Posts
“Shiksa” is a Nicer Word When Followed by a Cheerful Emoticon
By Jennifer Dziura / July 18, 2007
Apropos to my last post (How a Southern Gentile Learned About Judaism from Sassy Magazine and Horny Teenage Boys), I'll also confess that I managed to get through an entire high school career of dating Jewish boys exclusively (to recap: I was an atheist in a town dominated by evangelical Christians) without realizing that "shiksa" was an offensive word.
From the soc.culture.jewish FAQ (I can't imagine much has changed since 1996):
Shiksa and Shaygetz are the Yiddish derivative of the respective feminine and masculine Hebrew words for something unclean, dirty. The appellations are customarily applied to gentiles who do things inimical to Jewish interests, such as vandalizing Jewish buildings, robbing Jewish kids of their lunch money, or becoming romantically involved with Jews :-). The root is "sheketz", which refers to house rodents and lizards. They impart ritual impurity, and therefore the term lends itself to the same kind of idea. Some have taken to using the term to refer to Christian women in general. If Christians were using the term against Jews in English, they would be saying "Filthy Jews" or "Dirty Jews", and we Jews would rightly be offended.
Is that not the most passive-aggressive happy face ever? Filthy bitch :-)
A quick Google search of this post's keyword brings up the blog of one Shiksa from Manila,
POST A COMMENT
There’s a dead link in my second paragraph above that should take you here. Much thanks.
Great post. I work at the Jewish Outreach Institute where we have spent years exhorting the Jewish community (mainly communal professionals and lay leaders, but also anyone who will listen) to drop all use of the words shiksa, shaggets, and yes, goy and goyim (goy/goyim when not used in a Hebrew/Biblical context). I am AMAZED at the pushback we’ve received for suggesting such a thing.
The main criticism we hear is that the words were not being used to intentionally offend, and that we therefore cannot take a joke. Take for example the Shiksa tee-shirts The Mothers Circle, an educational course for women of other religious backgrounds raising Jewish children within the context of intermarriage. Several of these women have jokingly referred to themselves as shiksa, knowing the full impact of the word. That is their prerogative to do so. It is akin to GLBT reclaiming “queer.” But once a word has been “reclaimed,” it doesn’t mean it has lost all power to harm. Take the N-word for example, which may be fine from Method Man (though that too is up for debate), but from Michael Richards? Not so much.
A final note. If you check out this page, it says “[Author] Sophia [Romero] began a blog called SHIKSA FROM MANILA, a collection of stories about the hyphenated life based on a fictional character named Amapola Gold”. So the blog you link to may actually be a story, but that doesn’t diminish the importance of the message.
Some of my best friends are shiksa’s!
Great post, but, sorry, as the brother of a lesbian seperatist, I can tell you that that is not the answer. My sister tells me she still feels that Jewish guilt when she dates a shiksa…
Wanna post your own comments? Gotta log in first!