There are lots of Lebanese proverbs and sayings that are funny and meaningful, but this one I believe should be taken out of our dictionary. I hear it mostly from elderly people or even parents and it is used whenever someone does something that is not expected of him or something extraordinary, like for example if a lazy son starts studying and getting good grades, or if he offers help for no reason, parents would go “Chou sayir ma3ak 3am tedrouss? Baddo yimout yahoude …”
“Baddo yimout yahoude” translates to “A Jew is gonna die”, and basically means that a great dramatic event just happened just like when a Jew dies, but honestly I don’t get it. I think it’s an anti-Jewish saying that we should get rid of.
Note: I changed Anti-Semitic to Anti-Jewish as there’s some controversy over the use of that term and whether it’s directed against Jews only or Semite people in general.
I do not mean to be offensive but, you should do a bit more research before you post some stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semite
Here you go. I don’t know if you actually meant it, or you were being sarcastic, but I hardly doubt that this word is anti-semitic.
What word? I said the whole saying may seem anti-Semitic as we r referring to Jews making a death of one of them seem tragic and all the explanations related to such a saying can’t possibly be right.
Exactly. Saying that is not anti-semitic, coming from a semite :P! If you think of it this way, any bad reference to any of the semite people is anti semitic then. (References to khaliji, Somali, syrians, iraqis, lebanese….) The saying is wrong I agree with that, but it’s not anti-semitic. Just saying 😛
Definition of anti-semitism
The belief or behavior hostile toward Jews just because they are Jewish. It may take the form of religious teachings that proclaim the inferiority of Jews, for instance, or political efforts to isolate, oppress, or otherwise injure them. It may also include prejudiced or stereotyped views about Jews.
I definitely agree that the saying is anti-jewish and racist and should be banned from our culture.
But what Ribal wants to say is that Jewish people are spreading the idea that they are the only semitic people while we are semitic too :).
Najib – with all due respect, but your definition of Anti-Semitisim is incorrect because Semites are not only Jews. As Rabal has tried to express, in order for one to truly understand what “Anti-Semitism” is, then one must first understand what a SEMITE is . . . Semitic people are those who speak a Semitic language (Hebrew, Arabic, & Aramaic). In other words, Arabs fall into the category of Semites.
With that in mind, in light of the topic, to refer to the phrase in question as Anti-Semitic is the same as to say it is “self hating” simply for the mere fact that a Semite cannot be anti-Semitic without first being self-hating. Now, is the phrase anti-Jew, well, that’s a whole other topic, but if said by an Arab, then it is certainly NOT Anti-Semitic.
A Voice from NY,
It is not my definition. I checked over many websites and all referred to it as being directed against Jews, including Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism
From the comments here and what I read, I can see there’s some sort of controversy around that term so I will adjust it to anti-jew 🙂
The whole proverb has an original story behind it.
Maybe if u search in Salam El Rassis’ books, you can find the original story instead of giving those quote silly examples as the child getting good grades.