Hebrew Tattoos w/Artist and Calligrapher Gabriel Wolff
EPISODE NOTES
Description
Clarissa talks with artist and calligrapher, Gabriel Wolff. They talked about his journey to finding his niche as a Hebrew calligrapher, specifically for tattoo art, and the ways that Jews are using tattoos to wrestle with and communicate their individual and group identity. Gabriel also shared how he sees his art as part of our collective struggle as Jews to find a way past a "post-traumatic experience of life.”
People, Places & Things Mentioned
Example of one of Gabriel’s tattoo designs with a phoenix
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
Connect with Us
Follow Gabriel Wolff
Instagram:@hebrew_tattoos
Website: GabrielWolff.com
Gabriel’s Tattoo Art Website: Hebrew-Tattoos.com
Follow Clarissa Marks
Twitter: @clarissarmarks
Instagram: @clarissarmarks
Visit Onwandering.co for show notes and transcripts
Like the show? Rate On Wandering 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts
Suggest a topic or a guest by sending an email to hello@onwandering.co
Land Acknowledgement
On Wandering is recorded on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People past and present, and honors with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.
TRANSCRIPT
Clarissa Marks: I'm Clarissa Marks and you are listening to On Wandering. I'm re-releasing the episodes I recorded last year under a different show name and this one’s with artist and calligrapher, Gabriel Wolff. I interviewed Gabriel in January 2020. We talked about his journey to finding his niche as a Hebrew calligrapher, specifically for tattoo art, and the ways that Jews are using tattoos to wrestle with and communicate their individual and group identity. Gabriel also shared how he sees his art as part of our collective struggle as Jews to find a way past a "post-traumatic experience of life." He has a beautiful way with words and I loved revisiting this part of our conversation. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Gabriel Wolff.
Thanks so much for joining me again. I wanted to start by asking when you first got interested in calligraphy.
Gabriel Wolff : Right, so, calligraphy kind of accompanied me my whole life. I started playing the violin when I was five, and I think around the same time, I started being busy with calligraphy. I grew up in Munich, or I lived for quite a few years when I was a kid in Munich. So the calligraphy I was busy with when I was a kid was Latin letter calligraphy. And there's a story that, I don't know if it's true, but my mom tells the story that we were in an exhibition about in Nazi posters. And I was really, really excited about the letters on the Nazi posters. So I started imitating them, and this is how I got into calligraphy.
Clarissa Marks: Yeah, I've read that story, and that makes me think of a question that I'd like to start asking all of my guests. When did you realize you were a minority?
Gabriel Wolff :Oh, and I grew up as a minority. I don't remember myself as not being a minority. It was all around us. My grandparents had immigrated to what was then Palestine in '35, I think, or '36, and they came back to Germany right after the Holocaust. So I think in '47, or '48, just before the with the War of Independence in Israel broke out, they moved back to Germany because my grandfather was a theater actor and as such, he was connected to the German language. And he he had no reason to stay in a non German speaking country. For him, he was a German and so was my grandmother. So he decided to go back to Germany right when it was possible. So my mom grew up in a country where everyone around them was German., everyone basically had lived through the Third Reich, and my grandmother who really didn't want to go back to Germany for, I think, obvious reasons, no? Always had this idea of when you, so when my mom will be twelve, we'll go back to Israel. Israel is our home country.
My grandmother unfortunately died before my mom was twelve. And so my mom lived in Germany for her whole life, feeling that she was actually in not really in our own country. She had been to Israel like once in the '70s, but she had this clear idea that Germany was not her country, and Israel was. And so when we immigrated finally to Israel, I was twelve. But all the time until then, I clearly knew that I was an outsider. I belonged, kind of, but not really. There were the Germans and then there was us. And of course, you know, I went to Hebrew school and kind of religion classes and everything. And I knew that when everybody celebrated Christmas, we didn't. So it was very, very clear from the beginning that we kind of didn't belong.
