Nahanni: Hi, it’s Nahanni Rous, here with another episode of Can We Talk? First, a word from our sponsor, the University of San Francisco’s Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice. JSSJ is excited to announce the first-ever graduate-level certificate in JEDI—Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. This program will give you the tools to boost your classroom techniques, bring JEDI skills to your organization, and expand your personal knowledge. Fall classes begin August 27. Learn more and apply at USFCA.EDU/JEDI.

Nahanni: Now, on to the show.

[Theme music plays]

Nahanni: Welcome back to Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive, where gender, history and Jewish culture meet.

[Theme music fades out and jingle music fades in]

Nahanni: In this episode, we’re bringing back Can We Talk’s Word of the Week! These are episodes where we dig into one word and explore how it relates to Jewish women. This time, a word that on its surface appears not to be about Jewish women: shiksa.

[Jingle fades]

Judy Gold: Shiksa to me, is the ultimate not Jewish—someone who is so ethnically white.

Miriam Anzovin: There’s something about that term being used to imply a lesser status.

Lizzie Skurnick: I always felt like shiksa was really such a dangerous thing, because even though it seems like it's an insult to that blonde white lady, I think what it's really doing is affirming that that's really the top of the pile of how you’re attractive in this country.

[Music plays]

Judy: It makes me think of my mother because she used it a lot. “Oh, she's a shiksa.” You know, it's like you can have one word that is an entire paragraph, and that's one of the words.

Miriam: I certainly would never use that word, nor encourage anyone else to use that word towards a non-Jewish woman ever. It is very demeaning. And if somebody is proudly reclaiming that term for their own use, mazel tov, but the rest of us should not use that.

Nahanni: That was Miriam Anzovin, Judy Gold and Lizzie Skurnick weighing in on the word shiksa.

Nahanni: Some non-Jewish women have tried to reclaim the word. There are shiksa-themed products: t-shirts that say “100-percent shiksa,” cell phone cases with the phrase “I’m the token shiksa,” and here’s actress Drew Barrymore on The View in 2013:

Drew Barrymore: I’m a shiksa… and I do, like, I do the seders, and we do Passover and…

Joy Behar: You converted? 

Drew: We got…You know, I haven’t converted yet, Olive will be raised traditionally… (fade)

Nahanni: Terms like Shiksa Goddess and shiksappeal have been popularized by Jewish writers —male Jewish writers—and comedians like Phillip Roth and Jerry Seinfeld. 

In this episode, we’ll hear three perspectives on the word shiksa and how its meaning has changed over time.

Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath: Shiksa just means a gentile woman or a girl, a non-Jewish woman, or a girl. 

Nahanni: That’s Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath. She grew up in a Yiddish speaking home in the 1960s. She’s editor-in-chief of the Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary.

Gitl: Depending on the context, shiksa can take on a lot of negative or pejorative connotations, from “slut” to “forbidden fruit.” The pejorative terms are mostly with a sexual connotation or implication, especially in the 20th century. It didn't start out that way.

So, shiksa derived from the Yiddish word sheygetz. Sheygetz means a gentile male. Sheygetz has its own connotations. Sheygetz just meant, you know, a boy who was misbehaving, or who was a smart ass, who had chutzpah– if a Jewish boy threw a ball through somebody's window, you know, his mother would call him a sheygetz.

The word sheygetz, originally it's thought to come from the word sheketz, which is found in Sefer Vayikra; it’s the book of Leviticus. And it essentially means “disgusting, non-kosher bugs.” And then the word came up in the Talmud in Psachim and the implication was “abomination.” There was a quote there about not letting your daughter marry an unlearned or a non-observant man because they are a sheketz.

So then, you know, centuries later, people are speaking Yiddish in Eastern Europe, and shiksa meant a gentile woman. So, you know, maybe there were women in the market who were selling their goods.

And then towards the end of the 19th century, when secular Yiddish literature became much more popular and a lot of Jews were moving away from tradition, they were immigrating, it became a lot more popular.

I don't actually remember hearing the word shiksa in our home. I heard it on the street, among friends, in summer camp. And generally it was not positive. It was seen as, like, a lower-class woman, you know, not an intelligent or intellectual being.

I think it was with the 20th century, you know, maybe the sexual revolution, Woody Allen, Philip Roth, we started seeing literature where the word shiksa was thrown about.

Nahanni: Phillip Roth published Portnoy’s Complaint in 1969. Here’s an excerpt where he talks about his obsession with non-Jewish women:

But the shikses, ah, the shikses are something else again [...] How do they get so gorgeous, so healthy, so blonde? My contempt for what they believe in is more than neutralized by my adoration of the way they look, the way they move and laugh and speak.

Gitl: Today I think it still has that, you know...shiksappeal is… is mostly sexual. Women are not set in a good light when opposed to the shiksa. They are the woman that the Jewish man is trying to leave behind. It's not a good thing for Jewish women.

[Music begins playing and fades]

Keren McGinity: What comes to mind when I hear the word shiksa is myth-making and, uh, a Jewish communal preoccupation with this idea that golden-haired women lured Jewish men away from their families and religion and community.

Nahanni: Keren McGinity teaches American Studies at Brandeis University. She’s also the Interfaith Specialist at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

Keren: The first time that I heard “shiksappeal” was while watching an episode of Seinfeld. It was used in a conversation between George and Elaine, uh, and she was sharing with him that Jewish men were pursuing her:

Elaine: So now the other Lippman kissed me.

