Mo Rocca of the Cooking Channel was on WNYC this morning and– speaking to a Jewish host; Rocca’s not Jewish–talked up this trailer for a TV comedy he wants to make. It’s called Shabbos Goy. Check it out; I find it mildly repulsive. (And many readers on this site have told us how offensive they find terms like goyim, shegetz and shiksa).
During the era of postwar anti-Semitism (roughly from The Gentleman’s Agreement in ’47 to Dershowitz threatening to leave Harvard Law School if they didn’t get a Jewish dean, in ’71) it was a curse to call someone a self-hating Jew, for step-n-fetchit attitudes in the cause of ambition. Now we’re in a philosemitic era. It seems to have produced a different species of abasement.
Not even mildly amusing.
What’s with the *watermelon*? Where I come from, that is rank with racist connotations. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermelon_stereotype. So, images of someone being called something that sounds so like ‘boy’, and asked to step & fetch it, while totin’ watermelons — has connotations…
Am I reading too much into this? it just seems like this watermelon came from nowhere & was gratuitous prop so one wonders…
Shabbos Goy
Web definitions
A Shabbos goy, Shabbat goy or Shabbes goy is a non-Jew who performs certain types of work for a Jew on the Biblical Sabbath, work which Jewish Law enjoins the Jew from doing on the Sabbath. …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbos_goy
I had no idea what a shabbos goy was.
I have a low opinion of the current entertainment mentality that thinks humor is about being snide and denigrating people—-thats all so called comedians do today, they make society more crass in general.
But hey, the flip side of Shabbos Goy is Put a Lid on the Yids…..if you cant teach them manners then outdo them in a race to the bottom…..equal opportunity ridiculing…..coming soon on the Entertainment Today Channel.
repulsive? shit man, it’s not funny but it’s not repulsive, and if someone takes offense to this, they need to chill out.
i’d put this in an ‘inside joke’ category. most people who are not jewish won’t get this and have never heard the term Shabbos Goy, or Shabbos for that matter.