Clarissa Marks: So when did your family or when did you move back to Israel?
Gabriel Wolff : So, to me, it really wasn't moving back to me it was an absolute uprooting of.
Clarissa Marks: Okay.
Gabriel Wolff: I was a kid. When I understood that we would go I was eleven. We moved to Israel, like a few days before my twelfth birthday.
Clarissa Marks: And then you had never been there before. So it's a completely new country for you.
Gabriel Wolff: Yes, absolutely. We had been there for a week or something in the summer before that as a kind of, trying to get to know the country. But of course, you know, an immigration was still an immigration. So, yes, I didn't have the feeling that I was coming back. I had the feeling that I was leaving for a new country. I didn't really want to go , but you know how it is when you're a kid. You adapt very, very fast. So a few months after having immigrated to Israel, I spoke fluent Hebrew, and I went to regular school and, of course, I remembered where I came from, but I wasn't Israeli. When I was thirteen I was an Israeli.
Clarissa Marks: So when did you start designing or working with calligraphy in Hebrew letters?
Gabriel Wolff : I did already in Germany. I started with Latin letters, because they were all around me. My mom used to write her PhD on a typewriter. And that was, of course, you know, a German typewriter. And our whole apartment was full of books, all German and French and English books. So that was, kind of, the letters I knew more intimately. But Hebrew letters were part of my life when I was a kid. You know, every Jewish kid learns how to write when they're three, maybe. It took me a few years longer, but when I was six or seven, I knew how to write Hebrew. The really creative Hebrew calligraphy started when I came to to Israel. So when I was twelve or thirteen, I started experimenting with these letters, I started to try to find ways to play with them, ways to build new stuff with them.
Clarissa Marks: I think I read in one of your interviews that you mentioned as part of learning calligraphy, you spent a lot of time copying Hebrew documents that were preserved in archives in Jerusalem.
Gabriel Wolff : Yes.
Clarissa Marks: What kind of documents were you copying?
Gabriel Wolff: So a few different [kinds]. One of the things that I obsessed over for a summer when I was I don't know, seventeen maybe, was handwriting from eighteenth century Ukraine. I think it had to do with Rebbe Nachman at some point. But I found out that in the '50s, in Israel, there was a specific handwriting that was it was very common, which I believed then was rooted in eighteenth century handwriting in Ukraine. Looking back, I think it was complete bullshit.
But I was really amazed with that. And my mom used to work in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, so she had access to all the archives. So I would just sit weeks in dusty cellars, going through letters that nobody had read for the last 200 years, looking for ways to understand how handwriting developed. And one other thing I was amazed with at some point was 19th century, German art nouveau. There was a specifically Zionist stream in art nouveau in Germany, that used Hebrew letters. Now, it was very obvious obvious that something was wrong with the letters. They were kind of out of balance. So I started in looking for parallels or similarities between German calligraphy of that time and these Hebrew letters as well. I built crazy theories [about] how they came into being which, basically, you know, they're wrong, but I was busy with that. I did that for years because there's still loads of archives in Israel, especially in Jerusalem, that are kind of forgotten. They're accessible, but they're forgotten. Millions of documents. For a calligraphy, of course, that's a treasure, no?
Clarissa Marks : [Laughs] Were they legal documents? Were they just letters that folks wrote to each other, marriage certificates? What were these documents that you were working with?
Gabriel Wolff : Yes. All-
Clarissa Marks: All of them. Okay.
Gabriel Wolff: Yeah. Letters less. The main documents that are preserved today are legal documents.
Clarissa Marks: Okay.
Gabriel Wolff: So for example, there's a Beit Din that was functioning, I think, until the late 19th century in Altona, which today is a part of Hamburg in Germany. I think like 200 years of certificates and like documentations of this Beit Din, and so on and so on, was just transferred to Jerusalem. Stuff like that. Mainly legal documents. Today legal documents are all printed, but back then, of course, they were handwritten. To me it didn't much matter what was written in them. What I was interested in was only the letters handwriting.
