[Mesorah] S. Baer on Shelo Assani Nochri

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 09:06:25PM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: From what I can see, that Ibn Ezra compares the words Nochri, Zar,
: and Ivri, and never even mentions the word "Goy", and he never mentions
: the siddur or the bracha either. The most one can say is that Ibn Ezra
: would have found Nochri to be appropriate, but not that he would have
: found Goy to be inappropriate.

I would have concluded that IE didn't even think of it as a hava amina.
Further from appropriate than something considered and ruled out.

BTW, when did "goy" become shorthand for "[member of a different]
nation"? In Tanakh it's "nation", including us ("goy qadosh", "goy
echad ba'aretz", etc...) In leshon chazal, it's "[other] nation",
such as the BY and the 70 goyim. I think "goy" referring to a single
person, well post-dates R' Meir, who coined the berakhah.

I also wonder how much of the variability in the language of this
berakhah by choice, and how much was due to censorship.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The purely righteous do not complain about evil,
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