Is Term “Goy” Pejorative?

Volumes have been written on the attitudes of Jews and Judaism toward non-Jews. Perhaps, like most people, Jews did not always live up to the lofty ideals which their tradition espouses. Altogether too often they had good cause to hate and resent Gentiles. However, a review of the philosophical and legal position of Judaism ought to put to rest, once and for all time, the notion that the word “goy” may be used pejoratively.

Jews frequently use the term with respect to non-observant co-religionists. Many also use it to denigrate those who do not share their faith or ethnicity. But the Halachic norm dictates otherwise. For all human beings are endowed with the “Tzelem Elohim” (Genesis 1:27)  the divine image. No person is without it and consequently the sanctity of every man, woman, and child is inviolate  according to Judaism.

Even pagans could bring offerings to God in the central shrine in Jerusalem. Their divine image was the warrant for this privilege and gifts that they made to the building itself in perpetuity were never to be altered.

So committed is the Jewish tradition to the equality of the non-Jew who leads a righteous life that it accords to him the coveted title of “Chasid” and assures him salvation just as it is vouchsafed to righteous Jews themselves.

Maimonides (Helchot Teshuva 3:5; Hilchot Melachem 8:11) distinguishes between a righteous non-Jew who pursues righteousness because it is the will of God and a righteous non-Jew whose pursuit of eternal values and moral deportment is derived from reason and natural law. The latter he calls a “Chacham”  a wise man; the title “Chasid” is reserved for those who are also God-fearing.

But whatever the title, the conclusion is that Jews did not feel compelled to convert non-Jews to Judaism. Commitment to Judaism was not the condition prerequisite for salvation for anyone but Jews. Non-Jews could achieve it by righteous living alone. And Judaism today is still fully committed to this view.

However, there were some institutions and laws from whose scope non-Jews were excluded. Marriage is one of the most important. Jewish law very much respected the family ties that non-Jews created among themselves. But to be a Jewish marriage, and for the family to be deemed a Jewish family, both spouses had to be Jewish.

This did not spell inequality for if one of the spouses was non-Jewish, even the Jewish spouse was not regarded as married. It was the marriage that was no marriage for either. The taboo against intermarriage was always one of the most effective ways to prevent total assimilation and the end of the Jewish people.

Jewish law permitted Jews to take interest from non-Jews while they could not thus profit from their own coreligionists. But this too is no reflection on the non-Jews. The Jew could also pay interest to non-Jews while he was prohibited from paying it to a fellow Jew. The Jews were expected by the Bible to constitute a fellowship that closely resembled a family in which the more affluent members help the less affluent. Among themselves they were to promote “free loans”. (Leviticus 25:36-38)

Plato approved of this for Athenians whom he too would have wanted to constitute a close brotherhood. The profession of banking was to be in the hands of outsiders. Unfortunately, neither he succeeded in Athens nor Jews in Jerusalem or elsewhere. The Biblical prohibitions were subverted and capitalist enterprise holds sway. But one can hardly regard the rule as demeaning the non-Jew.

Much of Jewish law was designed to create strong kinship ties among Jews. Jews were ever to be responsible for each other as members of a family are responsible for each other. This also explains why it is that when a natural disaster takes place Jews feel relieved when no one of their own people is a victim. Certainly there is no basis for this sentiment in Jewish law.

Whenever God’s creatures are destroyed we are to sense pain and anguish. Yet it is only natural that one feel relieved when a member of one’s own family has emerged safe and unharmed. In the same way, Jews feel that they are all members of one big family and theirs is a sense of relief when no member of this very extensive family is hurt.

Indeed Jews have always cultivated a feeling of family kinship which is much broader than the conjugal unit. The Hebrew term “Mishpacha” has always spelled more than father, mother, and children. It meant all the generations in a clan. It included ascendants and descendants and collaterals.

The loss of this conception of family in our own day is unfortunate and accounts for much unhappiness. However, because among Jews the sentiment applied to families in the broadest sense of the term, the family ultimately came to mean all of the Jewish people. In the messianic era it will mean all mankind.

Jews do have strong kinship ties with their fellow Jews. Their millennial history has certainly helped to forge these ties. Yet when permitted to live in peace with their non-Jewish neighbors Jews have made manifest the greatest magnanimity conceivable to better the lot of all mankind.

The Christian and Mohammedan worlds have great evidence of this. The poor and the sick of all faiths have been a Jewish concern all the time. And if, because of a major or a minor holocaust, one Jew or another hates the non-Jew, his hate should be understood. But the mandate of Jewish law is unequivocal  all share the divine image.