You're a Jew!

[The Fanboyists]

Christians have hated Jews for about 2000 years. Catholic dogma is clear that Jews should be hated.
I don't hate Jews, but then I'm not a good Christian.

Not modern Catholic dogma. We're past that.

Anyways, as for the OP's question: I've never heard it used as a serious insult. It's occasionally used as a fake-insult with people who we know are Jewish. By fake insult, I refer to the way that friends insult each other as a matter of familiarity, including cases where one of my Jewish friends has called another Jewish friend a Jew. I have never heard anyone use "Jew" as an actual insult, though.

If anything, I hear it more than anything get used as a "[blank] pride!" subject more than anything else. Of course, that may be because something like a third of my school is, in fact, Jewish, so it would make sense.

Honestly, between my everyday life and NS, I've probably heard 'Catholic' used as an insult more often than I've heard 'Jew' used as one.

[Nazi Flower Power]

No fair! How am I supposed to aim my artillery when I'm laughing???

You see that button that says "Give all Uranium to Geniasis"?

That's the one. I swear.

I'm not falling for that! If that was the button for my artillery it would be labeled in German!

[Geniasis]

I'm not falling for that! If that was the button for my artillery it would be labeled in German!

...

Goddamn it.

[Natapoc]

Antisemitism is bad I'm very sorry to hear you experience it so often.

[Big Jim P]

"Roses are red
Violets are bluish
If it weren't for Jesus
We'd all be Jewish.

[Ridann]

Antisemitism is bad I'm very sorry to hear you experience it so often.

I've had people refer to me as a wog. So how 'bout some sympathy here too?

Or is that now acceptable?

[East Fancainia]

Actually, I've heard that a lot. I usually reply by saying "Hi! I'm German!" Usually they shut up because of the dark humor within the statement. Although, I say that when I meet random people or I hear people discussing World War type stuff. Like for example I met a Polish person and I said that.

Anyway, it pretty much is now. Mostly because being Jewish is sort of viewed as being hairy, having a big nose, being greedy, having a small dick, etc. So it's viewed negatively, therefore it can be deemed an insult by people.

[Risottia]

I'm an Atheist.

... I continued this process every time I found someone being picked on, but now the entire school will believe i'm Jewish by next week...

I (an atheist) was considered at school (by the most moronic) a Jew. Their proof was that I once knocked down a neo-nazi that was chanting through the hall "let's take the jews to the ovens".

So, meh. Business as usual.

[NoN0NSENSE]

I've often heard it used as an insult to describe someone who is cheap or stingy. Blame South Park. I know, I do.

[Natapoc]

I'm an Atheist.

... I continued this process every time I found someone being picked on, but now the entire school will believe i'm Jewish by next week...

I (an atheist) was considered at school (by the most moronic) a Jew. Their proof was that I once knocked down a neo-nazi that was chanting through the hall "let's take the jews to the ovens".

So, meh. Business as usual.

Someone seriously said that at your school? I hope you knocked him/her down really really hard!

[The Archregimancy]

And yet we know from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice that at one point the Jews were revered as a noble and honorable peoples who were the personification of all heavenly virtue.

And then you have Shylock perpetuating the stereotype.

In fairness, Shylock can be interpreted as a somewhat more complicated character than is sometimes assumed. The whole insistence on the literal repayment of a pound of flesh as security for a loan undoubtedly plays into some fairly unattractive 16th/17th-century anti-Semitic prejudices, but there is some attempt in Act 3 Scene 1 to humanise Shylock by having the character issue his (famous) plea to consider him no differently from his Christian Venetian neighbours, while noting that his own opponents might themselves be motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice.

He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million;
laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation,
thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies;
and what's his reason? I am a Jew.

Hath not a Jew eyes?
Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons,
subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge.
If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?
Why, revenge.

The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Though whether the more sympathetic reading of Shylock is due to changing audience tastes, or Shakespeare's own ability to write complex characters who can simultaneously pander to existing prejudices while retaining a sympathetic element is a matter of debate that NSG has no more ability to answer than the generations of scholars who've argued over the issue.


