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August 19, 2008 | 9:19 am
There is a once-again-popular practice among some Christians of celebrating Passover. I wrote about this two years, and in discussing a Christian Seder, I included this paragraph:
The Seder began with the “mother” of each table lighting a candle that represents the spiritual joy of God’s promise to the Israelites. Monsignor Peter Nugent explained to the goys what each object on the Seder plate represented - the bitter herbs of slavery, the nuts and apples of hard work, the unleavened bread of people on the run, among other items.
Buried right there in the middle of that segment was what attracted one really angry email. Did I not realize, one reader wanted to know, how offensive the term “goy” is to Christians? He obviously did not realize that plenty of people call me a goy.
But that brings up a bigger issue, which I began thinking about two weeks ago when this comment was left in a post about Barack Obama’s secret life as a Shabbos Goy. Rabbi Kerry Olitzky commented:
It is time to stop the use of such language that excludes and offends. With the growing number of those from different religious backgrounds now part of the Jewish community, the term “goy” needs to be excluded from our vocabulary. No more need be said.
Is it? What is so profane about referring to the non-Jews as goyim? Sure, it is an us/them designation, and in certain connotations it can be quite the pejorative, but it’s not like this word. If goyim is a no go, what about alter cocker, which is about as ageist as goy is exclusionary?
(The above headline is a reference to a plethora of books on my shelves that include the words “end” and “Jews” in their titles.)
Posted by Brad A. Greenberg in 4 Comments — Leave your comment
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Yes, I would argue that other words should be removed from your vocabulary if they are offensive and perjorative. But there is no need to take the argument ad absurdum. I believe that the term is offensive to many people. If you choose to continue to use it—now knowing that—it is your choice.
To the repeated question I repeat the answer. Which is that the word ‘goy’ is never going away. It is a legitimate neutral functional ancient original authentic Biblical Hebrew word meaning ‘nation’. The word is applied to Israel no more or less than other nations, and if it did not exist it would have to be invented. In that line of thinking, there are many Jewish concepts others complain about; Jewish nationhood - the Jewish relationship to God - the Jewish view of Torah as overarching - the Jewish homeland of Israel/Palestine/Canaan - Jewish exclusivity, elitism, particularism… Shall we exclude all of those from our vocabulary as well? Is anyone else excluding thngs the Jews find offensive from their vocabularies? Of course not.
You, Rabbi Olitsky are free to commission the writing of a Torah scroll that excludes the word ‘goy’, but then you would have to exclude all those other things I mentioned, and it wouldn’t be worth the parchment it is written on.
That said, just for practical reasons I would use the term ‘goy’ in a natural manner among those who get it, and not among those who misunderstand and resent it. Same for ‘this word’. Shmuley is wrong, and it is not possible or necessary for Jews to alter their culture to suit a moving target of political correctness. And once again the larger context is that nobody exerts a tenth of the effort the Jews do to be tolerant, accommodating and innoffensive, and thus nobody has the right to make demands upon us. I would employ the same guidelines for it as I would for the word ‘goy’.
There are many words that meant something at one time and now have taken on other levels of meaning. Sure the Torah used the term in a somewhat neutral matter. But it no longer is used that way. I understand that many Jews are tolerant of others. Unfortunately, some are not. For me, and clearly not for you, if I am working to bring those on the periphery of the community into the community, then I want to make sure that I am conscious of those things—including language—that threaten to keep them on the outside.
See the latter part of my answer for the response. First is on a general agreement with you on principle. Always bearing my mind good faith and good will and good intentions etc., I don’t rub anything in anybody’s face that they have personal or cultural impediments to understanding. The mainstream kiruv movements do the same thing. Aish HaTorah/Ohr Sameach etc. approach is like that too. Accentuate the positive, frame the discussion on common terms, meet the estranged half-way, always demonstrate love and respect but only as much tolerance as makes sense in the context of retaining the authority of the right to speak for a position.
At the same time, it is arguable about how much we give up before we are joining them outside of the community rather than bringing them in. To the extent that our words and our ways and our values are offensive, it is largely due to the assimilation not of Jews into the surrounding culture but of the surrounding culture into the Jews. It’s not only our words that offend, it is our existence and presence. Sorry to be so pessimistic. “But as much as they would afflict them, so did they multiply and so did they gain strength, and they were disgusted because of the children of Israel.“ Exodus 1:2 12. (So what else is new?) And that is not a place where we can join them. Are you aware that the word ‘Jew’ is a crossover epithet in Great Britain? While every Yiddish speaker uses the word ‘yid’ comfortably, that is even more of a universal epithet. Should we adapt to those realities and change our own name to run from current cultural and social conditions. That has actually been tried of course without success by selected subgroups of Jews.
The classical Jewish positions do not change. You have not answered if it would be possible or desirable to eliminate the word ‘goy’ from the Torah, Oral Torah, and innumerable commentaries, and if so what would replace it. The real answer you are circling around is to avoid any notice at all regarding a person’s status vis a vis Jewishness. To brush it under the rug until we can possibly never deal with it, like postponing the status of Jerusalem to ‘Final Status talks’ which would take place after facts on the ground make them moot, for one side or the other. Since so much of our identity is tied to that Jewish/non-Jewish status that would be impossible.
But let’s say nobody ever uses the word ‘goy’ again. You know the elaboration on the Haggadic expression that the Jews were ‘distinctive’ in Egypt on the basis of maintaining their names, language and clothes? We progressively hear from all kinds of people that it IS perfectly Jewish to change our names, language and clothes. But from others that it is perfectly Jewish not to believe in God or follow the Torah or participate in Jewish nationhood or take seriously the idea of a national revelation, it is Jewish to disregard all religious observances and lifestyle and community activities, it is Jewish to subordinate the interests of the Jewish community to the interests du jour, even that of enemies of the Jewish people, and recently and famously that believing in Jesus is THE MOST JEWISH THING YOU CAN DO! That’s what you end up with if you are uncomfortable drawing a line, or draw one that is so abstract that nobody even notices it. That is the situation that Roy Neuberger found himself in, in a family affiliated only with a two-dimensional Ethical Culture society. By the time Jewishness becomes no more than an opinion, a feeling, a non-serious choice, a website, then it will be not worth dying for, not worth living for, not worth sacrificing for, not worth getting anybody upset about, and not worth missing one’s favorite TV show for.
Since you bring it up, let me ask you if Jewish intolerance is a major factor in the estrangement of Jews from the community. I mean real illegitimate intolerance, not just intolerance of the intolerable such as intolerance of denial of human, civil and national rights to Jewish people and The Jewish People. Because that is something not in our power to address or that anyone has a right to ask us to give up.