Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Hebrew Ink: Justin Bieber’s New ‘Yeshua’ Tattoo

A month after his first visit to Israel, Justin Bieber has gotten a Hebrew tattoo.

The 17-year-old pop star showed off the new ink during a visit to Hawaii with his girlfriend this week. (Because that’s what normal 17-year-olds do: get tattoos and go to Hawaii with their girlfriends.)

The letters spell out “Yeshua,” or Jesus, in Hebrew.

Israel’s Mako website speculates that the Christian singer may have been influenced in his tattoo selection by his Jewish manager, Scooter Braun. The site claims Bieber says the “Shma” before every concert, and that Braun has discussed Jewish ethics with the performer.

Whatever the tattoo’s inspiration, The Shmooze hopes it means that Bieber wasn’t too traumatized by his visit to Israel, which was marred by overzealous paparazzi and opportunistic politicians.

The concert itself went off without a hitch, and the singer delighted fans by using a bit of local slang — “sababa,” or cool — that didn’t make the cut as his tattoo.

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.

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!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.