Talk:Yid

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Ezra, this version is okay if we say who uses the term "Yid", as well as who considers the term offensive. In New York, in the mouths of non-Jews, I suppose the term would be a put down. But in your social circle, it seem to be okay, even desirable.

Perhaps if you identified your social group -- I mean, identified the group which regards the word "yid" as a nice thing. --Ed Poor

This page is very problematic. I am giving a translation of Ezra's text:

A Jew is somebody who knows that he must keep the commandments of the Bible. He might not keep them perfectly, but he knows that he must. Any Jew no matter how poorly he fulfils his duty to keep the commandments still has a little bit of Jewishness [the correct translation--I happen to speak Yiddish]. This [Jewish, sic] spark can flare up at any time and allow him to overcome his evil inclination to not keep the Torah and its laws.

Does anyone really think that this is an encyclopedia-worthy entry? I would really like to hear from people who have not been involved in the debate and who no personal involvement in the subject. Danny

"Any Jew no matter how poorly he fulfils his duty to keep the commandments still has a little bit of Jewishness [the correct translation--I happen to speak Yiddish]. This [Jewish, sic]"- Danny, how can that possibly be the correct translation? You've made it clear that you don't have a very strong grasp on the english language. -Lara

It doesn't seem encyclopedic to me. There might be an article possible on kinds of Jews and their self-descriptions and if there were then this might be a quotation, or "description of a characteristic attitude" or some such, but no one who come to an encyclopedia looking for the meaning of "yid" could possibly be satisfied, not even if this were a Jewish encyclopedia. As it is, the only meaning of yid in English is "offensive term for Jew".
I started out writing a parody of what a similar page for nigger (from the positive point of view of, say Niggaz With Attitude) would look like, but even half a sentence's worth of it was too much even for a talk page. (It was funny, though.) Ortolan88
Well, I just read it for the first time, and it makes no sense to me. It should describe what the term means and who uses it, and that it's offensive. -- Zoe
I'd like to second Zoe's motion. It just doesn't make any sense. Tokerboy 01:23 Nov 1, 2002 (UTC)

Okay, let's see if I can remember this. The word "yid" in Yiddish is equivalent to the English word "Jew". Some English speakers adopted the word as a derogatory term. (Is that right?)

The Yiddish word "Yid" is merely Yiddish for Jew, and we already have an entry on Jews. This is unnecessary duplication. Worse, it is badly written, and looks like it is going to be start of an Ezra-style polemic. This entry should be deleted. RK

The preceding question is correct -- "yid" = Jew and in some contexts may be (or have been) used simply to mean Jew, and in other contexts as a pejorative.

To Ezra and others: I have removed the current text of the article to this talk page. I believe the page itself should be deleted but I am willing to entertaina little discussion before making the vote on the vote for deletion page. Here is the removed text:

A Yid (pron. Yeed, Yiddish for Jew) is somebody who knows that he must be Shomer Torah uMitzvos (Keep the Torah and its laws).
He might not keep them perfectly, but he knows that he must.
Any Yid no matter how poorly he fulfils his duty to keep the Mitzvos (Torah laws), still has a Pintele Yid (A Jewish spark.) This spark can flare up at any time and allow him to overcome his Yetzer Hora (evil inclination) to not keep the Torah and its laws.

This definition is not accurate. AT BEST one can say that some Jews use the word this way. As with many words, it is used in different ways and has several meanings.

There are two things I feel very strongly about, and until some sysop freezes the page or bans me, I will remove the above text to "talk" if it is put back until I, or enough other people, believe the author of the text has responded adequately to the following two issues.

1) As put, this article is a definition of a Yiddish word. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and it is not a Yiddish to English dictionary. Some words, like "Torah" or "fish" or "Judaism" refer to complex topics that deserve Encyclopedia articles. Some words, like "chair" and "soupspoon," or "asiento" or "cuchara," do not merit articles. Ezra, if you want this article to float, you must explain why this merits an encyclopedia article. What motivated you to write this particular article -- please do not explain to me why you have chosen to contribute to wikipedia in general, I think I understand why. What I want to know is why we should have an article on "yid" when we do not have an article on other "chair" or "asiento."

2) In fact, I do not think that this is a good translation of the yiddish word "yid" or definition of the English word "Jew" (which is a good translation of "yid" -- note that depending on who is speaking and in what context, "Jew" can be perfectly innocent or derogatory). It is a polemic that Jews ought to obey Jewish law. OF COURSE some Jews think they should obey Jewish law, and OF COURSE some Jews do not. Simply to observe that some Jews think they should obey Jewish law is banal and to make it into an encyclopedia article is silly; to do so as a way to communicate to others that all Jews ought to obey Jewish law is a polemic and there is no conceivable way that any such a claim could ever be NPOV.

Ezra, note that I did not merely delete the article. I removed it to talk because I do not want to silence you unilaterally. I do not think that this article could ever be successful, but I am more than willing to give you a good try. I just ask you to work on it, try out ideas on this talk page, and wait until other more experienced wikipedians agree that it is a plausible encyclopedia article, or even a decent first draft of part of an article. First, you need to convince us there is a need for an article on "yid." Then you need to develop one that is NPOV and informative and has substance.

