Goy

Hebrew Bible

The word goy means "nation" in Biblical Hebrew. In the Torah, goy and its variants appear 560 times in reference to both the Israelites and the non-Israelite nations.

The first recorded usage of goyim occurs in and applies to non-Israelite nations. The first mention of goy in relation to the Israelites comes in , when God promises Abraham that his descendants will form a goy gadol ("great nation").

There are two exceptions where a "Kingdom of Goyim" is mentioned. One is in , where it states that the "King of Goyim" was Tidal. Bible commentaries suggest that the term may refer to Gutium. The other is in , where a "King of Goyim in Gilgal" is included in the list of kings slain by Joshua. In all other cases the meaning of goyim is 'nations.'

In , the Israelites are referred to as a goy kadosh, a "holy nation". One of the more poetic descriptions of the chosen people in the Hebrew Bible, and popular among Jewish scholars is goy ehad b'aretz, or "a unique nation upon the earth" ( and )

Translations of 'goy' in English-language Christian Bibles

In English language Christian bibles, nation has been used as the principal translation for goy in the Hebrew Bible, from the earliest English language bibles such as the 1530 Tyndale Bible and the 1611 King James Version.

The King James Version of the Bible translates the word goy/goyim as "nation" 374 times, "heathen" 143 times, "Gentile" 30 times (see Evolution of the Term below) and "people" 11 times.

Evolution of the term

While the books of the Hebrew Bible often use goy to describe the Israelites, the later Jewish writings of the Hellenistic Period (from approximately 300 BCE to 30 BCE) tended to apply the term to other nations.

Goy acquired the meaning of someone who is not Jewish in the first and second century CE. Before that time, academics Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi have argued, no crystallized dichotomy between Jew and non-Jew existed in Judaism. Ophir and Rosen-Zvi state that the early Jewish convert to Christianity, Paul, was key in developing the concept of "goy" to mean non-Jew:

This brilliant Hellenist Jew [Paul] considered himself the apostle of the Christian gospel "to the gentiles," and precisely because of this he needed to define that category more thoroughly and carefully than his predecessors. Paul made the conception that "goyim" are not "peoples," but rather a general category of human beings, into a central element of his thought [...] In the centuries that followed, both the Church and the Jewish sages evoked Paul's binary dichotomy.

The Latin words gentes/gentilis – which also referred to peoples or nations – began to be used to describe non-Jews in parallel with the evolution of the word goy in Hebrew. Based on the Latin model, the English word "gentile" came to mean non-Jew from the time of the first English-language Bible translations in the 1500s (see Gentile).

The twelfth century Jewish scholar Maimonides defines goy in his Mishneh Torah as a worshipper of idolatry, as he explains, "Whenever we refer to a gentile [goy] without any further description, we mean one who worships false deities". Maimonides saw Christians as idolators (because of concepts like the Trinity) but not Muslims who he saw as more strictly monotheistic.

As a pejorative

Goy can be used in a derogatory manner. The Yiddish lexicographer Leo Rosten in The New Joys of Yiddish defines goy as someone who is non-Jewish or someone who is dull, insensitive, or heartless. Goy also occurs in many pejorative Yiddish expressions:

• yi ({{lang|yi| דאָס קען נאָר אַ גױ}})Something only a goy would do or is capable of doing.
• yi (אַ גױ בלאַבט אַ גױ)"A goy stays a goy"
• yi (גױישער קאָפּ)"Gentile head," someone who doesn't think ahead, an idiot.
• yi (גױישע נחת)Pleasures or pursuits only a gentile would enjoy.
• yi (!אַ גױ)Exclamation of exasperation used "when endurance is exhausted, kindliness depleted, the effort to understand useless".

Several authors have opined on whether the word is derogatory. Dan Friedman, executive director of The Forward in "What 'Goy' Means, And Why I Keep Using It" writes that it can be used as an insult but that the word is not offensive. He compares it to the word "foreigners" which Americans can use dismissively but which isn't a derogatory word. Similarly, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) has stated that "goy" is "Not an insult, just kinda sounds like it."

Rebecca Einstein Schorr argues that the word has an established pejorative overtone. She refers to the observation "the goyishe groomsmen were all drunk and bawdy; of course, you'd never see that at a Jewish wedding" and "goyishe kop" where the word is used in a pejorative sense. She admits that the word can have non-pejorative uses, such as "goyishe restaurant" – one that doesn't serve kosher food – but contends that the word is "neutral, at best, and extremely offensive, at worst." She advocates that the Jewish community stop using the word "goy." Andrew Silow Carroll writes:

But the word "goy" has too much historical and linguistic baggage to be used as casually as "non-Jew" or "gentile." It starts with the obvious slurs – like "goyishe kopf," or gentile brains, which suggests (generously) a dullard, or "shikker iz a goy," a gentile is a drunkard. "Goyishe naches" describes the kinds of things that a Jew mockingly presumes only a gentile would enjoy, like hunting, sailing and eating white bread.

Nahma Nadich, deputy director of the Jewish Community Relations of Greater Boston, writes:

I definitely see goy as a slur — seldom used as a compliment, and never used in the presence of a non-Jew.

adding

That's a good litmus test: if you wouldn't use a word in the presence of someone you're describing, [there is a] good chance it's offensive.

In antisemitism

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, white supremacists have ironically used the term "goy" in reference to themselves as a signal of their belief in conspiracy theories about Jews. For example, a Hungarian antisemitic motorcycle association refers to themselves as the Goyim riders, and in 2020 Kyle Chapman tried to rename the far-right group the Proud Boys to the Proud Goys.

In a similar vein, the far-right American Traditionalist Worker Party, in 2017, created the crowdfunding platform called GoyFundMe, a wordplay on the popular crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.

