# Are the Ferengi in Star Trek supposed to be Jews? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted, star-trek-paramount\ **Created:** [December 17, 2021, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236 "2021-12-17T19:44:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/41 "2021-12-18T16:05:44Z")
My comment was intended as a vote of support for your argument ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/42 "2021-12-18T19:01:25Z")
Let’s face it all the aliens in Star Trek are racist stereotypes. No peaceful Klingons, one diplomatic Romulan. one scientific Ferengi, one Ferengi who becomes a starship captain, one non spy Cardassian and one emotional Vulcan. Strangely the Trill and the Bajorians seem to have avoided this, ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/43 "2021-12-18T19:09:50Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > I say this as a Jew (who is surfing the web after sundown Friday), I find Orthodox Judiasm deeply misogynist. All major religions are misoogynist, and the more fundamentalist they are, the worse they are. However, if you’re looking to create a Jewish stereotype, “misogyny” is not something that popular culture in the Western world particularly associates with Judaism any more than it does with other ethnicities or faiths. > [@Odesio](#): > > It wasn’t until TNG that the ridiculous notion of Star Fleet being a non-military organization took root. Roddenberry was famously insistent long before TNG that Starfleet wasn’t a military; he had to be more or less totally sidelined while they were making “Wrath of Khan” because his ideas were bizarre and interfered with making a good story. He was really upset by the scene where Kirk disintegrates the parasite that emerges from Chekov’s head, claiming Kirk would have saved its life and preserved it for study. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/44 "2021-12-18T19:31:00Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Roddenberry was famously insistent long before TNG that Starfleet wasn’t a military; he had to be more or less totally sidelined while they were making “Wrath of Khan” because his ideas were bizarre and interfered with making a good story. He was really upset by the scene where Kirk disintegrates the parasite that emerges from Chekov’s head, claiming Kirk would have saved its life and preserved it for study. I didn’t bring this up because I didn’t think it was necessary. Yeah, Roddenberry was insistent SF wasn’t a military, but the producers of the Wrath of Khan rightly ignored his protestations. The idea that Star Fleet wasn’t a military organization wasn’t established for the audience until TNG. You can really see the difference in attitudes when comparing TOS episode “The Ultimate Computer” to the TNG episode “Peak Performance.” In “The Ultimate Computer,” The Enterprise is tasked with participating in a war game with other Constitution class ships in order to test the efficacy of the M-5 computer to handle a star ship without a crew. While Kirk expresses his doubts that a computer can perform this function, he doesn’t express any negative feelings regarding participation in war games. Contrast this with “Peak Performance” where the Enterprise-D is to participate in a war game to better help them prepare for the Borg threat. Riker specifically says that the exercise is a waste of time because Star Fleet is all about exploration. Never mind that a few episodes back they got their asses handed to them by the Borg and only escaped because Q intervened. I feel like such a nerd right now. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/45 "2021-12-18T19:36:52Z")
The Ferengi were intended to be a stereotype of the dealers at Star Trek conventions. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/46 "2021-12-18T20:01:54Z")
> [@furryman](#): > > Let’s face it all the aliens in Star Trek are racist stereotypes. No peaceful Klingons, one diplomatic Romulan. one scientific Ferengi, one Ferengi who becomes a starship captain, one non spy Cardassian and one emotional Vulcan. I would have said “racial” instead of “racist”; but yeah. The Star Trek universe makes heavy use of [Planetville](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Planetville) and related tropes. > [@](#): > > By extension, if a planet represents a country, an alien race represents an ethnic group ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/47 "2021-12-18T20:53:47Z")
I’m not so sure about the geopolitical stereotypes, but I never got the impression that the Ferengi were supposed to be in any kind of great power competition. Instead, the Ferengi were more… localized bad guys. Like we’d run across some local Ferengi who were doing something shady and/or greedy, and they weren’t necessarily part of the Ferengi Navy, or representing their government in any way, save the fact that their government was just some giant mercantile operation. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/48 "2021-12-18T21:00:44Z")
> [@furryman](#): > > Let’s face it all the aliens in Star Trek are racist stereotypes. No peaceful Klingons, one diplomatic Romulan. one scientific Ferengi, one Ferengi who becomes a starship captain, one non spy Cardassian and one emotional Vulcan. Wait, which Ferengi became a starship captain? I know Nog rose to the level of lieutenant in Starfleet. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/49 "2021-12-18T21:01:03Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Riker specifically says that the exercise is a waste of time because Star Fleet is all about exploration. I agree there were a lot of mixed messages in TNG. Starfleet is a weird organization but it’s silly for it to pretend it’s not a military when it’s tooling around in heavily armed warships and the crews all wear uniforms and have ranks. The captain of TNG Enterprise literally has a battle tactic named after him. ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2021, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/50 "2021-12-18T21:49:54Z")
On screen, I think the last we saw of him, he was a Lieutenant, Junior Grade. In the [Star Trek Online](https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Nog) continuity, he rose to command of the _U.S.S. Chimera_. That’s not exactly canon, but apparently in an episode of _Discovery_, in the 32nd Century there’s a _U.S.S. Nog_, which is apparently named after a famed starship captain, presumaby the same Nog. ---
