Kike
Kike is considered by some as a derogatory term for someone who is Jewish. Early evidence suggests it was used at first among German-American Jews in reference to newcomers from Eastern Europe, perhaps because the names of the latter ended in -ki or -ky."[1]
- The term "Kike" was coined by racist German Jews, who hated the Ostjuden who flooded into America after the Russians opened up the Pale of Settlement in 1881, which is to say after Jews murdered the Czar and encouraged and orchestrated pogroms, "It was I. M. Wise, typically, who broke the silence of the established Jews as they saw what was happening to the good name of their faith. From the fresh air of Cincinnati, Wise observed the noisy, smelly scenes in the eastern seaports and was revolted. 'It is next to an impossibility to associate or identify ourselves with that half-civilized orthodoxy which constitutes the bulk of the [Jewish] population in those cities,' he stormed. 'We are Americans and they are not. We are Israelites of the nineteenth century and a free country, and they gnaw the dead bones of past centuries.' Wise was never a man to mince words. 'The good reputation of Judaism must naturally suffer materially, which must without fail lower our social status.' The prosperous 'Uptown' Jew of New York found identification with the unsavory 'Downtown' Jew dangerous in the extreme. It was in the Uptown salons of the German-Jewish aristocracy that the word 'kike' first appeared, to deride the uncultured and unclean immigrants. Yet the emotional dilemma was acute, for the Uptown Jew was not without a sense of obligation and guilt."[2]
Another theory "suggests a source in Yiddish kikel "circle." Accordingly, Jewish immigrants, ignorant of writing with the Latin alphabet, signed their entry forms with a circle, eschewing the customary "X" as a sign of Christianity. On this theory, Ellis Island immigration inspectors began calling such people kikels, and the term shortened as it passed into general use."[1]
See also
External links
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Kike http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=kike
- ↑ The Words "Kike" and "Anti-Semite" Were Both Coined by Racist Jews, Who Hated Other Jews by Christopher Jon Bjerknes
