The original sabbath
is Saturday, a connection reflected
in cognate terms for the latter such as Spanish sábado, Arabic sabt, and more obscurely in French samedi (from Late Latin sambati dies), German Samstag. For observant Jews, the day comes with many practical
restrictions on what you are allowed to do -- no turning on lights, operating
machinery, etc.
To observe the letter of the Law while yet enjoying the
usual convenience, some Jews traditionally made use of a Shabbos goy -- or, more genteelly, Sabbath gentile -- to perform the necessary actions.
As, in the
Depression-era memory of a working-class Gentile growing up in Hell’s Kitchen,
Manhattan:
There
was also some Jewish fellows who I made a few dollars from. I’d be standin’ around on one of the
holidays and the Jewish man would
say, “Come up and light my fire. I’ll
give you a nickel.” So, great, I’d
go up the stairs, but I never could understand the whole concept of the Jewish
holidays where somebody would
stand right next to you and you would light it for them, but who was gonna
question them? I nickel here and a dime there -- that was big money.
--
Jeff Kisseloff, You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II (1989), p. 575
Yet a more particular conscience might be troubled at this dodge, and indeed we read:
If a non-Jew lights a lamp on
Sabbath, a Jew may make use of the light.
But if he lights it for the sake of the Jew, it is forbidden.
-- The Mishnah: Oral Teachings
of Judaism, transl. & ed. by Eugene Lipman (1970)
With a curious combination of ostensible observance and
covert opportunism, a loophole was found even for this. A footnote explains:
Non-Jews have also been used to
keep coal furnaces going on Sabbath
and to perform similar minor chores -- all in violation of the
Sabbath. A legal fiction is used
by the rabbinate to justify this practice. The Jew may not ask the non-Jew to perform the service, nor
may he compensate the non-Jew for performing such services. The non-Jew “volunteers for his own
reasons”, and the Jew benefits.
Later, a gift of gratitude is given to the non-Jew for the coincidental
fact that his “volunteer” service was of benefit to the Jew on Sabbath.
One is reminded of those Islamic banks which obey the letter
of the ban on usury by not charging “interest” on loans, so named; but charging … ahem … certain fees …
Jesus, as was his wont, swept aside the casuistry, and cut
right to the root:
“The Sabbath was made for Man,
not Man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)
[Folkloristic note:] Notions related to the "Shabbos goy": cat's-paw; proxy.
~
~ ~
A bonus, of Jewish
interest:
Why you should never
let a gentile run a pawnshop:
Murphy Makes a Mitzvah
~ ~
~
In European history we find a sort of mirror-image or dual of
the shabbos goy: the Hofjuden.
The wars of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries had played into the hands of the Jewish money-changers and
moneylenders, who had made themselves indispensable to the absolutistic
princes. Even in the first half of
the nineteenth century, the rules of states and principalities were depending in their financial enterprises on their “court Jews” (Hofjuden) … In the age of Metternich,
most of the Jewish court bankers were baronized, although they were still
deprived of cirtizenship.
-- Kurt Reinhardt, Germany: 2000
Years (1950, 2nd edn. 1961), p. 554
~
~ Posthumous Endorsement ~
"If I were alive today, and
in the mood for a mystery,
this is what I'd be reading:
"
(Ich bin der Graf von Metternich,
and I approved this message.)
~
Another little-known parallel between European and MidEast
social history, this from 19th-century Prussia:
Jews and members of the armed forces were excluded from citizenship, the former for racial, the latter for professional
reasons. Members of both
categories were considered as “denizens” (Schutzverwandte). They were forbidden to own real estate,
were excluded from trade and industry, and had no share in city administration.
-- Kurt Reinhardt, Germany: 2000
Years (1950, 2nd edn. 1961), p. 434
This arrangement of Schutzverwandte is reminiscent of the institution of dhimmis -- certain non-Muslim groups
tolerated (and surtaxed) under caliphal rule. (The “dh” here represents a voiced interdental fricative,
like the initial sound of English this.)
(Here Gellner is using the modifying appositive Parade- in the German sense, as in Paradepferd; nowadays Americans would say "poster-goy".)
The English Wikipedia entry, by the way, paints a happy-face
on the history of dhimmi disabilities.
The German version, by contrast, names names:
Der Erlass des Abbasidenkalifen al-Mutawakkil gegen die Dhimmis
- Gemäß dem Historiker at-Tabarī erließ der Abbasidenkalif al-Mutawakkilim April 850 einen Befehl, wonach Christen und alle Schutzbefohlenen honigfarbene Umhänge taylasan und die althergebrachten Gürtel zunnar und eine gelbe Kopfbedeckung zu tragen hatten. Kleidervorschriften und weitere Unterscheidungsmerkmale sind allen Gemeinschaften des ahl al-dhimma auferlegt worden.
- al-Mutawakkil ließ ferner an die Häuser aller Nicht-Muslime schwarze Teufelsköpfe malen und ihre Gräber einebnen, um sie dadurch von den Gräbern der Muslime unterscheiden zu können.
- • Gottesdienste und Beerdigungen sind unauffällig zu halten; dabei sind keine Zeichen ihres Glaubens, z. B. Kreuze, zu zeigen.Gemäß diesem Erlass von al-Mutawakkil mussten neu errichtete Gotteshäuser zerstört werden. Wenn der Platz groß genug war, sollte er als Bauland für eine Moschee verwendet werden.
- Dhimmis durften in Staatsämtern nicht beschäftigt werden.
- Kinder von Dhimmis hatten keinen Anspruch darauf, Schulen der Muslime zu besuchen oder von einem Muslim unterrichtet zu werden.
You will notice that the imposition of a yellow badge of
shame upon the Jews, made notorious by the Nazis, was actually invented much
earlier, under the Abbasids.
For a rich collection of cultural and semantic observations about the classical age of Arabic,
consult my book:
[Update April 2014]
Jung
had been, as is very clearly evident from Freud’s own emphatic statements, the Parade-Goy
of the early psychoanalytic movement.
-- Ernest Gellner, The
Psychoanalytic Movement (1985; 2nd edn. 1993), p. 8
(Here Gellner is using the modifying appositive Parade- in the German sense, as in Paradepferd; nowadays Americans would say "poster-goy".)
The author adds in a footnote (p. 226):
This term, literally
Display-Gentile, was in current use to describe a Gentile figurehead of a Jewish
firm, set up to ward off anti-semitic feelings towards the establishment in
question.
Compare, in our own day, the Parade-shvartser (among other ornaments) as a front for business
benefitting from set-asides.
Update July 2018] It turns out there is a curious reflex of goy in the French lexicon: goujat.
1.
(vieux) valet d’armée
2. (vieux ou régional) apprenti maçon
2. (vieux ou régional) apprenti maçon
3.
(vieux) rustre …
[mot
languedocien, de l’ancien provençal gojat
“gars”, hébreu goya “servante
chrétienne”]
-- Dictionnaire
de la langue française (Bordas)
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