[Avodah] Vayichad Yisro - Disparaging Non-Jews

[Zev Sero via Avodah]

On 01/27/2016 10:49 AM, Michael Orr via Avodah wrote:
> Rav Steinsaltz in his notes on Sanhedrin 94a cites the Gra who explains
> that only after the tenth generation of descendants is the non-Jewish
> blood less than a one thousandth, which is the most stringent standard for
> bitul/nullification.

This doesn't seem tenable to me, because if his non-Jewish "blood"
is less than 100% then he is no longer a ger.  The proverb must refer
to a tenth-generation ger, i.e. all of his ancestors for the last
ten generations were gerim.  In that case why only 10 generations?
Perhaps because by then the knowledge that his remote ancestors were
not gerim but goyim is only intellectual, and he doesn't relate to it
in any way, any more than we relate to the fact that *our* remote
ancestors were idolaters.  I would imagine that this actually takes
significantly less than 10 generations, and that "10 generations" is
merely an expression meaning a very long time, taken from the pesukim
about Mamzerim, Amonim, and Moavim, which says that these may never
enter Kehal Hashem, even after a very long time.


> Nowadays, almost any Jewish audience of a significant size, (whether
> at a shiur or lecture, in a shul, or any class in a Jewish school)
> is quite likely to have gerim or children or grandchildren of gerim
> among it. Certainly when we extend those who we must be concerned not
> to offend to include all who have any ger forebear within the previous
> ten generations, it would have to be assumed that this principle should
> be applied when addressing virtually any Jewish setting.

If this is the case today then surely it must have been even more so
in Chazal's day, when giyur was so popular that historians tell us at
one point 10% of the Roman empire was Jewish.  And yet they limited the
proverb to the presence of a known ger.  Kal vachomer nowadays.


> But speaking disparagingly about non-Jews is not just likely to hurt the
> feelings of gerim and their descendants. Making negative generalizations
> about a large class of people (in this case almost the entire human
> race!) is also unlikely to be true, and likely to sound crude, not just to
> gerim and their descendants, but also to anyone who is uncomfortable with
> painting all non-Jews with the same negative brush.

And yet Chazal had no problem with doing so, and did so all the time.
They didn't worry that there might be a ger in the audience.  It also
seems to me that it doesn't apply at all to divrei torah, i.e. passing
on Chazal's worldview, because gerim need to hear that too.  Nor did
it apply to a conversation such as Moshe's with Yisro; he must have
known that Yisro would not rejoice at hearing what happened, but he
didn't refrain from telling him.

So when does it apply?  Perhaps only to a casual conversation with no
to'eles, i.e. when one wouldn't be allowed to say loshon hora about a Jew.
In such a case, if one is talking to a ger, then the rules of loshon hora
should be extended to goyim as well, in deference not to their reputations
but to his feelings.


> But it is difficult to see how this can come about, and why Hashem
> would even want it to come about, if it were correct that non-Jews
> are by their nature irredeemable, (incapable of participating fully
> in the ge'ula to come).

What do you mean by "participate fully"?   The nevi'inm tell us what
the goyim's role will be in the geulah: "And strangers will rise and
tend your sheep", "And kings will be your nannies and their princesses
your wetnurses".   Their role in the geulah will be as support staff
so that we can learn Torah all day.  And giyur will no longer be
available to them.  I don't know if that fits your definition of
"full participation".



-- 
Zev Sero               All around myself I will wave the green willow
zev at sero.name          The myrtle and the palm and the citron for a week
                And if anyone should ask me the reason why I'm doing that
                I'll say "It's a Jewish thing; if you have a few minutes
                I'll explain it to you".