Why no tattoos for Jews?
The biblical ban is Leviticus 19:28, “You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.”
The general principal is that in the Jewish faith, the body belongs to god, and a person is simply borrowing it until s/he returns it in heaven. A person violating this law was historically unable to be buried in a Jewish graveyard.
This decree has become more political since WW2. During the holocaust, Nazis tattooed numbers and letters on prisoners, knowingly violating Jewish code.
Since then, tattoos in general have been a painful reminder for many Jews of the hideous atrocities that they suffered at that painful point in history.
The religious law banning the burial of tattooed Jews has since been abolished in the wake of the tattooed holocaust survivors, however. Jews with tattoos may be buried in most Jewish graveyards, though some still request laser surgery.
Currently, even though tattoos are still expressly forbidden by Jewish law, many Jews are both getting tattoos, and finding singular ways to express their Jewish heritage through unique religious tattoos.
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