An open letter to a friend:
Regarding the tattoo, they are in vogue now, as you well
know. In fact I recently read that according to dermatologists thirty six
percent of our twenty and thirty year olds have tattoos! Stroll down any street and it is like reading
a Ray Bradbury book. Yes, it is forbidden by halakha to have a tattoo. There is no equivocation about it
either as the halakha actually is
rooted in Torah law itself; no derivatives for this one!
Please remind your child of the last time that Jews forcibly received tattoos. They are still many of them living among us. How repugnant for Jews religiously devout, to be stripped, shorn and branded like cattle. That is the power of a tattoo.
Naturally, the Torah is concerned with the idea of being made in God's image and any action that would be a strike against such a poignant creation is viewed as if we were saying. “You, Gog, did not d a good enough job on us. We are making it better!”
And, yes, there is a Law that also prohibits Jews who have been so 'decorated' from being properly buried. In fact, to take another page from the era of the Shoah, one of the first post-Holocaust she'lote addressed to the rabbis by the survivors is were they even permitted to daven with a congregation any more. That is to say, a person who has been physically shredded is not permitted to have honors to the Torah. I was reading just a few weeks back about a man who had arrived at the infamous camp of Auschwitz and queried one of the older inmates, "Why are those men waddling like ducks?" The latter answered that they had been castrated. These same people, if they were fortunate enough to survive, also knew that such beastiality rendered them unfit to return whole before G-d. Can you imagine that additional pain?
In one very famous tale from a small French community told by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, of blessed memory, one feeble man came to shul every Shabbes and sat in a corner. On one week, he was asked, hounded to reveal his identity. It was then that he unveiled that he was a world class famed hazzan. People would come from all over Europe to hear his immaculate and heart-felt singing. Then, as one of the few people who returned, there was little left. His eyes had been removed by the Nazis. His vocal chords long destroyed. He was as it turned out, dying. He was escorted to the Bima, as a final request to daven one last time. His fear? He was not worthy because of what the animals had done to him.
Please remind your child of the last time that Jews forcibly received tattoos. They are still many of them living among us. How repugnant for Jews religiously devout, to be stripped, shorn and branded like cattle. That is the power of a tattoo.
Naturally, the Torah is concerned with the idea of being made in God's image and any action that would be a strike against such a poignant creation is viewed as if we were saying. “You, Gog, did not d a good enough job on us. We are making it better!”
And, yes, there is a Law that also prohibits Jews who have been so 'decorated' from being properly buried. In fact, to take another page from the era of the Shoah, one of the first post-Holocaust she'lote addressed to the rabbis by the survivors is were they even permitted to daven with a congregation any more. That is to say, a person who has been physically shredded is not permitted to have honors to the Torah. I was reading just a few weeks back about a man who had arrived at the infamous camp of Auschwitz and queried one of the older inmates, "Why are those men waddling like ducks?" The latter answered that they had been castrated. These same people, if they were fortunate enough to survive, also knew that such beastiality rendered them unfit to return whole before G-d. Can you imagine that additional pain?
In one very famous tale from a small French community told by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, of blessed memory, one feeble man came to shul every Shabbes and sat in a corner. On one week, he was asked, hounded to reveal his identity. It was then that he unveiled that he was a world class famed hazzan. People would come from all over Europe to hear his immaculate and heart-felt singing. Then, as one of the few people who returned, there was little left. His eyes had been removed by the Nazis. His vocal chords long destroyed. He was as it turned out, dying. He was escorted to the Bima, as a final request to daven one last time. His fear? He was not worthy because of what the animals had done to him.
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