(, regular plural or ) is a
Hebrew word which means "nation". Historically and up to modern times it is a synonym for
Gentile or non-Jew.
Etymology
thumb|250px|A page from Yiddish-
Hebrew-
Latin-
German dictionary (16th century) contains a list of nations, including word "גוי", translated to Latin as "Ethnicus"/" class="wiki">Elia Levita's
Yiddish-
Hebrew-
Latin-
German dictionary (16th century) contains a list of nations, including word "גוי", translated to Latin as "Ethnicus"
In the
Torah/
Hebrew Bible, and its variants appear over 550 times in reference to
Israelites and to
Gentile nations. The first recorded usage of occurs in
Genesis 10:5 and applies innocuously to non-Israelite nations. The first mention in relation to the Israelites comes in Genesis 12:2, when God promises
Abraham that his descendants will form a ("great nation"). While the earlier books of the Hebrew Bible often use to describe the Israelites, the later ones tend to apply the term to other nations.
Some Bible translations leave the word untranslated and treat it as the proper name of a country in
Genesis 14:1. Bible commentaries suggest that the term may refer to
Gutium. The "King of Goyim" was
Tidal.
In Rabbinic Judaism
One of the more poetic descriptions of the chosen people in the Old Testament, and popular among Jewish scholarship, as the highest description of themselves: when God proclaims in the holy writ, , or 'a unique nation upon the earth!'.
The
Rabbinic literature conceives of the nations () of the world as numbering seventy, each with a discrete language.
On the verse, “He [G-d] set the borders of peoples according to the number of the
Children of Israel,”
Rashi explains: “Because of the number of the Children of Israel who were destined to come forth from the children of
Shem, and to the number of the seventy souls of the Children of Israel who went down to
Egypt, He set the ‘borders of peoples’ [to be characterized by] seventy languages.”
The
Ohr Hachayim maintains that this is the symbolism behind the
Menorah: “The seven candles of the Menorah [in the
Holy Temple] correspond to the world's nations, which number seventy. Each [candle] alludes to ten [nations]. This alludes to the fact that they all shine opposite the western [candle], which corresponds to the Jewish people.”
Modern usage
As noted, in the above-quoted Rabbinical literature the meaning of the word "" shifted the Biblical meaning of "a people" which could be applied to the Hebrews/Jews as to others into meaning "a people other than the Jews". In later generations, a further shift left the word as meaning an individual person who belongs to such a non-Jewish people.
In modern
Hebrew and
Yiddish the word is the standard term for a
gentile.
In English, the use of the word can be controversial. Like other common (and otherwise innocent) terms, it may be assigned pejoratively to non-Jews. To avoid any perceived offensive connotations, writers may use the English terms "Gentile" or "non-Jew".
In Yiddish, it is the only proper term for Gentile and many bilingual English and Yiddish speakers use it dispassionately or even deliberately.
The term
shabbos goy refers to a non-Jew who performs duties that
Jewish law forbids a Jew from performing on the
Sabbath; typically, lighting a fire to warm a house.
In
Israel, secularists rarely use the term, preferring refer to foreign countries and nations by their specific names.
See also
