CHOCHMAS NASHIM: LECH LICHA:
TATOOS AND PIERCINGS
By: Suri Davis
Isnt it fascinating, how laws are set forth by nations. Is anyone really interested in reading the Constitution over and over and over. Maybe Nat Lewin and Alan Dershowitz, but not the multitudes. The laws are dry and boring. Take it from me, I’m busy reading the tax code.
But isn’t it fascinating that G-d decided to set down Jewish law, and the law of Ethics for the world in story format. The first torah portion, shows us Adam and Eve sinning, and Kain killing Abel with jealousy.
Noah reveals a world so wrought with sin, it had to be destroyed. The torah is about humanity, reality and transformation in the regular man’s attempt to stay within the lines of the laws set forth by G-d. Abram took upon himself monotheism, and this week’s torah portion shows G-d acknowledging his efforts by promising him heirs and a tiny land filled with milk and honey.
When I was in Israel recently, I walked and walked and walked. It was crowded in Jerusalem for Sukkoth, hustling and bustling. I shared tables, buses and benches with all kinds of people, including several with arms covered with tattoos and piercings body-wide. I have a couple of colleagues that have them as well, and it is a wonder to me that they use their bodies to express themselves seemingly as art canvases or billboards. They have statements to make, and I ponder and mull what their messages are. I don’t ask them, because I want to interpret them in my own way as each person who sees them is meant to interpret them. If there is a unifying personality trait to these tattooists it is a very sensitive soul.
It appears to me that maybe these people are in the pupa stage of a caterpillar, that stage where a caterpillar morphs into a beautiful butterfly. The caterpillar disappears into a cocoon for this transformation and reappears as transformed from a creature stuck on the bottom of the earth, crawling on its belly, to one which can soar high above humans and all who are attached by gravity to earth.
These tattooists seem to be deflecting. They are transforming internally, they are in a period of growth, but they don’t want you to look at them, they want to be alone, so they distract you by having you look externally, they challenge you to feel their pain, self-inflicted, of the tattoo making and the hole piercings, challenge you to look beyond what you see, to stare at their souls, their sensitive growing souls.
When infants go through this transformation, they sleep a lot and through their sleep, they experience tremendous growth. They have the luxury of growing in their private youthful cocoon. Not so with adolescence and teen years. Those in high school, college, yeshiva are in a tremendous growth spirt, and it is a challenge for them to have their privacy to transform, when they are in a very public period in their lives. Tremendous struggles to be understood, to understand, to figure out who they are and who they want to be, and where they want to be and who they want to be and how they want to get there. It happens throughout life, e.g., midlife crisis, when one takes stock of where one is and looks into the future and determines is he/she is on the track he/she wants to be on for the future. What is the purpose he/she has given life, and what is the legacy he/she wants to leave.
When you look at a Jackson Pollock painting, what do you see? The Chabad movement is awesome at this x-ray vision, never being fooled by what a person wants to appear like, but zeroing in on the neshama. Israelis are called Sabras, because they appear prickly, but their neshamas are beautiful and sweet. Hard for me to adapt to when I go there, a real challenge to see mah sheyesh bo/to see what is in the heart of each person.
In this week’s parshah, Abram tells G-d that he sees in his astrology that he is not destined to have children. G-d replies that He will change the names of Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah, so their destinies may change as well. Transformation.
G-d says: Abraham you worked hard to spread word that there is only one G-d in Heaven. There is a covenant between you and Me, the circumcision, and all those who enter into that covenant with Me, who believe that there is one G-d up on Heaven will be the beneficiary of G-d’s largesse, an ethical life, and a tiny homeland which is rich in produce for those who keep His covenant. G-d promises the land to Abraham, and we are so very fortunate to have control of that land in our hands.
We are challenged to see not just what is there, what G-d gave us when we were born, Abram and Sarai, but to work within G-d’s framework to realize the inbred potential in ourselves as well, and when we work to actualize that potential, G-d works with us to transform us so that our destinies may align with our actions and efforts.
It is the humanity of the format in which G-d gave us our laws that provides the desire to learn the Torah over and over every year from beginning to end, extrapolating new meaning every time we delve into it. It is a new year, new resolutions, new opportunities, run with them.
Shabbat shalom.
Suri