Tattoos
April 27, 2002

I try twice a week to exercise at a local gym. It takes a lot of courage on my part because I stand out the minute I walk through the door. I don't fit the mold of the typical guy there. I don't look like a clone of Arnold Schwartzenagger, and I don't sport tattoos on my body.

My decision to exercise as well as my decision to avoid the tattoo parlor derive from my commitment to Jewish law. With regard to exercise, Judaism teaches that one is obligated to care for one's health. It is a mitzvah - a commandment derived from the biblical verse - oo'sh'martem et nafshotaychem which literally means "you must guard yourselves" and which our rabbis interpret to mean you must keep your body healthy. According to all medical professionals, primary among the ways of staying healthy is to exercise. So using the step machine and lifting weights - in addition to helping me feel energetic and alert - is also a mitzvah, and one I enjoy performing. It is a double win for me.

Regarding tattoos, today's torah reading - as well as last's weeks - deal with this practice. In this morning's torah reading, there is a command, specific to the cohanim, the priests, lo yistritoo s'ratet, which means you shall not make gashes in your flesh. But in last week's torah reading, this command was addressed to the entire Jewish people. Evidently tattooing was associated with pagan rites and the Torah, in its war against idolatry, prohibited any practice that smacked of pagan ritual.

In the Talmud, the major code of Jewish law that developed as a commentary to the torah, there is a debate about what exactly is prohibited. One scholar said a tattoo violates the torah only if it includes the name of a pagan deity or the name of God. Another scholar prohibited any permanent decoration on the skin, regardless of what is inscribed or depicted. The great legal authority, Maimonides, following this latter opinion, prohibits any act of tattooing. Period.

It seems that the abhorrence of tattooing has been deeply ingrained in the Jewish psyche. This may account for the question that I, and many of my colleagues, have been asked whether it is permitted for a person who has a tattoo to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. The answer is yes, it is permitted. But the fact that many Jews erroneously think it is not shows that in the minds of many Jews this is a serious violation.

But what precisely does it violate? Is it just the Torah's protest against ancient paganism? No. It goes beyond that. Tattooing violates Judaism's teaching that our body is a precious gift from God. We can't do with it whatever we want. We have to take good care of it. As I explained earlier, that is why I exercise. It is a religious obligation to keep my body healthy. This is also the reason why - even if I wanted to - I would not smoke, take drugs, abuse alcohol or overeat. These behaviors cause harm to the body and one's health, and, therefore, I would argue, these habits are prohibited by the Torah.

I would link the law against tattooing, also, to this idea of the sanctity of the body. The torah teaches us that we are created b'tzelem elohim, in God's image. Our body is sacred. We don't use it as a billboard. It is not the proper vehicle for proclaiming our beliefs, our partners in love, our artistic preferences to the world. The way we use our body is a statement of our values. Tattooing makes a statement that to my mind negates Judaism's teaching about the body's innate holiness. On the other hand, modesty in dress, covering our heads when praying are examples of Jewish ways to use our bodies to embrace sanctity and holiness. As the torah urges us: kidoshim tihiyu, "you shall be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy."

There is another point, too, I would make to any person who would come to me and inquire, "Rabbi, is it permissible for me to get a tattoo?" I would ask this person, "Why are you, heir to a rich Jewish heritage and to profound Jewish values, striving to imitate the culture of MTV?"

This question is not meant to imply that it is wrong for Jews to adopt aspects of our American culture. If I believed that I would choose to live in the Jewish areas of Williamsburg, Boro Park or Monsey where that is the mindset. I am not questioning whether we should adopt but what we should adopt. The fact is that Jews have always interacted with and adapted from the various civilizations they have encountered. Dr. Gershon Cohen, who was one of the leading Jewish historians of recent times, once gave a lecture titled: "The Blessings of Assimilation in Jewish History." In this provocative talk, he stated that if you examine the periods of great Jewish intellectual inventiveness, you will discover that a certain amount of assimilation and acculturation not only didn't impede Jewish continuity and creativity but that it was actually a stimulus to original thinking and expression and, consequently, a source of renewed vitality.

Throughout history, the Jewish people have come in contact with all the great civilizations of the past: Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Christian, Moslem, European and Asiatic. And as we interacted with each group, we borrowed and acquired languages, styles of living, habits of learning, ideas and insights, dress, architecture and music.

And yet, the great trick of Jewish existence is that even though we constantly assimilated from other cultures we didn't become assimilated.

A few years ago, the Dalai Lama invited a group of Jewish religious leaders to meet with him. What he wanted to learn from them was the secret of Jewish survival. The Dalai Lama leads a people living in exile from their homeland, Tibet, and he is worried about his people losing their unique traditions through assimilation. He wanted to learn from the assembled Jewish religious leaders how Jews endured thousands of years of exile from their land and yet managed to survive as a unique people.

I imagine that what the invitees told the Dalai Lama was that we survived because we always borrowed ideas and values selectively. We were alert against readily accepting the totality of another culture. We always made certain that what we adopted was compatible with Jewish values and ideals.

And that must be our guiding principle today. Our task, like that of each previous generation of Jews, is to sift through the ideas, the values and moral stances of our society in a deliberate and planned fashion and to draw a demarcation line between what Judaism can accommodate and embrace and what it must reject as foreign and incompatible. That we Jews are still here today - whereas all other ancient peoples have disappeared - proclaims our success in correctly drawing that line.

But we can't rest on past laurels. Our future as a people is secure only if everyone of us embraces wholeheartedly a lifestyle compatible with Jewish Traditions, with Jewish values and Jewish morality. May each of us faithfully pledge ourselves to this urgent and sacred task.