Personally, I believe that an article on Jews or Judaism would be a good article for Wikipedia. But you know what? We already have these articles. In the article on "Jew," in you want, put "(Yiddish, "Yid;" Spanish, "Judeo," French, "Juis" or whatever, if it makes you happy -- I have nothing against other languages). Also, you may want to contribute to the article on Judaism. Your essay on "yid -- such as it is -- does raise a genuinely interesting question: why some Jews believe they should obey Jewish law while others believe they should not. I would applaud an accurate addition to the article on Judaism that answers this question -- IF if it can be answered in a non-polemical way

  • if it really tells us what motivates observant Jews without putting down non-observant Jews
  • and if it explains what motivates non-observant Jews without putting down observant Jews
  • if it explains why at a certain time in history this issue became a serious question facing Jews that could be answered in different ways (e.g. talk about Napolean's Sanhedrin, the Enlightenment, the decline of Christian hegemony in Europe, the rise of capitalism, etc)
  • and if it explains why there are tensions between these two groups in a blanaced, NPOV and accurate way.

We all have biases and we all struggle to control them. If any non-Jewish/non-fundamentalist reader of this page thinks I am way out of line I would appreciate it if you told me why. Ezra, believe it or not I welcome your response but please think about what I have written. Do you disagree with me, or not understand me? Do you reject what I am saying, or do you reject the whole wikipedian project of 1) being an encyclopedia and 2) being NPOV? Slrubenstein

No, it isn't. Forget the "some ... adopted". There is no other meaning, all English speakers consider yid an offensive term, according to Webster's Third Unabridged Dictionary', the Oxford English Dictionary (the world standard in American and English dictionaries, respectively) and three other major dictionaries I checked. There is no inoffensive use of the word yid in English, it is the equivalent of nigger, or maybe, darky as applied to black people. Ortolan88
Ortolan88, I do not know why you cut what I wrote, I think it is generally wrong to cut from the talk page especially when the motivation is sincere. I didn't want to cut what you wrote, but it was the only way I could revert to what I wrote -- feel free to put your view back in, you do not need to cut what I wrote to do so. [See Wikipedia:Handling edit conflicts. --Ed Poor] But for what it is worth, I remember friends of mine refering to their kipot as "yid-lids" jokingly. I agree with you that in most cases "yid" is very offensive, but there are some Jews who in some contexts use the word and that is a fact. Slrubenstein
Slrubenstein, you seem to have done the same thing, by deleting Ortolan's comments that were previously on this page. [See Wikipedia:Handling edit conflicts. --Ed Poor] NO, this should NOT be deleted, any more than Nigger should be deleted. It SHOULD be made clear that, in ALL English environments, the word is offensive. -- Zoe

Mellow down easy, cats. Nobody cut anybody intentionally, all edit conflicts all the way. Here's what I was trying to say (for the third time):

Forget about "some ... adopted". In English, there is no inoffensive use of the word yid in standard English. I checked all standard dictionaries, OED, Webster III, several more. It is always offensive.

Ortolan88

The only inoffensive use of the term seems to be when used in relation to Tottenham Hotspur F.C. , and this usage can be offensive as well depending on who is using it. See [[1]].

I have tried to fix my inadvertent deletion of Ortolon's comment -- if it didn't work please, Ortolon88, fix it, but please just don't delete what I wrote, or at least pay me the courtesy of an explanation -- and I am sorry I deleted what you wrote. [See Wikipedia:Handling edit conflicts. --Ed Poor] The fact remains, there are English speaking Jews who use the word in a non-derogatory way; it doesn't matter whether dictionaries report that (they don't because it just isn't the issue in this country that other words like Nigger are, so it isn't as big an issue). Zoe, you have an interesting point about the comparison to Nigger although I think the point is that there is a debate among Anglo- and African-Americans right now about the use of the word, and an article about the word gets at useful issues of American History, Identity politics, and the workings of racism. There is no comparable debate around the word "yid" that deserves coverage in an encyclopedia. But if you think so, and if you think that an article about "yid" can illuminate issues in Jewish history, identity politics, and racism, by all means I invite you to give it a try. I just insist, and continue to insist, that the article have some substance and be accurate and NPOV. Slrubenstein
PS Zoe I think you misunderstood me above -- I did not mean that I would delete the claim that "yid is pejorative" (as long as it is acknowledged that it is not necessarily pejorative) -- I meant that I would delete what Ezra Wax had written which as you know was quite quite different from the current version of the article. Slrubenstein

Hm. I see Stevertigo is restoring the biased comments Martha added. I don't intend to get into an edit war over this. -- Zoe

"according to, for instance, Webster" is equivalent to saying "according to, for instance, some dictionary". If you're going to attribute something to a dictionary, attribute to an actual dictionary. I'm taking the clause out, for now. -- Nohat 21:24, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

In my mindset, there is nothing pejorative about the use of the word Yid at all, except if one thinks of Jewishness as something negative. It's really just a an odd but neutral little word borrowed from another language into English, and so equating Yid with Nigger to me just seems uninformed. The word Jew (and its equivalents in French, Arabic, Russian, Persian, etcetera) is far more likely to be used as a term of insult among certain groups. Big Adamsky 17:34, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Big Adamsky raises an interesting point. I know several people, including some Jews, who shy away from the word "Jew" as if it were itself derogatory, resorting to circumlocutions like "Jewish person." This doesn't make it a derogatory word.Benami 19:25, 23 November 2005 (UTC)