Freed hostage Or Levy posts a photo of his arm with the quote on Instagram. The quote reads, “He who has a why can bear with any how,” a statement told to him by fellow hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin on their 52nd day of captivity. Hersh was later murdered by his terrorist captors at the end of August 2024.
Levy was released home in February, only finding out then that his wife, Eynav, was killed on October 7. “This sentence accompanied me ever since and to this day, and perhaps thanks to it, I was able to survive this terrible inferno,” writes Levy, who was taken hostage with Goldberg-Polin on October 7, 2023.
In his well-known work Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl wrote, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” Like Frankl, himself a Holocaust survivor, Levy was inspired to live because he had a reason. “My ‘why’ is [my son] Almog and I knew that I would survive anything — no matter how difficult it was — for him.”(Article) But, what do we make of the tattoo?
While it will not bar anyone’s being interred in a Jewish cemetery, getting a tattoo is explicitly prohibited by the Torah. We see this in our Acharei Mot- Kedoshim, this week’s Torah portion, when it states, “You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead, nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves; I am the Lord,”(Leviticus 19:28). Most authorities understand that this is a prohibition of doing this pagan ritual of getting a tattoo for the dead. It is interesting about Or Levy’s tattoo is that he did not get this to respond to the dead, but rather as a reminder as to how he wanted to live. We should all be blessed to know our “why”.
Said to Myself 
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