Clarissa Marks: So when did you first think of designing calligraphy for tattoos specifically?
Gabriel Wolff: It was a coincidence. I when I was in my early twenties people just started asking me for it. In the beginning was friends, and then friends of friends. At some point, I think I wanted to learn HTML, so I built kind of a blog or something. Because I calligraphy was what I had, I just, you know, uploaded a bunch of my works. And then step by step, and requests started pouring in. The internet back then was really not what it was today, so it happened slowly, but I was not interested tattoos whatsoever. I was never one of the cool kids, so I didn't have any tattoos. I wasn't fascinated by tattoos. I had a lot of piercings, but tattoos wasn't something I was busy with. I considered myself, you know, interested in calligraphy. In fact, it took me years to really take an interest in tattoos as such, and that was just because more and more people started asking me for calligraphy designs specifically for Jews. And most of them were, obviously, Jews.
Clarissa Marks: So now you work as part of a team, right? You have someone else who helps with the translation or getting the wording right when folks make requests?
Gabriel Wolff: Yes, that's correct.
Clarissa Marks: So can you tell me a little bit more about that process?
Gabriel Wolff: Yes, I work together with a guy who lives in Haifa, in the north of Israel. He's a Bible scholar and he's a linguist. He's writing his PhD in Jewish history. He's busy with words. He's a poet as well. His approach to words is, I feel it's deeper than my own. What I'm interested in is letters, and he is really a man of the words. So the initial, kind of, part of the design process involves a lot of thinking about which words are suitable for a tattoo. Sometimes people come with names and then it's pretty easy. Sometimes you have to think how to transliterate names, but basically you have the words. But sometimes people come with ideas like, "my grandfather just died. I would like to commemorate him," or "I have been through a tough year, through a rough year. I would like to find a way, a touchstone and to get out of it." And then he is the one who really tries to build a story, or tries to hear the story, and look for references in either the [unintelligible], you know, Biblical verses, or in the Talmud, or in Israeli poetry, or in other texts, and suggests a few different options and I create my art from these words.
Clarissa Marks: What drew me to your style, initially, is that it's not just linear letters. You're really good at making the letters shaped into a representation of something else. So you have examples on your website of, like, someone asked for the Shema in the shape of a tree. Or there's another quote that's written in the shape of a lion. How did you develop that style where, you know, the letters are arranged into a pictograph?
Gabriel Wolff: It took a long time. It took a long time and during which I was not really interested in being creative, I was busy with being exact. But at some point it was just not enough. So I started, you know, embellishing more and more. And then I started adding some round shapes, which is still something I love to do. And at some point, a guy asked me for a tree. It was a tree of life. And at the beginning I thought it was completely impossible until I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and the first tree was born. And from there, I felt that, you know, sky's the limit, and I started the experimenting with it. It adds another layer to my art. So, writing a text and embellishing it and making it balanced is one thing, but creating, for example, a phoenix for a rape survivor, which is something that happens more than anything else, is a complete different level of representation of a story. So you have the text talking about the story, and you have the form, kind of suggesting a solution to the situation or giving the situation a new horizon. And that is what I really love about my art. It is the process of the transformation within a piece of art.
Clarissa Marks: I was reading on your website that there is not a lot of history of Hebrew letters being used in artistic pictorial forms because of the confusion in Judaism about what's iconography. So you also look to other cultures. You looked at Arabic calligraphy for inspiration. Was that difficult to translate calligraphy from Latin or Arabic into something that could be used for Hebrew letters?
Gabriel Wolff: It was definitely a challenge. Earlier I talked about the German art nouveau artists who tried to take an aesthetic that was prevalent in German calligraphy of the time and impose it on Hebrew letters. And that is something that is possible but it can fail tremendously.
Clarissa MarkS: What does it look like when it fails?
