Religions against tattoos and piercings...

Last week i posted about the reasons people get tattoos and one of the reasons was for the faith in one's religion. Upon doing the research for that post i found out that there are some religions that see the art of tattooing and piercing as a crime against their religion. To find out more about this, i spoke to my roommate, who is Jewish and found out that both the Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah speak out against getting tattoos and piercings. It is looked at as immoral because it is defacing God's work by cutting it to the flesh of one's body. To get a bit more specific, the actual passage says, "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord." Leviticus 19:28. It was once against the law to partake in these activities and one would be rejected from being buried in a jewish cemetery. Although once the holocaust was over there were many jewish people who were tattooed with numbers against there will, so the this law was no longer enforced. Although in some strict communities and households they still stick to this religious belief.

Seeing that we r in college, and it is somewhat of a rebellious stage where students tend to experiment, especially with tattoos and piercings, some students even who's families practice these religions go against there religion and parents beliefs. I spoke to a few friends at DePaul who are Jewish and 2 out of those three have tattoos. They got these tattoos on there back and other places that are hidden so that their parents will hopefully never see them. They all said that there families would be very disappointed with them if they were to find out that they had tattoo and it is for this reason they they have chosen to remain anonymous. So even though tattoos and piercings are becoming more and more accepted, there are still those people who abide by their religious beliefs and feel that it is immoral. After learning this, one must realize that this is why people with tattoos and piercings are looked at differently and in some place not accepted.