I've just seen your blog and as the child and grandchild of Holocaust surviviors I'd like to add my two cents' worth: Firstly, Jewish law and tradition have always prohibited tattoos so if you do get a tattoo of any kind you are thumbing your nose at your own religion, whether you intended to do so or not. Secondly, it also seems rather discordant to choose to remember the Shoah in a way that you know your parents and grandparents, who went through it, would disapprove of. You can't possibly claim that you would be "honoring" them by doing this when they clearly wouldn't want you to. Thirdly, I don't think that what you call the "old school" of Holocaust remembrance, with its emphasis on "Never Again" and fighting anti-Semitism, is necessarily outmoded, or that it conflicts with the "new school", which fights genocide and racism everywhere. The two things can blend together. Young Jews can and should fight racism in general, but we should also be aware that Jews are STILL the most targeted group for racism around the world. Even today there are more attacks by racists in the US and in other countries on synagogues and Jewish communal buildings than there are on mosques, churches, or any other religion's structures. And please do not forget that Iran has threatened to exterminate the Jewish state, killing all six million Jews in it (a rather significant number, of course). Anti-Semitism is, unfortunately, still alive and well and is not an "outmoded" issue at all.
Finally, I do think there are other ways to commemorate the Holocaust, and specifically the way it affected your family, while honoring your family's desires and your Jewishness at the same time. Some people publish books (I recommend reading "The Lost" by Daniel Mendelsohn), other people create blogs and websites in they tell their families' stories and post photos and copies of documents; I myself have made it my personal project to dig up the names and as many details as possible about my relatives in the Holocaust, and have sent Pages of Testimony to Yad Vashem in memory of those who didn't have pages commemorating them. These are just some suggestions that would memorialize the events without writing them indelibly on your body.
In addition, probably the best thing you could do to honor your family is to remain Jewish, and to ensure your children do so too. We might be part of a universalistic modern world, but we have our own specific and great history, culture, traditions and rituals that we can and should be proud of. And not only that, but keeping them going gives us the best possible victory over those who tried to exterminate us.
I've just seen your blog and as the child and grandchild of Holocaust surviviors I'd like to add my two cents' worth: Firstly, Jewish law and tradition have always prohibited tattoos so if you do get a tattoo of any kind you are thumbing your nose at your own religion, whether you intended to do so or not. Secondly, it also seems rather discordant to choose to remember the Shoah in a way that you know your parents and grandparents, who went through it, would disapprove of. You can't possibly claim that you would be "honoring" them by doing this when they clearly wouldn't want you to. Thirdly, I don't think that what you call the "old school" of Holocaust remembrance, with its emphasis on "Never Again" and fighting anti-Semitism, is necessarily outmoded, or that it conflicts with the "new school", which fights genocide and racism everywhere. The two things can blend together. Young Jews can and should fight racism in general, but we should also be aware that Jews are STILL the most targeted group for racism around the world. Even today there are more attacks by racists in the US and in other countries on synagogues and Jewish communal buildings than there are on mosques, churches, or any other religion's structures. And please do not forget that Iran has threatened to exterminate the Jewish state, killing all six million Jews in it (a rather significant number, of course). Anti-Semitism is, unfortunately, still alive and well and is not an "outmoded" issue at all.
Finally, I do think there are other ways to commemorate the Holocaust, and specifically the way it affected your family, while honoring your family's desires and your Jewishness at the same time. Some people publish books (I recommend reading "The Lost" by Daniel Mendelsohn), other people create blogs and websites in they tell their families' stories and post photos and copies of documents; I myself have made it my personal project to dig up the names and as many details as possible about my relatives in the Holocaust, and have sent Pages of Testimony to Yad Vashem in memory of those who didn't have pages commemorating them. These are just some suggestions that would memorialize the events without writing them indelibly on your body.
In addition, probably the best thing you could do to honor your family is to remain Jewish, and to ensure your children do so too. We might be part of a universalistic modern world, but we have our own specific and great history, culture, traditions and rituals that we can and should be proud of. And not only that, but keeping them going gives us the best possible victory over those who tried to exterminate us.