JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
“In the next life, I’m tryna stay paid,” the rapper Drake announces on a recent single. “When I die, put my money in the grave.” That request may be fulfilled sooner rather than later, now that the rapper has mortally offended every living Beatles fan. The 32-year-old rapper is partial to tattoos and self-aggrandizement, and…
The California Supreme Court unanimously overturned a white supremacist’s death sentence after they found that prosecutors tainted the jury’s deliberations by focusing on his Nazi tattoos, The Washington Post reported. Jeffrey Scott Young, who at the time was affiliated with neo-Nazi groups like the Aryan Brotherhood, was on trial for murder in 2006. He was…
For long as I can remember, I have been captivated by tattoos. I love the variety, the creativity, and the idea that your body can be a canvas for art. As a serious lover of heavy metal, this tatted-up aesthetic makes me swoon. I have lusted after tattoos for my entire life — even in…
This article originally appeared in The Forward on July 4, 1997. The first tattoo, speculates Peter Trachtenberg, was the mark of God placed on Cain “lest anyone finding him kill him.” In other words, muses the author of “7 Tattoos,” “From the very beginning tattoos were associated with wrongdoing.” but that was not their only…
Wandering around Tel Aviv’s Florentin neighborhood the day of the third annual Israel Tattoo Convention, I figured I would encounter a trail of tattooed people who would lead me there. But inked Israelis were on every street corner and coffee shop; I couldn’t quite determine whom to follow. “In Tel Aviv, in the south, every…
My first tattoo, summer of 2010: Woodstock (not the festival, the little yellow bird from the Peanuts) sitting on a unicorn, both characters wishing on a star. It reflects the childlike innocence I hope to maintain. After I got it, I began to understand why people always say they “crave” ink: By the middle of…
Russian opera singer Evgeny Nikitin has withdrawn from the Bayreuth Opera Festival because of Nazi tattoos on his chest and arm. Nikitin, 39, withdrew days before he was supposed to sing the lead in Richard Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman,” after archival images of him playing drums in a heavy metal band – chest bared and…
Getting inked isn’t abhorrent behavior for Jews these days. There’s HebrewTattoo.net, a translation service that generates thousands of hits each month, and celebrity tattooists like Ami James, the Israeli-born former star of TLC’s “Miami Ink.” But Jews looking to inscribe their bodies with the language of prayer might be wise to ignore the cautionary (and…
כאָטש זי מישט אַ מאָל אַרײַן רוסישע ווערטער איז איר ייִדיש פֿאַרבליבן אַ פֿליסיקע און מע קען בולט הערן איר „טאָטע־מאָמע לשון“
