Is Jew an anti-Jewish term?

jewcentral · Site Admin Joined: Oct 31, 2002 Posts: 74

A concerned Jewish man has complained that the word "Jew" is an anti-semetic term.

jewcentral · Site Admin Joined: Oct 31, 2002 Posts: 74

We at JewCentral and JewCards obviously see nothing wrong with the term- otherwise we would not have used it in our name.

I checked it up in the dictionary and the definitions are as follows:
1. An adherent of Judaism as a religion or culture.
2. A member of the widely dispersed people originally descended from the ancient Hebrews and sharing an ethnic heritage based on Judaism.
3. A native or inhabitant of the ancient kingdom of Judah.

None of those seem like slurs. But i'm sure you're saying the dictionary may not print offensive terms. But it does! I checked up one very offensive word- you can see the results say "n. Offensive Slang" (don't click if you dont want to see the word.)

"Jew" is just the singular of "Jews". "Jews" isn't bad, is it? ( a quick search on the ny times has an article with the word jew, jewish and jews. Here's another from fox news. I'm sure they wouldn't use that if it was offensive. )

To the anti-semitic groups i'm sure Jews, Jewish or anything to do with the religion is a slur.

Frankly if "Jew" is now a bad term, let's win it back because it's too similar to words we do use to describe ourselves like "Jewish" and "Jews"!

Mort · Guest

I think using the word Jewish vs. Jew is more proper. Why then I ask
for your forum you call it "Jewish News for the Jewish Professional." If you really were consistant you would call it "Jewish News for the Jew Professional". It just doesn't sound right; thats why and neither does JewCentral; it should be called Jewish Central in my opinion.

jewcentral · Site Admin Joined: Oct 31, 2002 Posts: 74

It depends on the context for when we'd Jew vs Jewish.

Jew is a noun and Jewish is an adjective. So I would say Chaim is a good(adj) Jew(n). Or Mark has a Jewish(adj) prayer book(n).

"Jewish News for the Jew(n) Professional(n)" wouldn't work. "Jewish News for the Professional Jew" makes sense but means that the person's business is being a Jew (without getting preechy that wouldn't work). but I could have said "Jewish News for the Professional who is a Jew" or "Jewish News for the Jew who is a Professional"- that would longer and confusing.

When picking names for websites you are limited- you want it short and to the point. Unfortunately a lot of good names are taken (including JewishCentral.com) or too generic that is why people make up words (yahoo, Travelocity) or repurpose words (amazon, google) or concatenate words(jdate, jewishcafe).

Mort · Guest

But in this case Central is used as a noun. So Jew Central is noun noun. For Grand Central Station the Central would be an adjective to Station which is the noun in this case, but for Grand Central, Central is now a noun; i.e. the station terminal. You've heard people say"Change trains at Grand Central." That's why I say Jewish Central (adjective noun) sounds better.

lijew · Guest

ok, people, here's the deal: a jew is a member of the jewish nation or religion (a whole other controversy right there). nothing disparaging about it, especially in English. (I was never fond of the word "Yid" since I feel German brings its own connotations to the word.)

in this case, i believe both jew and central are nouns, just as in train station.

to really get your goats, those who have started or followed this discussion, my only pet peeve with jewcentral is that its abbreviation is "JC", an abbreviation for a jew who is none to popular with the jewish nation or religion.

Getalife · Guest

Are you people retarded, Jew is not a negative term! The name of this site is just fine, not deragotory at all. Get a life, and somebody just shut up all those idiotic Politically correct gestapo!