Jew

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Jew Summary

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A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address

Jew

‘Jew’, used as a term of address, now tends to be aggressive but was not always so. In literature it occurs from time to time. especially in plays or books like The Merchant of Venice where a Jewish character is important to the plot. Shylock is at first addressed as ‘gentle Jew’ by Antonio, but is ‘Jew’ to Gratiano in the judgement scene.

Launcelot addresses Jessica as ‘most sweet Jew’, and there is a similarly friendly use in Love’s Labour’s Lost, where Costard calls Moth ‘my sweet ounce of man’s flesh, my incony [fine] Jew’. In Mordecai Richler’s Joshua Now and Then occurs:

Greenhorns, you know, new arrivals from the old country, would get off the train with their bundles, scared shitless, and my father would come up to them with this pad in his hand and bark, ‘What’s your name, Jew?’ ‘Bishinsky,’ they’d say, teeth chattering, or ‘Pfeffershnit.’ And he’d holler, ‘You crazy Jews, this is the British fucking Empire and you can’t call yourself by such horseshit names here.’

‘Jewboy’ is sometimes used of or to a Jewish man or boy in modern times, but this could only be used between intimates who were on friendly-insult terms without giving offence. Richler himself has an example of ‘you filthy Jew’ used as a covert endearment in another of his novels, Cocksure. A wife uses it to her husband, adding ‘Ikey hooky-nose’ for good measure, as he pretends to drag her into their bedroom, but when she accidentally rolls onto him, making him breathless. she immediately switches to ‘darling’. ‘You Jewbastard’ is used by a black American speaker to a Jewish acquaintance in The Tenants, by Bernard Malamud, but without real aggression. The person addressed has just used the word ‘shmuck’, which leads to a discussion of Jewishness.

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