I finally got a copy of the book for which I wrote a chapter about tattoos and Judaism, Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices — Body. I wrote the piece for the Jewish Publication Society.

Following is the text of the chapter I wrote, titled Kosher Ink: The Emerging World of Tattooed Jews:
www.jewishpub.org/pdf/essayJCJV.pdf

I’m excited to see it published in this book which locates my work on Tattoo Jew in the context of Jewish ethics, tying it to traditional sources and offering a chance for discussing the topic in the broader spectrum of a contemporary Jewish experience.

Plus, I’m flattered and excited to have been asked to be the person they chose to write on this topic.

They briefly touch on Jews with tattoos, and the camera shows the two images from Tattoo Jew used in the article.

Tattoo Jew is featured today on the CNN.com home page and in an article on the “New Jews” which you can find here:

www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/10/28/new.and.emergent.jews/index.html

It features a few words from an interview with me, and photos from Tattoo Jew taken by my partner on this project, Justin Dawson.

Also, the new version of the Tattoo Jew documentary site is up. It is greatly improved, so please check it out and let me know what you think:

tattoojewmovie.com/

I just wanted to share today’s exciting news with you.
Warm regards,
Andy Abrams

Craig Dershowitz started with a Kabbalah Ladder on his back, then followed with the word ZION on his right forearm. His entire torso remains a mural in progress.

Marisa Kakoulas considers herself a Grecian urn, ready to be decorated. The suit she wears as an attorney conceals her black-ink tapestry, making her feel like a superhero, she said.

They are Jews with tattoos, a trend that began on the fringe and is moving toward the mainstream. Ink-wearing Jews are not as omnipresent as in some other groups, given the proliferation of tattoos in sports and the entertainment industry, but their numbers are increasing, according to tattoo wearers, artists and the rabbis who bear witness to the branding of their flock.

Joshua Andrews, operator of hebrewtattoo.net, an online catalog of Jewish body-art samples, said he receives 35,000 visits a month to his Web site and 50 personalized design requests monthly. Yoni Zilber, an Israeli tattoo artist in Brooklyn, said he gets a customer asking for Jewish-themed adornment at least once every few weeks.

Pride, aesthetics and rebellion all play a part. To these inked-up believers, the Leviticus exhortation to “not make 20 gashes in your flesh for the dead nor incise any marks on yourself” has lost its relevance in 21st century Judaism.

“There are a number of taboos that I believe restrict modern American Jews,” Dershowitz said. “I am excited to break these taboos and to show a New York Jew as a strong, creative, artistic individual who is not afraid to wear his religion and beliefs, quite literally, on his sleeve.”

Dershowitz, a 32-year-old Morgan Stanley alum who edits a tattoo magazine called Bombin’, stood on the balcony of his 15th floor apartment with Manhattan at his feet and a tableau of an ancient past draping his upper body. Mother Israel grows out of the earth on his chest. Archangel Michael protects a kibbutznik and a soldier. On his right arm, the Lions of Judah play bodyguards to King Solomon.

The artwork does not bolster his connection to Judaism, he emphasizes; rather it forces others to recognize it.

“The permanence of a tattoo can only, rarely, be reversed,” he said. “At the same time, the passion which motivated getting it cannot be reversed at all. My family and friends, forced by either the former or the latter, have no choice but to accept.”

For the 36-year-old Kakoulas, an international-law specialist who lives in Brooklyn, her tattoos are a canvas of patterns that chart her world travels. “It’s not about making a statement,” she declared. “It’s about beauty.”

Eric Silver, a Penn State University sociology professor who has written about tattoos, attributes the increase in the practice among Jews to a larger social movement. “Tattoos have become normal among adults, and Jews come in a lot of flavors,” he said. “There’s a big chunk that are pretty assimilation-minded and want to participate fully in mainstream culture.”

But for many, the Torah still holds sway.

“Tattoos are just incompatible with Jewish values,” said Rabbi Brian Schuldenfrei of the Conservative Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. “We see the body as a holy and beautiful vessel, created by God. A tattoo only takes away from that divine beauty. So, we dismiss the practice of tattoos — but must remember not to reject the person with tattoos.”

Rabbi Eric Siroka of the Reform Temple Beth-El in South Bend, Ind., preached acceptance for the growing number of tattooed Jewish youth. “They’re wearing it the same as they would clothing or jewelry,” he said. “You have to be respectful as you would with any part of a person’s expression.”

And then there is Andrews, who appears to straddle both sides of the argument. Despite running the tattoo Web site, Andrews has no tattoos himself and declines to tattoo Jewish clients because it is “not Judaic in any capacity,” he said. “I get enough business from Goyim that I do not need Jewish business.” (He draws designs for everyone, but Jewish customers must go to another artist for the hands-on work.)

Andrews began the Hebrew calligraphy Web site on a lark and discovered a market, he said. He credits a recent spike in visitors to the his-and-hers King Solomon quote worn by David and Victoria Beckham. The words etched in Hebrew translate to “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”

Zilber said most of his Jewish customers focus on religious themes and Hebrew lettering. As for his own body, the artist wears Tibet-inspired tats. (“I’m Jewish in the inside,” he explained.)

Although cultural mores have loosened for modern Jews — “the shock value has worn off,” Rabbi Siroka said — the decision to get a tattoo does not always come easily.

Will, an artist at a tattoo parlor in Greenwich Village where some customers have been ordering the Star of David, recalled a recent encounter. “One older guy … thought about it for a long time,” he said. “He was conflicted.” The man eventually got the tattoo, as do most of those who waver, the artist said.

