Reply To: Jew vs. Jewish Person

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I had a teacher in a secular education setting who told my class that “Jew” is derogatory and it’s polite to use “Jewish person” to refer to Jews. I found this odd. One refers to Christians and Muslims, rather than “Christian people” or “Muslim people”. It seems more disrespectful to me to make Jews the exception, where the grammatically correct title of an adherent of Judaism (namely, “Jew”) is treated as an insult, than to just call us Jews.
Just for the sake of interest, this particular teacher was virulently anti-Israel and spent a great deal of time in a class that was not focused on the subject teaching about how evil Israel is. “Israel is evil” in a secular context is shorthand for “Jews who defend themselves are automatically unjustified and should rather let themselves be killed”, and “Jews have no right to be physically present in Israel” (because being in Israel requires defending oneself, and that is never justified). I always felt her insistence on the terminology “Jewish people” was a way of establishing herself as impeccably unprejudiced before indoctrinating everyone into her prejudice. “I can’t be an antisemite, look how careful I am to refer to Jewish people rather than Jews”.