The marks we carry
Recently, I received a video depicting former hostage Rom Braslavski undergoing the painful procedure of having his tattoos removed.
I watched for only a few seconds. It was difficult for me to see. I quickly took a screenshot for my blog, but I could not continue watching.
It made me wonder: Why do young people choose to permanently mark their bodies with tattoos?
Perhaps my feelings about tattoos were formed long before I even understood what the word meant.
When I was a little girl of about five, I sat on my father’s lap on Seder night during Passover. As he sang Chad Gadya, the traditional song at the end of the Seder, he rolled up his sleeve, and my young eyes discovered the blurry blue numbers on his forearm, partially covered by body hair.
“Papa, what are these numbers on your arm?” I asked him.
He paused.
Then, using language meant for a little girl, he explained:
“Bad people did this to me a long time ago. Instead of calling me by my name, they referred to me by a number.”
And he pointed to his arm.
Was I aware of the impact those words would have on me?
Did I understand the meaning of a tattoo?
Certainly not.
But what I did understand was that those blue numbers and my beloved Papa’s past were connected to something terrible. I could read that much in his facial expression.
Those numbers had not been his choice. They had been forced upon him in Auschwitz, as part of an attempt to strip a human being of his name and identity.
Perhaps that is why, throughout my life, I could never look at tattoos simply as decoration.
I grew up during the 1960s, an era we referred to as the hippie years. In my hometown of Vienna, it was not as obvious as it was in America. Or perhaps our small Jewish community was less exposed to that culture.
Today, I sometimes see people my age with tattoos covering their arms and bodies, remnants of their younger and perhaps wilder years.
And I think again of my Papa’s arm.
We are now in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, known as the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance.
And that brings me back to Rom Braslavski.
After the unimaginable suffering he endured in captivity, Rom has spoken publicly about drawing closer to Judaism. He covers his head and has described a renewed awareness of Hashem and of his Jewish identity.
As part of this return to his roots, he has learned that the Torah forbids a person from tattooing the body.
Now he is going through the painful process of removing his tattoos.
Rom’s decision to endure this difficult procedure should inspire us all.
My father could never remove the numbers that had been forced upon him. Rom, however, is choosing to remove the marks of an earlier chapter and return to his Jewish roots.
Perhaps this is the essence of teshuvah. We cannot erase yesterday, but we can choose how we enter tomorrow.
May Hashem help us remove the invisible marks from our neshamot and enter Yom Kippur with a renewed and cleansed heart.
Gmar Chatimah Tovah.