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A page from Elia Levita's Yiddish-Hebrew-Latin-German dictionary (16th century) including the word goy (גוי), translated to Latin as ethnicus, meaning heathen or pagan.^[1]

In modern Hebrew and Yiddish goy (/ɡɔɪ/; גוי‎, pl.: goyim /ˈɡɔɪ.ɪm/, גוים‎ or גויים‎) is a term for a gentile, a non-Jew.^[2] Through Yiddish,^[3] the word has been adopted into English (pl.: goyim or goys) also to mean "gentile", sometimes in a pejorative sense.^[4][5][6] As a word principally used by Jews to describe non-Jews,^[5] it is a term for the ethnic out-group.^[7]

The Biblical Hebrew word goy has been commonly translated into English as nation,^[8][9] meaning a group of persons of the same ethnic family who speak the same language (rather than the more common modern meaning of a political unit).^[10] In the Bible, goy is used to describe both the Nation of Israel and other nations.

The meaning of the word goy in Hebrew evolved to mean "non-Jew" in the Hellenistic (300BC to 30BC) and Roman periods, as both Rabbinical texts and then Christian theology placed increasing emphasis on a binary division between Jews and non-Jews.

In modern usage in English, the extent to which goy is derogatory is a point of discussion in the Jewish community.

The word "goy" is sometimes used by white supremacists to refer to themselves when signalling a belief in conspiracy theories about Jews.^[11]

Hebrew Bible

The word goy means "nation" in Biblical Hebrew.^[12][13] In the Torah, goy and its variants appear 560 times in reference to both the Israelites and the non-Israelite nations.^[14]

The first recorded usage of goyim occurs in Genesis 10:5 and applies to non-Israelite nations. The first mention of goy in relation to the Israelites comes in Genesis 12:2, when God promises Abraham that his descendants will form a goy gadol ("great nation").^[15]

One exception is in Genesis 14:1, where it states that the "King of Goyim" was Tidal. Bible commentaries suggest that the term may refer to Gutium.In all other cases the meaning of goyim is 'nations.'^{[16] [8]}

In Exodus 19:6, the Israelites are referred to as a goy kadosh, a "holy nation".^[12][17] 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" (2 Samuel 7:23 and 1 Chronicles 17:21)^[18]

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 300BCE to 30BCE) tended to apply the term to other nations.^[12]

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.^[22] 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."

— Haaretz journalist Tomer Persico discussing views of Ophir and Rosen-Zvi^[13]

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".^[23] Maimonides saw Christians as idolators (because of concepts like the Trinity) but not Muslims who he saw as more strictly monotheistic.^[24]

As a slur

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.^[25] Goy also occurs in many pejorative Yiddish expressions:

• Dos ken nor a goy - Something only a goy would do or is capable of doing.^[25]
• A goy blabt a goy - "A goy stays a goy," or, less literally, according to Rosten, "What did you expect? Once an anti-Semite always an anti-Semite."^[25]
• Goyisher kopf - "Gentile head," someone who doesn't think ahead, an idiot.^[25][26]
• Goyishe naches - Pleasures or pursuits only a gentile would enjoy.^[27]
• A goy! - Exclamation of exasperation used "when endurance is exhausted, kindliness depleted, the effort to understand useless".^[28]

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.^[29] He compares it to the word "foreigners" which Americans can use dismissively but which isn't a derogatory word.^[29] Similarly, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) has stated that "goy" is "Not an insult, just kinda sounds like it."^[30]

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."^[26] Andrew Silow Carroll writes:^[27]

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, good chance it’s offensive."^[27]

In antisemitism

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the term "goy" has been used ironically by white supremacists to refer to themselves to signal a belief in conspiracy theories about Jews.^[11] For example, a Hungarian antisemitic motorcycle association refers to themselves as the Goyim riders,^[31] and in 2020 one activist tried to rename the far-right group the Proud Boys to the Proud Goys.^[32] In a similar vein, in 2017, the far-right American Traditionalist Worker Party created the crowdfunding platform called GoyFundMe, a wordplay on the popular crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.^[33] The Goyim Defense League 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 anti-Semitic and racist texts, pictures and videos." ^[34]

The word also features in the alt-right catchphrase or meme "The Goyim Know, Shut It Down" associated with online forums such as 4chan and 8chan. In this context, the speaker assumes the role of a panicked Jew who reacts to an event that would reveal Jewish manipulations or Jewish deceitfulness. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the meme first appeared in 2013 on 4chan.^[35]

See also

• Gadjo
• Ger toshav

References

External links

• The dictionary definition of goy at Wiktionary