SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Rabbi Michael Friedland was eating in a downtown restaurant one day when he noticed his waitress’s arm.
The tattooed Hebrew letters caught his attention, recalls Friedland, rabbi of Sinai Synagogue.
It turned out that the young woman wasn’t Jewish, or Hebrew. Out of respect for a relative who had been Jewish, she told Friedland, she researched Hebrew for sentimental words such as “mother” to imprint onto her arm.
Traditionally, Judaism has interpreted Leviticus 19:28 as banning tattoos: “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor imprint any marks on you; I am the Lord.”
With the popularity of tattoos, Friedland and other rabbis have more closely examined what the passage means and its historical context.
Rabbi Eric Siroka of Temple Beth-El researched the topic after a parent at an earlier synagogue he served asked about it.
“Over the course of history, the thought was that if you had a tattoo, you couldn’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery,” Siroka says.
Historically, too, tattoos were connected with those practicing idolatry.
Although Siroka says he would still discourage any marring of the body, tattoos do not seem to be any more serious than other less-than-respectful things we might do to our bodies.
Saint Mary’s College religious studies professor Joseph Incandela says he’s not aware of any biblical pronouncements with “the force” of the Leviticus words that would prohibit tattoos among Catholics.
“Probably the closest one can come within the Christian Scriptures is I Corinthians 6:19, which says that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,” he wrote in an email.
Adding to the disapproval of earlier generations was the Holocaust, when Jews in concentration camps were assigned numbers, tattooed on their arms.
Both recognizing the changing mores. Friedland is puzzled by those who choose tattoos that don’t relate to their own heritage.
“Why would you borrow from somebody else’s culture?” he asks rhetorically.
The law against tattoos in Leviticus is primarily to prevent infections.
Many Jewish customs/traditions are health-oriented, such as a modest means of isolating people with sickness so it doesn’t spread. In fact, because of their quarantine-like customs and ritual washing, Jews were relatively untouched when the black plague ravaged Europe and the rest of the world. Often times because of this, Jews were blamed for being behind the spread of the plague via use of magic… And were subsequently burned at the stake for just following God’s health laws.
I would warn anyone against getting a tattoo. No matter how far technology and health medicine has come in this day and age, there is still the chance that you will contract an infectious disease in the process of getting a tattoo. It is roughly a 9% chance for getting Hepatitis C via tattooing. Then you have to worry about your skin being broken and open for a while until it heals, and in that time your body is prone to catching whatever seeps in through the portion of skin that is pierced with a needle in the process of tattooing.
I have nothing against anyone getting a tattoo. The only thing that I have to say is that the human body is to beautiful to cover any part of it with ink. Personal opnion.