Bring your jammies, blankets/pillow, a covered drink
and a snack to share!

If you’d like to meet your friends for dinner first,
we’ll be at Jason’s Deli on Road to Six Flags at
5:30pm.

Please reserve your spot by emailing Jennifer Daley
at jdsports27 -at- hotmail.com
or by calling
See you there!! ]]> http://www.bethshalom.org/2008/07/family-movie-night/feed/ http://www.bethshalom.org/2008/07/jews-with-tattoos/ http://www.bethshalom.org/2008/07/jews-with-tattoos/#comments Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:13:33 +0000 webmaster http://www.bethshalom.org/2008/07/jews-with-tattoos/ For Some Jews, It Only Sounds Like ‘Taboo’

ROBERTA KAPLAN, 71, has never been a fan of tattoos. “I’m a very Jewish person,” she said. “I was told from way, way back that you’re not supposed to desecrate your body.”

Ms. Kaplan ordered her five children to renounce tattoos. (What would neighbors at synagogue think?) Her children, in turn, did the same (every third teenager may have an ankle tattoo souvenir from spring break, but that doesn’t make it right by the Torah).

By the time Ms. Kaplan’s daughter Liz Carnes, 49, had teenage daughters who wanted body art, Ms. Carnes knew how to dissuade them. “I’d say, ‘If you get a tattoo, you can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery,’ ” said Ms. Carnes, the owner of a video equipment company in Carlsbad, Calif. “For no real reason, just that’s what my parents told me.”

Nearly every Jew, from those who go to synagogue only on holidays to those who dutifully follow Jewish law, has heard that adage. It has deterred many from being inked, even as tattoos have become widespread among N.B.A. players and housewives alike.

According to a 2007 poll of 1,500 people conducted by the Pew Research Center, 36 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds and 40 percent of 26- to 40-year-olds have at least one tattoo. Still, even Larry David was so haunted by the cemetery edict that he wrote an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in which he pays off a gravedigger to have his mother reburied in a Jewish cemetery despite a small tattoo on her behind.

But the edict isn’t true. The eight rabbinical scholars interviewed for this article, from institutions like the Jewish Theological Seminary and Yeshiva University, said it’s an urban legend, most likely started because a specific cemetery had a policy against tattoos. Jewish parents and grandparents picked up on it and over time, their distaste for tattoos was presented as scriptural doctrine.

At first, Nicki Carnes, daughter of Liz and granddaughter of Roberta, listened to her elders. “I took what they said to heart,” said Nicki Carnes, 29, who works for her mother’s company. “Then as I got older, I started doing my own research. I asked different rabbis, and they each had their own take.”

By the time, three years ago, she had an abstract rendering of her cat tattooed on her wrist, she wasn’t sure she was in the wrong. After all, she had figured out on her own what has yet to become commonly known among Jews: that rabbis disagree about just how bad it is to get inked.

Still, you try confronting your grandmother. Instead, Nicki Carnes hid her abstract cat for months, until one day her sleeve rode up. “My grandma grabbed my arm and just stared,” she said. “She gave me that blank, ‘You broke my heart’ look.”

Old myths die hard, and many tattooed Jews in their 20’s and 30’s say they often are criticized by other Jews, both relatives and strangers. Some, like Nicki Carnes and her sister, Rebecca, who now also has a tattoo, say that being permanently marked was just something they wanted. Others say they were tattooed to rebel or, surprisingly, that they wanted a Jewish tattoo as a way of connecting with their religious and cultural identity.

Andy Abrams, a filmmaker, has spent five years making a documentary called “Tattoo Jew.” In his interviews with dozens of Jews with body art, he’s noticed the prevalence of Jewish-themed tattoos — from Stars of David to elaborate Holocaust memorials, surprising since one reason Jewish culture opposes tattoos is that Jews were involuntarily marked in concentration camps.

