Judge orders Spanish Royal Academy to delete pejorative definition of 'Jewish'

An Argentine judge has ordered the publishers of a major Spanish dictionary to remove a pejorative definition of the word "Jewish" from its listing, local media reported late Thursday.

The fifth and last definition of the word "Jewish" in the Dictionary of the Spanish Language, which is published by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), is of a person said to be "greedy or usurious."

The dictionary cautions that this usage is "offensive or discriminatory."

The other four definitions are "Hebrew", a person "who professes Judaism," a "native of Judea, a country in Asia Minor" and "belonging or relating to Judea or the Jews."

Judge Lijo – who has nominated for Argentina's Supreme Court by President Javier Milei – ordered the academy to "immediately remove the fifth definition of the word 'Jewish' for representing hate speech and incitement to discrimination on religious grounds," according to a ruling cited by the Infobae news portal.

He also ordered that the link to the word on the dictionary's website be blocked in Argentina until it complied with the request.

It was possible to still access it on Friday morning, however.

The ruling stemmed from a complaint filed on August 28 by Claudio Epelman, Executive Director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, and Jorge Knoblovits, president of the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA) against the director of the Royal Academy, Santiago Muñoz Machado, and against the entire organisation.

The complaint cited a law banning the "justification or promotion of racial or religious discrimination in any form," a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.

Jewish groups and rights groups have asked the RAE twice to remove the definition, but Muñoz Machado refused, while agreeing to add the stipulation that the fifth definition given for Jewish is "offensive of discriminatory," according to Infobae.

Lijo ruled that RAE's response was an "unacceptable response from a human rights standpoint.”

Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America. The Jewish community in Buenos Aires was targeted in two major attacks in the 1990s, one on the Israeli Embassy in 1992, which killed 29 people, and another on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in 1994, which left 85 people dead.

– TIMES/AFP