Why Hebrew letters?

Aleph

We’re Jewish. Letters hold deep significance for us. For the past 2,000 years, every (male) Jewish child learned to read by age three. Hebrew letters surround us from day one, no matter where we grow up. In Jewish mysticism, letters are seen as the building blocks of creation itself. It’s said that if even one letter vanished from the alphabet, the world would collapse.

We are עם הספר, “the people of the book.” And while most Jews don’t speak Hebrew, nearly all can read it—just as their parents, grandparents, and countless generations before them did, going back to the times of the First Temple.

We are all acutely aware that our traumas are passed down from generation to generation. Both individually and collectively, we live and relive the unresolved traumas of our ancestors. But just as well, we’ve inherited everything else that shaped their lives. We are the dialectic result of all the lives that preceded ours. Hebrew letters, an almost unchanged cultural phenomenon throughout dozens of generations, have inevitably become a part of our cultural DNA. We carry them, quite literally, in our bodies.

So, what could make more sense than making these letters visible on our skin as a way to express Jewish identity?