Gabriel Wolff: It looks out of balance. So, the basic Latin letter is based on a square. And the basic Hebrew letter is, kind of, it hangs on a line. If you look at Hebrew letters, if you look at the Hebrew text, and you don't know how to read it, the first thing you see is basically a line at the top of the letters that goes through the whole text, and then some stuff hanging from it. And this is something that you kind of intuitively have to understand, in order to be creative with these letters. And in the case of Arabic letters, it's different. Again, there's the same line, but it's at the bottom of the letters. So this is one specific difference between the different alphabets and there are, you know, several others. So like any translation, like translating a poem from one one language to the other means that you have to really understand both worlds. So it's, kind of, diving into one calligraphy and picking what makes sense in one system, in one calligraphy, in one art form, and try to not just impose it on the other, but to, kind of, take the essence and let this essence bloom in the other calligraphy, in the other art form, in the other system, in the other alphabet. But for example making, what did we talk about? Phoenixes and lions?
Clarissa Marks: Right.
Gabriel Wolff : These are definitely ideas that I took from Arabic calligraphy.
Clarissa Marks: Oh, okay.
Gabriel Wolff: This is very common or this is very emblematic to Arab calligraphy.
Clarissa Marks: Do folks ask for the Phoenix quite often?
Gabriel Wolff: Yes, that's true. A Phoenix is something that that is very common that is a theme that is very public. A lion is a theme that is very common. And of course then stars of David and any specific Jewish symbolism. But generally speaking, people don't come when they're at the top of their game. People look for, or often look for a tattoo when they're in crisis. Tattoos are always either in a touchstone, so either something to hold on to, or an expression of their identity. A lot [are] about sexual assault survivors. Surprisingly, a lot [are] about people coming out of the closet. And then there [are] the kids of Holocaust survivors who wanted a tattoo for for the last, I don't know, 30 years, and they promised their parents they would get it once the parents passed. And the parents pass, and the kids commemorate the parents with a tattoo, which is a crazy tension, no?
Clarissa Marks: Yes.
Gabriel Wolff: Commemorating a parent who didn't want you to get tattooed with a tattoo. The same tension, kid of, you know, getting a Hebrew tattoo in general, as a Jew. You mark yourself as a Jew with a transgression against the Jewish rules. So this tension is really a part of the process of almost every tattoo I ever design.
Clarissa Marks: Right. So I was going to ask, there's a lot of confusion about whether or not Judaism as a religion approves or disapproves of tattooing. And there's debate about whether or not you can be buried in a Jewish cemetery with a tattoo. So have you gotten pushback from more conservative Jews about your work because of this?
Gabriel Wolff: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. We tried to arrange an exhibition about Jewish tattooing Germany, and we were looking for a rabbi to, kind of, not say, "tattoos are okay! That's great! Just, you know, all the Jews should get tattoos now," but, just somebody who would say, "it's okay to talk about the issue." And we didn't find one single rabbi who was willing to do that in Germany. So, yes, I get a lot of push-back. There's no question that tattooing is prohibited in Judaism. It's kind of a minor offense. It's not like breaking Shabbat, for example. It's maybe a little bit like shatnez, like mixing, you know, garments. I guess that, you know, the t-shirt that you're wearing right now, you don't know if it's shatnez or not. It's just not something that really concerns us. But tattooing is kind of the same, you know, level of horribleness within Jewish religion. But, yes, it's prohibited. There's no question. You can get buried. I don't know where that comes from, but I heard that this is a confusion that originates in a Seinfeld episode.
Clarissa Marks: [Laughs]
Gabriel Wolff: I don't know if that's true. But yes, you can definitely get buried in a in a Jewish cemetery. Nobody will ask you even if you're tattooed, you know, from head to toe, but still it's the same. There's no question about that.
Clarissa Marks: I wanted to dig in a little bit more into how these tattoos are part of Jewish identity. Do you feel that being Jewish is part of your work as an artist?
