Alicorn comments on The Shabbos goy

[Alicorn]

Is there a word for a person hired to operate electric devices for you on the Sabbath?

Shabbos goy.

[PhilGoetz]

Awesome!

So it’s less-offensive to use the term “Shabbos goy”, which logically criticizes Judaism, than to use the term “Jew”, which creates a negative association with Judaism.

[PhilGoetz]

If that’s so, then if you tell people

“Black people were slaves. (Slavery is bad.)”

“Women are paid less than men. (People who are paid less are valued less.)”

what they hear are the associations

“Black people are bad.”

“Women are less valuable than men.”

[Cyan]

Got here late—what was the original title?

[PhilGoetz]

“Kill the Jews”.

I guess some people are just touchy.

[Jack]

AHAHA! Well done.

[Jack]

Necessary Jews

[ata]

When I first saw it under that title, before I read the article, I read it as contrasting with “Sufficient Jews” or possibly “Contingent Jews”.

I’m still enjoying imagining what those could possibly mean.

[Kevin]

Jew is just a really loaded word because it is used by various sorts of supremacists. “Jewish person” can be substituted without any kind of negative connotation.

[Jack]

If I use the phrase “Shabbos goy” instead of “Jew”, are people going to criticize me for using a term that implicitly makes fun of Jews?

Nah. Your word choice is now orthogonal to the usual patterns of antisemitism and you have legitimate cause for making fun.

[Jack]

Is the plural Shabbos goyim?

[Alicorn]

I’d assume so. I’m only half-Jewish on my dad’s side, and he was brought up in a fairly liberal sect and ditched even that shortly after getting bar mitzvahed and didn’t pass on a Jewish surname—I’m as non-Jewish as one can get while retaining any claim to it at all. So I’m not a proper authority on the subject.

[PhilGoetz]

I thought that you’re considered Jewish if your mother was Jewish, and not Jewish if she wasn’t.

[komponisto]

That depends on the sect, apparently.

[Alicorn]

Exactly. Genetics, of course, don’t give a damn whence the Jewishness, and it didn’t inhibit my ability to pick up secondhand culture either except inasmuch as that set of grandparents died when I was a kid, but my point was that it being on my dad’s side makes me “less Jewish” by a relevant metric.