Word Worry

Who is a Jew? Talmudic scholars, rabbinical courts and even the Israeli Cabinet have long argued the question.

The English language has answers of its own--some of them offensive to Jew and non-Jew alike. For 35 years the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Britain's equivalent to the American B'nai B'rith, has tried to persuade lexicographers to change certain definitions in dictionaries. It has had scant luck with the editors of the magisterial Oxford English Dictionary, the most complete and authoritative record in existence of what English is and has been. Next month Marcus Shloimovitz, a 67-year-old textile salesman from Manchester, will take the argument one step further --to the High Court of Justice.

Shloimovitz has no complaint about the O.E.D.'s first definition of a Jew:

"A person of Hebrew race; an Israelite." He does, however, object to the second: "As a name of opprobrium or reprobation; spec. applied to a grasping or extortionate moneylender or usurer, or a trader who drives hard bargains or deals craftily." Acting as his own lawyer, Shloimovitz will ask the court to force the O.E.D. to delete definition No. 2 from all future printings.

To which R.W. Burchfield, the O.E.D.'s chief editor, replies, in effect, "balderdash." He told the Philological Society that "we are concerned with the accurate recording of language, not what people think it should be." Burchfield's chief concession to his lexicographical critics has been to include in the supplement's definition of Jew a historical note explaining how Jews became known as moneylenders in England during the Middle Ages.* If by chance Shloimovitz does win his case, the O.E.D. will undoubtedly have other aggrieved readers in the courtroom. Among them might be thousands of irate Yorkshiremen. "Yorkshire," says the dictionary, is sometimes used to refer to "the boorishness, cunning, sharpness or trickery attributed to Yorkshire people."

* When Christians were prohibited by canon law from engaging in money lending because they would be sinfully guilty of usury, Jews, who were barred from most other occupations, took on the disdained but necessary job.

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