Saturday, October 04, 2008

MORE HEBREW TATTOOS. The language on these is okay, but other issues arise:
When senior Melanie Teichner walks across the University of Minnesota campus, she is hardly unusual. Yes, she sports two tattoos, but her discreet images are modest compared with many of her fellow students’ skin art.

But when she walks into the Hillel, the Jewish student center in Dinkytown, the perspective changes. It’s not the tattoos’ design or placement that make them significant. It’s that she has them in the first place.

Traditional Jewish law bans tattoos, based on Leviticus 19:28: “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.” When they mention the law, many rabbis add the term “voluntary” or “discretionary” to such tattoos in deference to the numbers that were tattooed on Jews in Nazi concentration camps, an association that further darkens the image of the tattoo among older Jews.

But increasing numbers of younger Jews are embracing tattoos, which have shed many of their negative stereotypes — they no longer are considered the purview of bikers, convicts and drunken servicemen — and have found a foothold in the under-30 set. They have gone from being outlaw symbols to fashion statements. Young Jews, like young non-Jews, are doing what younger generations have done since the beginning of time: ignore their parents.

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Background here.