If you really want an unquestioned model of anti-Semitism from Elizabethan drama, then you're on much firmer ground with Barabas, the lead character from Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. From Act IV, the sequence containing my favourite Marlowe line ("but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead")...

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Stay, wicked Jew; repent, I say, and stay.

FRIAR JACOMO. Thou hast offended, therefore must be damn'd.

BARABAS. I fear they know we sent the poison'd broth.

ITHAMORE. And so do I, master; therefore speak 'em fair.

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Barabas, thou hast--

FRIAR JACOMO. Ay, that thou hast--

BARABAS. True, I have money; what though I have?

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thou art a--

FRIAR JACOMO. Ay, that thou art, a--

BARABAS. What needs all this? I know I am a Jew.

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thy daughter--

FRIAR JACOMO. Ay, thy daughter--

BARABAS. O, speak not of her! then I die with grief.

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Remember that--

FRIAR JACOMO. Ay, remember that--

BARABAS. I must needs say that I have been a great usurer.

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thou hast committed--

BARABAS. Fornication: but that was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead.

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Ay, but, Barabas, Remember Mathias and Don Lodowick.

BARABAS. Why, what of them?

FRIAR BARNARDINE. I will not say that by a forged challenge they met.

BARABAS. She has confess'd, and we are both undone, My bosom inmate! but I must dissemble.-- [Aside to ITHAMORE.] O holy friars, the burden of my sins Lie heavy on my soul! then, pray you, tell me, Is't not too late now to turn Christian? I have been zealous in the Jewish faith, Hard-hearted to the poor, a covetous wretch, That would for lucre's sake have sold my soul; A hundred for a hundred I have ta'en; And now for store of wealth may I compare With all the Jews in Malta: but what is wealth? I am a Jew, and therefore am I lost. Would penance serve [to atone] for this my sin, I could afford to whip myself to death.

Now that's some proper dissembling evil money-grabbing covetous Jew stereotype anti-Semitism, not this wishy-washy "Shylock is an evil man, but aren't Jews really just like us under the surface?" Shakespearean anti-Semitism.

[The Archregimancy]

I'm sure the Pope would be especially glad to see that so many people consider the Roman Catholic Church as the sole Christian authority here on Earth, but you forget things like the Pogroms in east Europe, the place where Orthodoxy is the majority? The fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion was allegedly first published in the Russian Empire.

It pains me to have to write as much, but there's no 'alleged' about it, and far right Orthodox monarchists were largely responsible.

The Protocols were written somewhere between the late 1890s and 1903, and were first published in the latter year in the newspaper Znamya, the house newspaper of the ultra-nationalist Union of the Russian People, which itself was a branch of the counter-revolutionary (and deeply anti-Semitic) Black Hundreds movement.

The Protocols were almost certainly written by Pyotr Rachkovsky, the head of the Russian Imperial Secret Service's Paris office. I say 'written', but large sections are simply plagiarised from Maurice Joly's conservative monarchist anti-Bonapartist French satire The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu.

The Protocols were disseminated into the West by ultra-nationalist White Russian refugees following the 1917 Revolution. Most notably, the former Black Hundreds member Boris Brasol ended up in Dearborn, Michigan, where he befriended Henry Ford, and helped the latter publish The International Jew, Ford's infamous 1920s serialisation in the Dearborn Independent, which was heavily based on the Protocols. The International Jew has arguably been far more important in promulgating the Protocols hoax than the original Protocols themselves, and was published as 'fact' in Egypt as recently as 2001.

But whatever Ford's faults, the original source of the Protocols was ultranationalist - and therefore ultraorthodox - monarchist elements of the Imperial Russian Secret Service who distributed the forgery in anti-Semitic Russian publications in an attempt to blame Russia's Jewish population for late Imperial Russia's political and economic instability.

[Reoy]

South Park.

