Jews With Tattoos

In the great Talmudic tradition of her people, Ori Scherr scoured the literature, parsed the commentaries, and then, with her resolve firmly in place and her argument tightly constructed, dropped the T word on her parents.

Her father, a cantor at a Natick synagogue, shook his head. It's prohibited in the Bible, he told her. It will prevent you from being buried in a Jewish cemetery. It's an affront to victims of the Holocaust.

Her mother cut to the chase: Nice Jewish girls don't get tattoos.

Scherr, then an 18-year-old senior at Dover-Sherborn Regional High School, pondered her parents' advice and, in the equally time-honored tradition of adolescence, ignored it. The Aztec sun sign she had inked into her back is, to her way of thinking, as Jewish as the Star of David. In Hebrew, "Ori" means sun, and though she covers the tattoo when she attends synagogue, out of respect, she says the symbol is a fitting reflection of her Jewish identity.

Scherr is far from alone. In less time than it has taken Madonna to move from pop-star exhibitionist to tattooed Kabbalist, the 3,000-year-old Jewish taboo against body art has crumbled among some Jewish young adults. Thumb through the portfolio of almost any tattoo artist -- there are now a half-dozen in the city -- and you'll find traditional Jewish symbols of life and luck alongside menorahs and Hebrew blessings.

"I've done dozens of them," Ram Hannan says of these Jewish symbols. He opened Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo in Jamaica Plain in 2001.

Gabe Kapler, the muscle-bound Jewish right fielder for the Red Sox, has 11 tattoos, including a Jewish star on one leg and the words "Never Again," in reference to the Holocaust, on the other. Magician David Blaine had writer Primo Levi's concentration camp number, 174517, tattooed on his arm. Josh Glantz of Waltham, a tattoo artist outspoken about his Judaism, is covered with tattoos from head to toe, though none are Jewish symbols.

According to the Old Testament, they are all guilty of defying the word of God. Tucked between injunctions against cross-breeding animals and falsifying measurements in the book of Leviticus is this decree: "You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or imprint markings upon you: I am the Lord." Why Judaism prohibits body art is debatable -- the prohibition is not found in any other religion -- but scholars guess it has something to do with the idea of Jews making themselves a people apart. The thinking of leaders in the Jewish community today hasn't changed all that much. Many echo the sentiments of Daniel Margolis, the executive director of the Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Boston, who dismisses the tattoo trend as "a narcissistic fad" and "just another measure of assimilation."

But Scherr, now a 25-year-old Barnard College graduate who is studying Arabic in Jordan this summer, says the beauty of Judaism has always been its ability to evolve. "The literature isn't there solely to be taken literally," she says. "It's abstract; it needs to be interpreted." Smoking, anorexia, body mutilation, those fit the Levitical prohibition against abusing your body, she argues. Dyed hair, pierced ears, and even plastic surgery are something else.

And because, according to area funeral home directors, tattooed Jews aren't barred from Jewish cemeteries, the one cultural prohibition that does give pause to young Jews is the memory of Auschwitz, where Nazis tattooed numbers on prisoners. But even this has been subject to reinterpretation.

"It's the opposite of a sacrilege," says Dan Jaye of Brighton, a rugged 23-year-old Jewish Marine veteran with the word "perseverance" tattooed in Hebrew on his left arm. Far from disrespecting Auschwitz victims and survivors, he says his tattoo honors them. "It's a tribute."

At least one survivor sees the wisdom in Jaye's words. "To me it just means we can make our own decisions now," says Steven Ross, a 73-year-old tattooed Auschwitz survivor and a driving force behind the Holocaust Memorial near Faneuil Hall. "In a few more years, there won't be any more survivors left," he says. Then, the only Jews with tattoos will be the ones who asked for them.