Planet Soul
I’m a Rabbi With a Tattoo
One reading of the Bible contends that we are engraved on God’s hand. How could tattoos be against our faith?
Jews who don’t follow Jewish law or custom have zero qualms about criticizing my tattoos, whether or not they know I’m an ordained rabbi. A person who was literally eating pork ribs pointed to my arm and said, “Isn’t that technically not allowed?”
Sure, it’s technically not allowed, depending on your definition of “technically” (and, for that matter, your definition of “not allowed”).
Long, complex story short and oversimplified: Modern movements of Judaism continue to condemn tattooing as a violation of a commandment in the Torah (Judaism’s central sacred text), but the consequences of that violation, at least in most non-Orthodox communities, do not amount to complete ostracization. You may still be buried in a Jewish cemetery, for example.
Many Reform Jews embrace the concept of “informed choice” when it comes to following traditional Jewish law and have no qualms about things like driving on the Sabbath (though some “Jews in the pew” do hold different standards for rabbis than for themselves). Yet the ingrained condemnation of tattoos among otherwise nonobservant “lay people” in the Jewish…