There has long been controversy about whether having a tattoo prevents a Jew from being buried in a Jewish cemetery, though a spokesman for the Jewish Theological Seminary said scholars there have found no basis for this ban. Siroka called it “an old wives’ tale,” and some cemetery officials supported him.

“Internment sites here have to do with lineage of Jewish heritage,” said Kirk Taylor, the family service manager for Hillcrest Memorial Park’s Beit Olam Cemetery in Dallas. “… It has nothing to do with anything else.”

“We have a great amount of bodies coming in,” said Amber Hession, who answers the phone at Westlawn in Chicago. “I’m sure some have tattoos.”

The idea that tattoos dishonor Holocaust victims tattooed by the Nazis no longer resonates with many.

“The Holocaust wasn’t done with choice, and it was only to number people,” Zilber said. “I never get the association with the Holocaust and tattoos.”

With history and disapproval getting swept away, ink converts predict more of the faithful will visit tattoo parlors. And they’ll mean business.

Said Kakoulas: “We have not seen the saturation point.”

www.forward.com/articles/116224/

Everyone has heard at some point that Jews with tattoos cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

But is it true?

I was talking to my colleague Noreen O’Donnell yesterday about how it seems that everyone has tattoos these days. I mean, even 10 years ago, you rarely saw tattoos on anyone other than bikers and old Navy guys. Then women started getting those little ones on their ankles—hearts and flowers—and young guys started getting them around their temporarily flush biceps.

Now tattoos are mainstream. People from all walks of life are getting them—big, colorful ones.

But what about Jews and the whole cemetery prohibition thing? It seems that rabbis are pretty much in agreement that tattoos are contrary to Jewish law and tradition.

But the cemetery thing may be a folktale.

I came across a formal position from a Conservative rabbi—a responsum—about tattoos that reached this conclusion: “Tattooing is an explicit prohibition from the Torah. However, those who violate this prohibition may be buried in a Jewish cemetery and participate fully in all synagogue ritual. While no sanctions are imposed, the practice should continue to be discouraged as a violation of the Torah. At all times a Jew should remember that we are created b’tzelem Elokim. We are called upon to incorporate this understanding into all our decisions.”

The key to the overall prohibition seems to be Leviticus 19:28: “You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.”

An Orthodox rabbi, speaking in a video on Aish.com, puts it like this: “Our bodies are on loan to us, on loan from God. He gives us these bodies for X number of years. But these bodies don’t belong to us.”

But what about the cemetery thing? Last year, the NYTimes interviewed eight rabbinical scholars from different traditions, who agreed that the cemetery prohibition is a myth.

Finally, a filmmaker from LA named Andy Abrams actually made a film about why Jews get tattoos. It’s called Tattoo Jews.

The website explains: “This is not simply a story about Jewish people with tattoos. It is an examination about the ways in which we all express and define our cultural identity. Tattoo Jew is about the balance between individuality and a sense of belonging.”

religion.lohudblogs.com/2009/07/21/tattoos-for-jews/

The NY Times had a recent article about Jews with tattoos and the urban legend that they are breaking Jewish laws and won’t be able to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. The article features quotes from Andy Abrams whose documentary Tattoo Jew which he spent five years working on. (Note-I spoke with Andy a few years about doing an art exhibit of still from the film as well as showing it at the gallery I worked at and he was a real peach. However, the idea was quickly shot down by my board and the management of my institution as the gallery was part of a JCC and those individuals in charge believed the urban legend and didn’t really like anything that strayed too far from the ‘norm’ in any manner-Monica).

www.wornthrough.com/2008/07/25/news-flash/

www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/fashion/17SKIN.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=tattoo+jew&st=nyt

Filmmaker Andy Abrams has made a documentary titled “Tattoo Jew.”

An article over at Kosher Hollywood describes the project:
Abrams admits that when he began, he thought he’d find “a bunch of screw-ups,” or at least people with serious attitude problems. Instead he found people who had put a great deal of thought into the images they’ve chosen to permanently etch into their skins, images that are often explicitly Jewish.

“I found people incorporating [tattooing] as a part of not religious so much as spiritual expression. It’s an act of pride and it is really well thought out….The Judaic tattoos range from simple Stars of David and Hebrew characters, to elaborate pieces sometimes incorporating other elements of the person’s cultural identity. One man has a Hindu deity with the Hebrew character Aleph set in a ring behind. Another man, a former member of an anti-racist skinhead group, has a Star of David incorporated into a shield behind which sit two battle axes. “Young Jewish people are craving a new way to identify with being Jewish that fills the void. We don’t have a lot of easily digestible images in our daily lives about being Jewish.”

While orthodox Jews remain fairly rigid on the subject of tattooing (Abrams is quick to point out that this doesn’t mean that orthodox rabbis can’t be “hip” too), there does seem to be some small, growing acceptance of tattoos within the larger Jewish community. One reform rabbi recently called Abrams and spoke with him about helping a congregation member research a tattoo. The congregation member and her mother were tattooed just before the young woman’s Bat Mitzvah. Another participant recounted the time he was stopped at the door and told that he could not enter temple on one of the high religious holidays because of his visible tattoos. Catching word of what was happening, the rabbi came to the door and addressed the situation simply: “He’s a Jew. You let him in to pray.”

judeosphere.blogspot.com/2006/06/color-me-jewish.html

So, check this out… If you are interested in my coming to your college, synagogue, tattoo shop, high school, community center, art gallery, or whatever please let me know. I know we’re not finished with the project yet, but if you think it would be worthwhile to have me come speak to a group (along with a slideshow and a short piece of the film to screen) please drop me a line.

Tell me who you are, where you are, what you have in mind, and we can discuss the possibility and details after that. I’m really excited about Tattoo Jew. If you’re interested in having me come share the details about this exciting project please get in touch.