George: Sure, they’re Jewish and you’re a shiksa. 

Elaine: What does being a shiksa have to do with it? 

George: You’ve got shiksappeal. Jewish men love the idea of meeting a woman that’s not like their mother. 

Elaine: Oh, that’s insane. 

Keren: So when George says that to her, it's a way of glamorizing the gentile woman while at the same time disparaging the Jewish mother.

Nahanni: Later in the episode, Elaine consults a rabbi:

Elaine: Rabbi, is there anything I can do to combat this shiksappeal?

Rabbi: Elaine, shiksappeal is a myth, like the Yeti or his North American cousin, the Sasquatch. 

Elaine: Well, something’s going on here, because every able-bodied Israelite in the county is driving pretty strong to the hoop…

Rabbi: Elaine, there’s much you don’t know about the Jewish religion… For example, did you know that rabbis are allowed to date? 

Elaine: What does that have to do with…

Rabbi: You know, a member of my congregation has a timeshare in Myrtle Beach. Perhaps, if you’re not too busy, we could wing on down after the High Holidays… 

Keren: The rabbi is now hitting on the so-called shiksa. So, Seinfeld took it all the way, in other words [laughs]. And, you know, the only saving grace from my perspective is that when the rabbi looks up from his Rolodex, uh, the chair that Elaine was sitting in is now empty.

Rabbi: Elaine? Lainy?

Keren: She apparently had bolted [laughs] which is, um, a good thing.

Nahanni: Going back to what you said about denigrating the mother… So it sounds like, in one word, it has contained, like, a lot of misogyny from different directions.

Keren: Absolutely. Yeah. Misogyny with a capital M. It's used to keep women in their place. It's also, I think, one that the Jewish community has perpetuated  to reinforce the us-them binary. And I think it's very telling that the male equivalent, sheygetz, is like not used at all. Many people don't even know that word, you know, whereas shiksa is fairly well-known.

The reason that it's used as a weapon against women of other faith backgrounds is tied into the continuity crisis narrative around Jewish perpetuation, or who is reproducing, and whether those children would be halachically according to Jewish law, uh, Jews.

Nahanni: Right. So it's a matrilineal descent issue, where all of the pressure is on the identity of the woman. But is there also something sexual about it?

Keren: Oh, for sure. It's woven throughout that they are sexual beings or that, uh, as one mother of a man I interviewed told him—and she thought it would…I don't know why she thought it would turn him off from pursuing gentile women—but she told him that “shiksas didn't wear underwear.”

[Music plays and fades]

Keren: And if anything, that just, um, interested him more.

Elaine: This shiksa thing is out of control, what is with you people?!

[Music plays and fades]

Kylie: Lucas said to me once, “My sister said that shiksas are just for practice.” And when I heard that, you know, my chest went cold. I just felt, like, you know, I was in love with this guy, and that just took me down like ten levels. In that moment I just felt, like, okay, this guy is just—you know, just wants to be with me because he…I don't know what. It just demeaned me as a non-Jewish person, as a woman.

Nahanni: Kylie Ora Lobell is now a Jew-by-choice, married to a Jewish man—not Lucas.  She dated Lucas in college, and this encounter with the word shiksa changed the way she thought about the term.

Kylie: Up until then I thought, uh, you know, it's kind of a playful term. You know, I'd seen other people use it. I'd seen mugs that said “shiksa magnet.” I didn't think it was bad, but once it was used that way towards me and like, oh, this is just some girl he's biding his time with until he eventually marries a Jewish girl and gets serious, and you're just something fun to play with.

And I'm blonde—like stereotypical blonde hair, blue eyes, you know. Um, so that's when I really changed my attitude on it. And that really just struck me as being offensive and mean.

I guess the stereotype is that Jewish women are more demanding or, like, they're all up in your business or, you know, they're just overbearing. That's, like, the stereotypical, you know, portrait of a Jewish woman. And also there's the history of being a Jew and there's a lot of trauma in our past, you know? And then when guys get away from that and they go for quote-unquote shiksa, it's easy-breezy. You know, this girl doesn't—she's bubbly, she's a little bit dumb. She's not gonna be overbearing. She's just gonna let you be herself and she may even be subservient.

And also, you know, you can just do Christmas dinner and everything will be okay and there's no drama. And that's totally not true. I mean, every person has drama. Um, yeah. And now as a Jewish woman, it is also offensive to me, and it's offensive to all women.

[Music plays]

Keren: It's not in keeping with Jewish values, put it that way.  If there's a word to be reclaimed, I believe it's “gentile,” in a purely neutral way. And in a gender neutral way as well. You know, if folks could wrap their brains around using the word “gentile” to refer to beloveds of other faith backgrounds, then we can eliminate goy and shiksa and sheygetz.

Nahanni: And that’s our Word of the Week.

Thank you for listening to Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive.  Our team includes Jen Richler and Judith Rosenbaum. Our theme music is by Girls in Trouble. Thanks to Alicia Jo Rabins for letting us use her tunes for our Word of the Week jingle. You also heard Ned Lazarus reading an excerpt from Portnoy’s Complaint. You can find Can We Talk? online at jwa.org/canwetalk or wherever you get your podcasts.

Until next time, I’m Nahanni Rous.

[Music fades]