 |
 |
||||||||||
 |
Back to Question of the Week Q: I have heard that tattoos are forbidden in Jewish law. Why is this? At first I thought it had to do with something about altering the body; however, there seems to be no restrictions on piercing the ears (or nose in one reference I read.) CM |
||||||||||
|
 |
A: What an interesting mish-mash of issues this question brings up: body issues, gender issues, assimilation, idolatry, slavery.... It is definitely not as simple as I thought when I first read the question--and I didn't think it was that simple. Lets start with tattooing. The basis of the prohibition is biblical,
stemming from Leviticus 19:28: "An incision for a (dead) person
you are not to make in your flesh, writing of a skin-etching you
are not to place on yourselves, I am YHWH!" Rabbinic commentators have tended to view this prohibition as stemming from the prohibition of idol-worship and the practices of idol-worshippers. That is why the biblical passage ends with God stating "I am YHWH!." Indeed, one talmudic opinion held that the only tattoo that was prohibited was the writing of the name of a false god (see Makkot 21a). Other opinions forbade even "powdering oneself with burnt wood ash." The halachah ended up forbidding any permanent colouration based on the puncturing of the skin. Let's put on the back burner for a moment the question of what might be idolatrous about tattoos, and move on to ear-piercing. There is one instance in which the Torah demanded that the ear be pierced. A slave who refused to go free after seven years would have an ear pierced as a sign of continuous servitude. I think two pieces of commentary about this law are interesting here. One asks, "Why the ear?" The answer: to punish the ear that heard God at Sinai proclaim that God is the only master, and yet chooses to continue serving a mere human being. (A sort of mini-idolatry!) The other is that the rabbis ruled that this law applied only to male slaves. Women were assumed to already have pierced ears. Rabbi Daniel Komito Gottlieb has suggested to me that the symbolism of the male slave's pierced ear may indeed have been that he was no longer a "full man;" in his continous slavery, his status had become more like that of a woman. OK, lets throw these issues of slavery, gender, and mini-idolatry into the pot of idolatrous tattoos on the back burner and consider one last set of ingredients. My guess is that most Jews who know about the traditional prohibition of tattoos think, like CM did, and like I did before researching this answer, that it has to do with the sanctity of the body as God gave it to us. (Am I convinced that it does not? Is this sanctity unrelated to prohibitions of idolatry?) Therefore, the question remains why the popular Jewish imagination, regardless of the halachah, made a distinction between ear-piercing and tattoos. My guesses: 1. Ear-piercing is "socially acceptable" and even expected in the society in which we live. Tattooing is not. 2. Ear-piercing until recently was almost completely a female practice. My rhetorical question: What do (1) and (2) have to do with idolatry? And now I've cooked CM's question into a complete stew of questions: about gender, assimilation, idolatry, God and the body. I hope you enjoy chewing on it. written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
 |
[Home] [Lobby] [Library] [Classroom] [Office] [Lounge] [Gift Shop] Kolel: The Adult Centre for Liberal Jewish Learning
|
 |
|
|
|||
