Tattoos are taboo for many Jews, but the atrocities of October 7 have changed many minds about how pain leaves a mark.
“I’m a good Jewish kid from New Jersey,” says Todd Elkin, a former Wall Streeter who now works for his family’s commercial cleaning business.
“I never imagined doing this, but October 7th changed everything. I now have two tattoos.”
The good news is that the Jewish mother is still talking to him.
“I was close to my mother, like other Jewish children,” said the 54-year-old from Marlboro, NJ.
“I have to agree with my mother. He is 80 and I am still in awe of him.
The non-religious father, the marriage of the two was “broken” after the killing of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas terrorists, and responded by donating to Friends of the IDF and to send armor to the soldiers.
“But I think there should be more,” he said.
With his daughter away in college in the Midwest, and the anti-Israel campaign relentlessly raging on campuses across the country, Elkin is fed up with the “from the river to the sea” crowd.
He made a plan to take a “stance”.
“I’m not 20. That doesn’t mean impulsive,” he said, before getting a tattoo on his bicep in Hebrew that reads “Am Yisrael Chai,” which means “The People of Israel live.”
“This is my way of fighting back, showing my support for Israel,” Elkin said, adding, “This is just for me.”
He carefully chooses his tattoo artist.
“I wanted an Israeli and Jewish tattoo artist,” Elkin said of his decision to tap former Williamsburg resident May Hillel Levit.
She moved to the Miami area this summer after increasing antisemitism in the wake of the Hamas massacre left her “scared” to send her young son to daycare, she said.
A steady stream of new customers, including seniors, has been to Levit since the attack on his homeland.
“I get a lot of old people, people who don’t think about getting a tattoo in their life,” Levit said, noting that the first client who wanted to remember October 7 walked in three days after the terror attack and asked. the star of David.
A new client has recognized him, “I want something to show the world that I am a proud Zionist and a proud Jew,” Lewit, 30, recounted.
Common motifs include the Jewish star, the Hebrew symbol “chai,” meaning life, and the message, “We will dance again,” a tattoo ex-hostage Mia Schem inked on her arm shortly after her release from 55 days in Hamas captivity.
Others wanted to honor Hamas victims like Shani Louk, the 22-year-old German-Israeli tattoo artist whose lifeless body was paraded on a truck in Gaza after he was abducted in Nova.
“I am not a general, I am not a fighter. This is my way of remembering him forever,” said Shiri Rosenblat-Itzhak, a high school teacher in Hoboken who worked with Levit earlier this year on a “constellation” pattern tattoo on his right arm. It’s one of Louk’s own designs. .
“He is a symbol of something magical,” Rosenblat-Itzhak said.
“It is my duty to honor his memory and have it engraved forever. The fact that it is permanent is the most important factor for me. It will be with me all my life.”
Marking the dual solemnity and celebration of life can only be shared with a tattoo artist who understands, said the married mother of three.
“We were crying,” Rozenblat-Itzhak said of Levit.
That’s what draws many clients to Yoni Zilber, a tattoo artist who hails from Israel, NJ. His clients now include more than 100 Nova survivors and IDF soldiers dealing with PTSD, who found a way to Zilber through an organization called “Healing Ink,” which helps terror survivors.
“A lot of people feel like they want to remember the loss of their friends,” said Zilber, 49, who worked in Chinatown and New Jersey and initially donated all his earnings after the massacre to Israel.
The issue of whether tattoos are kosher stretches as far back as the Torah itself. The Jewish reluctance to tattoo dates back to Leviticus, which states, “You shall not tattoo yourselves,” a prohibition that has led some to believe that Jews who wear ink cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery.
The barrier is actually a myth, said Zilber.
“These are the stories your grandfather invented,” he said, referring to the misconceptions about Jewish funerals, adding a New York Jewish couple, “Lew the Jew” Alberts and Joe Lieber, who pioneered the tattoo industry last century.
“The people who make tattoo art in New York are Jews.”
Amy Platt’s mother always warned that the ink would prevent her from being “buried in a Jewish cemetery.”
But the act is acceptable now because her rabbi accompanied the Long Island mother of two to a tattoo parlor, using a design drawn by the rabbi himself.