The Goyim Defense League (GDL) and its website, GoyimTV, are another example.

Europol's 2021 report on Terrorism Situations and Trends discusses the German Goyim Partei Deutschland ('Goyim Party Germany'), "a right-wing extremist organisation" founded in 2016 which "used its website to publish antisemitic and racist texts, pictures and videos."

The slur is also featured in the far-right catchphrase or meme "The Goyim Know, Shut It Down" associated with Neo-Nazis on online forums like the 4chan and 8chan. In this context, the "speaker" assumes the role of a "panicking Jew" who reacts to an event that would reveal Jewish "manipulations" or Jewish "deceitfulness".

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the antisemitic meme first appeared on 4chan in 2013. Einstein Schorr called the meme an instance of "linguistic appropriation" whereby Neo-Nazis cynically incorporated "pseudo-Yiddish phrases" into their vocabulary to ridicule Jews. Schorr describes that as a way to propagate the "anti-Semitic myth that we are a cabal with our own secret language and agenda."

The Anti-Defamation League further deciphers the catchphrase,

The language is typically used in references to antisemitic conspiracy theories depicting Jews as malevolent puppet-masters, manipulating [[antisemitic trope#Controlling the media

the media]], banks, and even entire governments to the benefit of themselves but to the detriment of other peoples.

References

References

1. "Gentile". Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc..
2. Magid, Shaul. (7 December 2019). "Theorizing 'Jew" 'Judaism' and 'Jewishness': Final Reflections", The Journal of Jewish Identities 11:1 (January 2018): 205–215".
3. [[s:Bible (Tyndale)/Genesis#Chapter 10. Tyndale Gen 10]]
4. (18 October 2022). "Gowy Meaning in Bible – Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon".
5. Rosen-Zvi, Ishay. (10 June 2016). "What if We Got Rid of the Goy? Rereading Ancient Jewish Distinctions". Brill.
6. Maimonides. "Ma'achalot Assurot".
7. Leo Rosten. (14 April 2010). "The New Joys of Yiddish: Completely Updated". Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale.
8. Schorr, Rebecca Einstein. (21 August 2017). "Goy: Origin, Usage, and Empowering White Supremacists".
9. Silow-Carroll, Andrew. (22 April 2019). "Is 'goy' a slur?".
10. Johnnetta B. Cole. (1988). "Anthropology for the Nineties: Introductory Readings". Simon and Schuster.
11. (25 August 2017). "What 'Goy' Means, And Why I Keep Using It".
12. "Understanding Antisemitism: An Offering to our Movement". Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.
13. (29 November 2017). "Nazi sympathizer profiled by NYT loses job, asks for donations on racist fundraising site".
14. "Goyim Defense League".
15. "Nashville struggles to respond as Neo-Nazi groups turn focus on to city". [[The Guardian]].
16. "Inside GoyimTV, an underbelly of antisemitic neo-Nazi hate". [[The Jerusalem Post]].
17. "White supremacists, seizing on Israel-Hamas war, have accelerated their antisemitism since Oct. 7". [[Jewish Telegraphic Agency]].
18. "Goyim Defense League founder sentenced to 30 days for antisemitic littering". [[The Times of Israel]].
19. (21 May 2024). "Antisemitic, White Supremacist Propaganda Litters Collingswood Lawns".
20. (2021). "Terrorism Situations and Trends".
21. "The Goyim Know/Shut It Down".
22. "AJC's glossary of antisemitic terms, phrases, conspiracies, cartoons, themes, and memes.".
23. "The Goyim Know/Shut It Down".
24. (10 March 2011). "Frequency Lists for NT Greek and Biblical Hebrew".
25. (16 November 2020). "Meaning of ethnicus (ethnici, ethnica, ethnicae, ethnicam, ethnicarum, ethnicas, ethnici, ethnicior, ethniciora, ethniciore) in Latin-English dictionary".
26. link
27. (1939). "Goiim". [[William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company]].
28. (12 November 2020). "Proud Boys leader trying to rebrand the group as explicitly antisemitic". The Jerusalem Post.
29. (8 November 2022). "Gowy Meaning in Bible – Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon – King James Version".
30. Lazarus, David. (20 March 2022). "When Did "Goy" Become a Dirty Word?".
31. Maroof, Rabbi Joshua. (9 November 2018). "Pittsburgh Reflections – OU Life".
32. Molnár, Virág. (30 October 2015). "Civil society, radicalism and the rediscovery of mythic nationalism". Wiley.
33. (1917). "The New International Encyclopædia". Dodd, Mead and Company.
34. "Definition of GOY".
35. "Nation".
36. "goy ''noun''".
37. Persico, Tomer. (9 November 2019). "How the Jews Invented the Goy".
38. "Definition of Goy".
39. (2009). "Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice". Jewish Lights Publishing.
40. (2015). "Paul and the Invention of the Gentiles". The Jewish Quarterly Review.
41. Hayden, Michael Edison. (30 August 2020). "Wisconsin Man Who Says He Marched With Rittenhouse in Kenosha Was Immersed in White Supremacist Propaganda". [[Southern Poverty Law Center]].
42. Wiseman, D. J. "[http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/jtvi/wiseman_genesis-10.pdf Genesis 10: Some Archaeological Considerations] {{Webarchive. link. (2023-07-27 ." ''Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute'' (1955).)
43. Wolfthal, Diane. (2004). "Picturing Yiddish: gender, identity, and memory in the illustrated Yiddish books of Renaissance Italy". [[Brill Publishers]].
44. Yanover, Yori. (15 November 2013). "Maimonides: Islam Good, Christianity Bad, Muslims Bad, Christians Good".