Gabriel Wolff: Yes, absolutely. Being Jewish is part of everything. I don't think there's lots that I do that is not in some way related to being Jewish and definitely my art is all about being Jewish. My art is almost all about looking for a secular Jewish identity, looking for an honest way to express a Jewish identity that is not limited by religion. I'm not an atheist, but I'm definitely not religious. If needed I work on Shabbat, although I prefer not. I don't eat pork, but it's not that I keep kosher or something. So, I'm not a religious person, but my Jewish identity is a really big part of my life. It's a really big quest in my life. There are a lot of questions about it. So my art is all about this and listening to people talk about their own struggle, their own quest, their own search for Jewish identity is a big, big part of this work.
Clarissa Marks: You made a really interesting point in your artist statement on your website that Jews used to identify themselves more publicly and regularly with clothing, like a kipah or yarmulke, or sometimes they were identified in a way they didn't choose with a yellow star. But now modern secular Jews are less likely to wear those identifying features and can otherwise pass as non-Jews. So can you tell me about how your work designing Hebrew tattoos fits in with that story of presenting a public Jewish identity?
Gabriel Wolff: Yes, part of identity is always reflective. So it's always seeing yourself through the eyes of the other. So what the other sees in you is maybe a bigger part of our self-perception than we may want to think. So, I don't know, if you take a very handsome guy, the chances that he will be successful life are bigger than somebody who is unpleasant to look at because people treat him in a different way. So being viewed as Jews, being publicly recognized as Jews, helps us to live Jewishly in two ways. One is you recognize other Jews or other Jews who recognize you. And so if you're sitting in a train, and a Jew sits next to even if you don't talk to him, there is a Jewish presence in that train. It's not this atomized, singular existence that is so much part of our modern lives. And then, towards the other, towards goyim, towards the, gentiles, I think it's almost a political statement to be visibly Jewish, especially in a society that it's blatantly antisemitic. So being present in the public sphere as Jews I think is a big part of a healthy, proud Jewish existence and identity.
Clarissa Marks: Do you think that the folks who are coming to you for a tattoo design are looking for a more public way to signal that they're Jewish?
Gabriel Wolff: Some of them, yes, definitely. Some of them definitely are going for that. And some of them even will phrase, some of them really talk in these terms of wanting to be perceived as a Jew in order to stick to that identity. But not everyone. Definitely not. A lot of people to to do themselves on the back, or on the ribcage, or on the shoulders where it's not often visible. This being visible as Jews is kind of that's my quest. I think this is really important for us as Jews, but not everyone agrees. And definitely not all of my clients see themselves as, you know, warriors of Jewish visibility.
Clarissa Marks: Why does it feel important for you personally?
Gabriel Wolff : I'm an Israeli. I grew up in Jerusalem, or at least, you know, I was socialized Jerusalem. My important years I lived in Jerusalem and most of my years I lived in Jerusalem. And the feeling of being back in the diaspora, while, on one hand, it really makes it possible to look for a Jewish identity, which in Israel is very, very hard, as well puts me in a situation where I'm a minority. Minorities have an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is, we start looking out for each other, we start building a community almost inevitably. But of course, the disadvantage is that sometimes, you know, days passed by without me meeting another Jew, without some Jews meeting other Jews. So Jewish questions don't necessarily keep us busy. And in a world that is so crazily individualistic and that demands so much individualism from us, in such a world, it's easy to lose our collective identity, which is Judaism.
Clarissa Marks: So do you have any tattoos yet?
Gabriel Wolff: Yes, of course! In the end, I got tattooed. [Laughs]
Clarissa Marks: [Laughs]
Gabriel Wolff: After years of working in tattoos, I got tattooed. I got a half-sleeve with a star of David, obviously, and then some plants from the different places I lived in. As I mentioned, I grew up in Munich. I was actually born in Dachau, and I grew up in Munich, and then I lived for most of my life in Jerusalem, then I went on to live in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and then, for the last five years, I lived in Buenos Aires, and I live in Berlin. And so I collected, kind of, plants from all these places, and I made a half-sleeve with a star David. Kind of the story of my life and the conclusion: I'm Jewish.
Clarissa Marks: What happens if you move somewhere else? You're gonna have to get another plant and add to it.
Gabriel Wolff: I guess I will never be able to move again.
Clarissa Marks: Okay, that's it. It's done. Do you get any questions about your tattoos from folks on the street who, you know, don't know who you are but are interested in what you have in your arm?
Gabriel Wolff: Sometimes questions. Sometimes just, you know, this recognizing as being a Jew by other Jews, and as well some unpleasant encounters, less pleasant encounters. It's Berlin. Actually it's the safest place I know to be a Jew, including Jerusalem. Definitely safer than Buenos Aires, where any racism, but especially antisemitism seems to be just very, you know, public and open and it's okay to, you know, curse a Jew as a Jew on the street.
Clarissa Marks: In Buenos Aires?
Gabriel Wolff: Yes.
Clarissa Marks: Wow. I didn't know that.
Gabriel Wolff: A Jew, or Peruvian, or whatever. Racism is much less subtle than it is in Berlin. There's a lot of Arabic immigration here and, generally speaking, while I do think that most Germans have some antisemitic ideas, Arabs are more open in expressing them. So I do get some unpleasant comments from Arabs once in a while.
Clarissa Marks
Hmm. Does anyone ask for a tattoo in Yiddish?
Gabriel Wolff: Yes, actually two of the most amazing works I ever made were in Yiddish. To me Yiddish was a super important attempt to find a diasporic Jewish identity. Because my grandparents, of course, they spoke Yiddish and the generation before them. And the fact that, to me, Yiddish was just part of the cultural surrounding when I was a kid. And in Israel, it was immediately ridiculous, it was immediately ridiculed becauseYiddish is not something you can, you know, you can speak publicly in Israel. It's almost an anti-Zionist offense or something. So, two of the people I created tattoos for in Yiddish really became, kind of, moments of epiphany for me. One was a woman in Mexico, Mexico City, whom I later met in Berlin when she was visiting here, who got tattooed "libe aun arbet", "love and work." She herself studied in the only Yiddish-speaking, non-Zionist school in Mexico City where she grew up. She's a psychoanalyst, and she had the same kind of ideas of looking- we have a very similar language. She was as well looking for a non-Zionist or post-Zionist, particularly, diasporic Jewish identity. And she said, "in most of Latin America, Hebrew is the language of Jews. But Yiddish is the language of her grandparents." So, tattooing herself in Yiddish rather than a Hebrew was an important act to her. And a few years before that I had a guy, I forgot his name, but he tattooed a phrase from the Yiddish Police- help me out here.
Clarissa Marks: The Yiddish Policemen's Union?
Gabriel Wolff: Yes, exactly.
Clarissa Marks": By Michael Chabon?
Gabriel Wolff: Yes, yes, exactly. He tattooed a phrase from there. I can't remember the phrase, but as well it was this moment of understanding that Yiddish was not just in my head and it was not just at the beginning of the 20th century. It's something that people still really care about. One of the reasons I immigrated to Berlin in the end was that I had the feeling that maybe a Yiddish, a new, honest and authentic Yiddish culture would grow here. And I think that maybe I was wrong. There are a few Yiddish musicians here. But it's artificial. As long as there is no Yiddish life as, as long as there's no kids who speak Yiddish, I don't think there can be an authentic Yiddish culture.
Clarissa Marks: Yeah.
Gabriel Wolff: But yeah, Yiddish
Clarissa Marks : Yiddish. So what's something that you're curious about right now or that you want to start working on?
Gabriel Wolff: Right now, I'm working on a sculpture for the new building of the Tulsa Jewish Museum. They have a new ward.
Clarissa Marks: Oh wow.
Gabriel Wolff: [I'll] create the, kind of, an emblem for the outside. The interesting thing about it is that calligraphy, when it becomes more and more creative, it, kind of, almost automatically is looking for a third dimension. So while in the beginning letters just stand next to each other, letters get more and more intertwined in the process of becoming more and more creative. And while they intertwine, they need to go above and below. In the beginning, on paper, this is just an optical illusion. But working with it more and more, I kind of, already for years, I feel the need to really work in three dimensions. So when the curator of the Tulsa museum called me and asked me to create this calligraphy, it was a great opportunity to really go for this third dimension and create sculptures, rather than just calligraphy on paper. It feels almost like a natural next step I was waiting for this opportunity. My art was waiting for this opportunity. So I'm really happy about that. And another thing is an exhibition I have in the summer of 2020, here in Berlin, about abstraction in Jewish praying. I mentioned before, I'm really not a religious person, but I do pray. The only thing, or the only two items that I carry with me since my Bar Mitzvah, and that I never left behind through all my immigrations is my sedur on one hand and my talit on the other. I have a hard time justifying it, I have a hard time really accepting it, but I do pray. And there is an exhibition about the abstraction that is needed for a secular Jew to pray.
Clarissa Marks: That's fascinating. Where's that going to be?
Gabriel Wolff: Where's it going to be? It's going to be in, well, it's going to be in Berlin. Actually, it's going to be in a Christian space in Berlin. They asked me to create it. So yeah, this summer. It's exciting.
Clarissa Marks: Wow.
Gabriel Wolff: Yes.
Clarissa Marks: Okay. So is there anything that I haven't asked about yet that I should have asked?
Gabriel Wolff : Yes. When we talk about Jewish tattooing we should see it in a historic context. We talked before about tattooing being prohibited but being a minor offense, and the question: why shatnez, so mixing of garments, is just, you know, a forgotten offense or forgotten prohibition, and why tattooing is so central and arises so much anger, and so many hard feelings within the Jewish community, I think is interesting. And, you know, through these thousands, literally thousands of conversations I had with Jews about their identities, I discovered a few things. One of them is that the reason why tattooing is still so, so offensive to so many Jews is the Holocaust. In Auschwitz, they tattooed us, so tattoos is something that, you know, we don't touch.
Clarissa Marks: Mm hmm.
Gabriel Wolff: And one other thing we talked about is how tattoos are always about identity. How tattoos can either be like a confirmation of an identity you already have or a projection. So a wish for an identity, something that I want to be. So, you know, I want to be a strong person, I want to be a tough guy, put a skull on my forearm. And the Holocaust, as well, is something that is deeply connected to Jewish identity. So there is a connection, there is a parallel. And if we look at the historical moment at which we are right now, I think it's interesting what is happening. The last survivors are dying. So when I when I was a kid, old people in the synagogue were expected, kind of, to have a number on their arm.
Of course, that was in Germany, so you know, more survivors, but that was that was my surrounding. Old people were Holocaust survivors. My grandparents, they survived because they moved to Palestine, and then back to Germany, but their whole family, they all stayed in Auschwitz. So, this presence of the Holocaust was very, very, you know, omnipresent in my childhood. But if I look at my daughter, for example, she'll have her 18th birthday this year, her great-grandmother, who, herself, went through the Holocaust, she passed away when my daughter was four or something. So that whole generation, one generation after us has a completely different kind of approach to Holocaust, and hence a different approach to that huge part of our Jewish identity that is the Holocaust. On one hand that's a challenge because remembering the Holocaust, of course, is super important. And it's not just the fact that we have to remember the Holocaust, it's, as well, the conclusions.
So, how we remember the Holocaust, which I think is the most important question for our times, for Jews, of course. Our approach to the Holocaust, there is nothing that, in the end, deeply is more important than that. So, on one hand, it's the challenge. It's, kind of, the fight over remembering the Holocaust. On the other hand, it's a big opportunity. It's a great opportunity, and that is getting rid of being a post-traumatic society. The generation of our parents, they were just about survival. So they are the kids of those who really came out of Auschwitz. They had one role in life as being Jews and that was to reproduce to, you know, fill the ranks again, and that is absolutely understandable, but it's a post-traumatic experience of life. It's a post-traumatic life-experience.
When we immigrated to Israel, I mentioned before, the apartment we lived in was covered with books. We had no art at home because all the walls were, you know, covered with books. When we emigrated to Israel, we could take, I don't know, 5% of these books. These books were the life of my mom. She, you know, her identity was these books. So it was a really hard quest, a really hard choice: "What do I give? What do they take with me?" What did she take with her in the end? The Holocaust books. This was, you know, from all the books that she had collected through her whole life and the books of her father as well. From all these books, the most important books to her identity were the Holocaust books. And then if you look at, you know, Israeli society, this is the society I know best. It's a post-traumatic society. It's a society that is in a situation where it acts in very unfree ways.
Clarissa Marks: Mm hmm.
Gabriel Wolff: The occupation to me is mainly a question of post-trauma, of Holocaust post-trauma. All this is going to change the question is just how it's going to change. Is it going to just become a part of our identity for the next I don't know how many generations, or will we be able to to heal from this? That doesn't mean we should forget the Holocaust. It just means we should take a step back and look [at] if we can heal, if we can leave the trauma behind just like any other trauma, just like any other collective trauma. And so when I think about tattoos because they're connected to the Holocaust, and because they're connected to Jewish identity, or it can be a tiny step on a long, long way of rethinking how we live as Jews with the Holocaust. This is the moment. We have to solve this. We have to solve our identity, we have to solve our feeling of existence.
Clarissa Marks: Absolutely.
Gabriel Wolff: Tattoos can be a part of this. Tattoos can be a tiny, you know, a tiny stone and that new house we build.
Clarissa Marks: Right. Well, I can think about bringing it to a very individual level. If you're someone who wants to get a Hebrew tattoo, and you think of it as a celebration of your Jewish identity, and it's art, and it's something that you're very proud of, and the only thing that's holding you back from getting it is a fear that you've inherited, or a traumatic experience that you've inherited from your grandparents or great-grandparents because their experience with tattoos was related to violence and genocide, you have to think about, "how do I honor that memory and legacy of trauma, but also not let it stop me from expressing who I am and becoming who I want to be through something beautiful like a tattoo?" And I think Hebrew letters, especially in a beautiful calligraphy, art form are one of those ways of holding on to another part of being Jewish. It's related to other parts of our history besides the traumatic part of our history. You know, I've seen all of your tattoos, or least all the ones who have online, and I am so excited that there are people out there wearing those who feel really proud of their Jewish identity and like that there is something beautiful that's been created through the history of our language and art. So that's why I was very excited to talk with you, for exactly all of those reasons. It's been lovely chatting with you. If folks are interested in your work, or they want to learn more about what you're doing or tattoos, how can they learn more?
Gabriel Wolff: I have a website, I have an Instagram account. Just, you know, Google Hebrew tattoos, you'll find me easily enough. I have, as well, my non-tattoo art. You'll find it under my name, Gabriel Wolff, but same thing, Google is your best friend. Just Google Hebrew art, and I'll be there on the first page.
Clarissa Marks: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for talking with me today. This has been a really amazing conversation.
Gabriel Wolff: Thank you. It was really amazing.
Clarissa Marks: This episode was produced by me, Clarissa Marks with music by the Rondo brothers. If you like the show, you can support us by sharing it with a friend or by adding a review to your favorite podcast app. That'll make sure that other listeners can find us. You can connect with me on Twitter or Instagram at ClarissaRMarks, and to hear more episodes, read transcripts, or learn more about the people or media we mentioned, visit our website: Onwandering.co. Take care and see you next time.