Mr. Abrams has even seen tattoos that crack jokes, like the one on the back of Ari Bacharach’s neck: the word “Kosher” above a pig, an ironic statement about identity. “The people I interviewed are trying to express their Judaism, or connect with God or their Jewish roots,” said Mr. Abrams, 38, who lives in Los Angeles and calls himself a nonpracticing Orthodox Jew. “They’re taking this prohibited act and using it to feel more Jewish.”

Take Marshal Klaven, 29. While studying in Israel as a teenager, he decided to become a rabbi. For the first time, “it became not just the Jewish people, but my Jewish people,” he said. This sense of belonging inspired him to get the first of his three tattoos, a Star of David and a dove.

“For me, it’s about cultural pride and connecting in this very tangible, very visible way to a part of our lives that isn’t so tangible,” said Mr. Klaven, who is now a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and is writing his thesis on tattooing in the Jewish tradition.
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My Israel experiences always include study, tzedaka and filmmaking to tell
Israel’s story.

The study and Jewish enrichment– memory. I hope to explore over the course
of this year’s High Holy Days insights which I have gained into the role of
individual as well as collective memory in the formation of our own Jewish
selves and the notion of Jewish peoplehood with shared memory. Meanwhile, I
ask you in your summer thoughts and High Holy Day preparatory moments to
consider your own memories and the way in which those memories influence
every aspect of your life. Then, for a moment, just try to imagine how you
would link those memories to all our fellow Jews. Finally, sit down with a
tablet or at your computer and just list the instances in which you recall
(remember) the actual word “remember” or “memory” in Tanach, worship,
midrash, folklore– the totality of Jewish experience.

I was able to present, as I already shared with you, $1500 to Bikkur Cholim
hospital. In addition, one of our Bnot Mitzvah shared some of her Bat
Mitzvah gifts and on her behalf I was able to make an added donation to the
pediatric unit at Bikkur Cholim. Additionally, I made donations on our
behalf to Bemaagley Tzedek (words from the 23rd psalm which means “in
straight paths”)– an organization which advocates for workers and the
disabled. And finally, our donation reached The Israel Project, a non-profit
organization which assists journalists and independent filmmakers to obtain
materials, interviews and resources to tell Israel’s story to the world.

It is under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Office and The Israel
Project that I visited Sderot last Friday, July 11. I had the opportunity to
interview survivors of Qassam attacks, to photograph buildings which have
been hit directly, to witness schools under concrete canopies (which with
some irony they call a kippah) and actually to photograph into Gaza from the
closest overlook allowed by the military.

This will form part of a documentary which I am editing but for the moment
wanted to share with you a first “rough cut” of one interview. This is an
interview with Geut Argon, whose house was hit directly by a rocket some 6
months ago. Please watch and feel free to share the link with others so that
all of us can help tell Israel’s story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMfjhFM4wb0

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Ned Soltz

Yet a very uneasy shalom hangs over Jerusalem as we begin to prepare for
Shabbat. Traffic on Jaffa Road is back to normal and it is as if yesterday’s
incomprehensible attack simply wasn’t. Today, though, a Palestinian East
Jerusalem cab driver said: “Yesterday we couldn’t look at each other.” The
bulldozer attack was not, to most estimations, an organized terror action.
The perpetrator lived with a Jewish woman in the East Jerusalem village of
Suhr Baher, a community where Palestinians hold Israeli ID cards and from
which many of the trusted workers come. He had a criminal record and was
employed as a construction worker on the Jerusalem light rail transportation
project. Stories have surface that moments before he drove the front-loader
off the site into traffic he was taunted and pelted with stones by Charedi
children. And then he snapped.

Whatever the motivation, we grieve for the loss of more lives and the
suffering inflicted upon dozens. The press repeats the story of the parents
who handed their infant out of the car window to a passer-by moments before
their car was crushed.

For some reason unknown to me, I call to mind the Talmudic assessment that
Jerusalem was destroyed because of “sinat chinam”– gratuitous hatred. Far
too few of us are able to look each other in the eye these days. We pray for
guidance this coming Shabbat for our God to help us put an end to that
hatred even as we pray for renewed strength and resolve for our defense.

Shabbat Shalom m’Yerushalayim

Rabbi Ned Soltz