[Mad hatters in jeans]

no not an insult, but any word said in a specific way can be considered insulting, for instance when i was little i was insulted when someone kept calling me a billy goat, i've no idea why but it was incredibly frustrating.


but i think south park is responsible for this idiotic meme.

[Forster Keys]

A few people I know started using it around year 8 and 9 (14, 15 yrs old). It made them sound like real idiots, and I think, like others have said, they learnt it off South Park. They've kind of stopped now, and I haven't heard it for a few years. But I think South Park, at least in my rural backwater ( ) has achieved quite a lot in reviving anti-Semitism amongst the youth.

EDIT: Still, I haven't really seen much Anti-Semitism in Australia. A bit amongst the older generations, and now a little amongst the youth, but its by no means mainstream. But then again I've never really lived in an area with a high Jewish population, so maybe that's part of it.

[Risottia]

I (an atheist) was considered at school (by the most moronic) a Jew. Their proof was that I once knocked down a neo-nazi that was chanting through the hall "let's take the jews to the ovens".

So, meh. Business as usual.

Someone seriously said that at your school? I hope you knocked him/her down really really hard!

Did. And pushed a waste bin over his head for good measure.

[WWII History Geeks]

Jewish is considered an insult here, yes. Which is sad to an extent.

[Georgism]

I get called a dirty Jew all the time.

So yes, I suppose it is an insult.

[Oviabshe]

I never used to hear it, but recently, I've heard my classmates saying things like "That's so Jew!" (the way they might use "gay"). The other day, one kid was angry that another wouldn't pick up his money for him and he said, "I'm not a Jew!" (I do have a lot of racists at my school, so that could also be part of it.)

[Farnhamia]

Jewish is considered an insult here, yes. Which is sad to an extent.

Only to an extent? To what extent is it not sad? And where are you, by the way?

[Dakini]

I don't know why being a Jew would be considered an insult...

Usually it's used to call someone cheap or stingy (or occasionally in place of calling someone an "Indian giver").

[The Norwegian Blue]

This thread is really depressing. I was under the impression that this was one prejudice that had largely died out in contemporary America, aside from a few pockets of total crazies. Seeing antisemitism rising back up and people explaining that being Jewish is perceived as "being hairy and hook-nosed and greedy" makes me wonder what century I'm living in.

[Ravea]

I get mistaken as Jewish all the time, because I look like one. And by "Mistaken," I mean my home, dorm room, and car has been vandalized a few times with swastikas, and in one case my car's tires were slashed.

I am, in fact, Romani, which is something I'm not apt to share either. I've been called everything from scum to much worse, and told to leave certain homes and establishments. Most of this comes from Europeans.

[Dakini]

This thread is really depressing. I was under the impression that this was one prejudice that had largely died out in contemporary America, aside from a few pockets of total crazies. Seeing antisemitism rising back up and people explaining that being Jewish is perceived as "being hairy and hook-nosed and greedy" makes me wonder what century I'm living in.

I'm not sure that it's increasing anti-Semitism so much as it's an increase in people who
1. don't think about the meaning of words before they speak them (see also: "that's so gay!") and/or
2. people changing the words that they use because there are enough people expressing offence about other terms (e.g. "gay" "retarded") that they go back to slurs that people aren't paying as much attention to and/or
3. people thinking that Cartman from South Park is a good person to emulate.

[The Norwegian Blue]

This thread is really depressing. I was under the impression that this was one prejudice that had largely died out in contemporary America, aside from a few pockets of total crazies. Seeing antisemitism rising back up and people explaining that being Jewish is perceived as "being hairy and hook-nosed and greedy" makes me wonder what century I'm living in.

I'm not sure that it's increasing anti-Semitism so much as it's an increase in people who
1. don't think about the meaning of words before they speak them (see also: "that's so gay!") and/or
2. people changing the words that they use because there are enough people expressing offence about other terms (e.g. "gay" "retarded") that they go back to slurs that people aren't paying as much attention to and/or
3. people thinking that Cartman from South Park is a good person to emulate.

Fair. All three of those are depressing in their own right, though.