Reza Aslan at the Western Wall. Image by CNN

By Naomi Zeveloff March 14, 2017

Reza Aslan, the popular religion scholar and Iranian-American Muslim, has a Hebrew tattoo.

If you watch Aslan’s CNN series “Believer,” chances are you’ll catch a glimpse of his inked upper arm, which says “hillel,” during various rituals with the religions he explores, such as when he dunks under a waterfall with Voodoo practitioners in Haiti.

Reza Aslan’s “hillel” tattoo. Image by Courtesy Reza Aslan

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Aslan, 44, has had the tattoo for more than 20 years. He got it when he was 22 or 23, he told the Forward, as a reflection of his spirituality.

The word hillel means “praise’ in Hebrew, but Aslan said he was drawn to the word for its biblical meaning, which is “awe.”

“My spirituality comes from my family but secondarily it comes from my encounter with the world and with nature,” he said in an interview about “Believer.” “I am easily in awe of the world and of its glories and its mysteries and so I wanted to reflect that.”

The tattoo gets him confused for a Jew sometimes, especially at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. When Aslan travels to Israel, he said, he is always strip-searched.

“There is always that really funny movement when I take off my shirt and the officer looks at my arm and is like: ‘Wait, what? Why do you have Hebrew on your arm? Are you a Jew?’ [“I say,”] ‘No I’m not a Jew, continue with the strip-search.”

Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected]

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount