Piercing in Israel

With black marker in hand, piercing artist Daniel Barrak draws small, even lines on fifteen-year-old Danya's left nipple. The Tel Aviv high school student is in Barrak's small tattoo studio off Ben Yuhuda street getting her fourth piercing in the past year. Along with a nose ring and a pierced tongue, Danya sports a purple safety pin in her right eyebrow - a piercing she did with the help of her boyfriend at home.

"I like to be different," Danya explains. "This is my way of expressing myself. It's a way of decorating my body that expresses who I am."

Danya is one of the dozen or so teens who come to Barrak for piercing each week. Most want ear or nose piercings, although a few prefer to have their belly button or genitals pierced. Though piercing has been popular in the US for years, it has only recently become widespread in Israel, a country where the state is closely connected with religious law (Jewish religious law prohibits piercings because of interpretations of the Torah.)

Officials at the Ministry of Health have no estimate for the number of minors who have body piercings. Barrak thinks that about 5,000 piercings are done each year. Recently, teens are interested in having multiple piercings, or piercing unusual parts of their bodies, such as the area underneath their bottom lip or between their nostrils.

"A couple of years ago, everyone had their nose pierced," Danya said. "But now everyone has their belly button or tongue pierced. They are looking for something new. A nipple or an eyebrow isn't extreme enough."

As her boyfriend and two other friends stand by, one with a camera in hand (snapping photos of the whole process), Barrak unwraps a new 10-gauge needle from its wax paper casing. "Just hurry up, hurry up," Danya squirms. "Why are you taking so long?"

Her friends, standing on either side, calm her and grasp her hands as Barrak quickly drives the needle through her nipple, pulling it out and replacing it with the silver ring that Danya chose earlier. "Ow, ow, ow! Is it over? Are you done?" Barrak has her lie down and gives her a short lecture about how to clean and care for her new piercing.

After paying 120 NIS (about $45), Danya and her friends settle around a table at a nearby McDonalds to explain why the younger generation of Israeli's secular youth are so crazy about piercing.

"Piercing is a form of body art," says Channah, Danya's 17-year-old classmate who came along to photograph her friend's nipple piercing experience. "We are saying through this art that we are the anti-culture, we reject everything about how the culture demands us to be."

For Miedad, Danya's 22-year-old boyfriend, piercing is less about making a statement and more about pain. "Body manipulation expands your mind because we have fear of pain. So we avoid anything we think will hurt. But when you willingly subject yourself to pain, you can learn to enjoy the pain. That is liberation."

Danya explains that many piercing-prone Israeli youth consider themselves "Modern Primitives," a social and cultural movement that embraces scarification, branding, and S&M. "When you transcend the pain, you find out that you aren't limited by this physical world."

Philosophy of pain and piercing aside, how does this particular form of body art play out in their lives?

"Most people think this is really extreme," Danya explains. "But I don't think I will have any serious drawbacks unless I got an infection or something."

Miedad adds, "Some people might discriminate against you because of your piercings. When I was in the army, they would prohibit wearing nose rings and people who had them had to take them out and then the hole closed up. But the type of person who would discriminate against you because you have a piercing would not want someone like me to work for them anyway. They would think I'm too mushuggie (crazy)."