Re: Apollo
Umm, I would recommend you look up the
definition and etymology of shiksa and shaygetz before using the terms in common speech.
Yes, they refer to non-Jewish people, but carry worse connotations than calling a black person an "[n-word]".
I don't have to look it up because I lived it. In the family circle that I lived in "shiksa" and "shaygetz" were used just the way I used them.
I remember my cousin B., the guy who has lived in the same apartment in Palo Alto since 1961, came down to Fullerton to visit us around 1961. My brother and I took him to meet one of his mother's Yenta friends. My cousin is tall and thin, with blonde hair and blue eyes like so many people on my Mom's side of the family. That whole batch of relatives almost all had blonde hair or red hair and were tall and all had blue eyes. The one tell that they might be Jewish is that they pretty much all had Jewish noses.
Anyway, we introduced my cousin to this Jewish Yenta and while he goes to the restroom, she says, who is this guy, why are you hanging out with him and bringing him here. We say, he is our first cousin, Aunt Naomi's son. The lady said to us, "Really, I would have taken him for a shaygetz, he sure doesn't look Jewish".
Then there were these songs, we learned from our Jewish cousins in Dayton, Ohio, "Oy, yoy. yoy, zeta beta toy, what have you done to my little boy, sent him to college to learn to read and write and now he's dating Shiksas on Yom Kippur night. Then there were other Jewish jokes about college such as, "Hey, did you hear about the new Jewish Fraternity for older Jewish students, its called, Zaide laid a Shiksa. Zaide was Yiddish for Grandpa and Shiksa was a Jewish girl.
In 1975, I was dating a Catholic girl in Long Beach. We were adding a bedroom and bath to her parents home. She was 23 and was going to Long Beach City college, a 2 year community college, learning to be an X ray technician. She wanted to get married and I agreed to it. My Grandma started in on me, I don't want you to marry a Shiksa, over and over every time I mentioned her. I would have married that girl and we agreed to announce our engagement as soon as the room addition was completed but I was just getting ready to do OT III and she insisted that I quit CoS, saying that it was a church of the Devil. I really wanted to find out what OT III was all about about and I told that Shiksa that I supported her in her Catholcism and I demanded that she support me in my Scientology religion. She said that she was okay with me being Jewish but not a Scientologists. Eventually, we agreed to break up.
Another incident took place. My parents had Jewish friends named Berman. Their Son Sandy, married outside the Jewish faith. These people came over to visit my parents one day when I was about 9 and my brother was 6. They were completely distressed and in a tremendous tither. What was the problem? Their Son Sandy had become engaged to a Shiksa. Being Jewish and belonging to the local Temple was the most important thing in their lives and their son was planning on marrying a Shiksa. They threatened to disown him if he went ahead with that marriage. My parents tried to talk them into being more accepting of Sandy's fiance. They stressed that these were modern times, then around 1949 or 1950, and that people were now more tolerant.
The Bermans wouldn't listen. Sandy did marry the woman and the Berman's disowned him even though he was their only Son. They came over several times, completely distraught. Previously, they were always bragging about him and what a great guy he was. He was getting straight A's at USC, etc, etc. One day they came over looking like death. Sandy had actually married the Shiksa and they said they were forced to cut all ties with their only child. My parents gave them solace and tried to get them to accept the new wife into their family but they would have no part of it and they wrote Sandy out of their will. A year or so later, those two sad sacks came over again, Sandy's wife had given birth to a grandchild. My parents tried to give encouragement and congratulated them and suggested that the new baby might bring the family back together. Both Bermans were resolute, they had completely disowned their son. his wife and their grandchild. They kept saying that Sandy had betrayed them by marrying a Shiksa. They went to their graves in that state of mind, broken and unhappy people.
In my circle of friends and family, from the 1940's through the 60's when all of my family and about half my friends were Jewish, the words Shiksa and Shaygetz were used simply to mean a non Jewish female or male. Maybe in Europe or Israel or in ancient Poland. Latvia or Russia it meant something else but in Jewish society of the mid 20th century in the USA every Jew I knew used it just as I used it in my post.
Lakey
That's just the way it is...