**Author:** ![aurora\_maire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aurora_maire/32/328_2.png) [@aurora\_maire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aurora_maire)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/51 "2021-12-19T00:23:33Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > On screen, I think the last we saw of him, he was a Lieutenant, Junior Grade. In the [Star Trek Online](https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Nog) continuity, he rose to command of the _U.S.S. Chimera_ . That’s not exactly canon, but apparently in an episode of _Discovery_ , in the 32nd Century there’s a _U.S.S. Nog_ , which is apparently named after a famed starship captain, presumaby the same Nog. In the episode [The Visitor](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Visitor_(episode)) Benjamin has an accident that displaces him in time. Told from Jake’s point of view, the story covers about 50 years of Jake attempting to save him. At one point Captain Nog, along with Jadzia and Bashar, takes Jake back to the wormhole in an attempt to recreate the original conditions of the accident. This is an alternate timeline, though, as we know that Benjamin does not disappear from DS9 and Jadzia dies there. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/52 "2021-12-19T00:38:49Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I’m not so sure about the geopolitical stereotypes, but I never got the impression that the Ferengi were supposed to be in any kind of great power competition. Instead, the Ferengi were more… localized bad guys. Like we’d run across some local Ferengi who were doing something shady and/or greedy, and they weren’t necessarily part of the Ferengi Navy, or representing their government in any way, save the fact that their government was just some giant mercantile operation. They didn’t turn out to be that way, but they were indeed supposed to be bigger bad guys than that. The very first episode of TNG (“Encounter at Farpoint”) has the alien ambassador threaten to sell their “space station” to the Ferengi instead. I don’t know how powerful they were meant to be, but they were meant to be proper rivals. The idea that the early TNG interactions were all one-offs was a change after their first appearance went so poorly. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/53 "2021-12-19T00:50:23Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > I’d always taken them to represent the “greed is good” type capitalists that started to become prominent in the 1980s. I read somewhere, I think in another thread here actually, that in TOS Roddenberry addressed the social problems of the 1960s, and in TNG he wanted to address what he perceived as the social problems of the 1980s. And that sort of laissez faire completely unregulated capitalism was supported by Regan and the Republican Party And boy was he ever ticked off about what he found wrong with mid-80s social/political trends. Remember that in the very first half of the very first episode, when Q is throwing in Picard’s face his examples of how Earth does not have a peaceful and enlightened past, one of his avatars is a Cold War-era US Marine officer, talking about facing “the Commies”? Early TNG often honored the tradition of delivering a social message… through your window, wrapped around an 8-inch cinderblock. So the Ferengi were greedy ultracapitalists who kept their womenfolk naked and pregnant; while the Klingons were recast as these guys who just happened to live by extreme warrior values but could be worked with as long as you _respected_ that (I don’t know about you, but between “today’s a good day to die” and “you can’t make a deal if you’re dead” I know what position I’d take all other things being equal…). I remember in the lead-in to the debut, magazines like Starlog would run articles hinting at a “new and different adversary”, but when the TV show did finally reveal the Ferengi, I gotta say, I was underwhelmed. Really? That’s the key thing that makes your “new adversary” be on the Wrong Side? That they’re materially greedy? IMO their failure at taking the role of Main Adversary was indeed very much influenced by that _overcaricatured_ initial portrayal, in appearance, demeanor and behavior. As represented in their initial TNG appearances, they were so _stereotypically_ the opposite of what Our Heroes stood for, that many of us could not take them seriously as a peer adversary. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/54 "2021-12-19T00:55:39Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > [/del]Russians[/del] Klingons Use strike instead of del, and because strike is an html code (as opposed to a bbcode) you have to use angle brackets ‘\< \>’ instead of square brackets ‘[]’. `Russians Klingons` ~~Russians~~ Klingons Only posting because I happened to have just looked up how to do this on discourse a couple days ago. (And I just now had to look up the [discourse equivalent of noparse tags](https://meta.discourse.org/t/no-parse-option-for-posts/74927) for this post, which you do by adding a back tick ` (same key as tilde but without shift) to the beginning and end of what you want not-parsed.) Apologies for the hijack. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/55 "2021-12-19T04:16:14Z")
`` works as well, and is ~~less~~ fewer letters to type. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/56 "2021-12-19T04:32:49Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > As represented in their initial TNG appearances, they were so _stereotypically_ the opposite of what Our Heroes stood for, that many of us could not take them seriously as a peer adversary. It is interesting to note that of course the eventual true adversary, the Borg, are just as opposed to what the Federation stands for and seem to have no redeeming qualities. But they don’t elicit any obvious stereotypes. They’re a science fiction adversary - advanced, weird, novel and frightening. The Ferengi are just too on the nose. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/57 "2021-12-19T04:44:36Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > It is interesting to note that of course the eventual true adversary, the Borg, are just as opposed to what the Federation stands for and seem to have no redeeming qualities. But they don’t elicit any obvious stereotypes. They’re a science fiction adversary - advanced, weird, novel and frightening. The Ferengi are just too on the nose. In a sick way, the Borg have similar goals as the Federation in that they’re just trying to unite everyone. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/58 "2021-12-19T15:51:21Z")
The Borg were the Federation taken to its logical extreme. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/59 "2021-12-19T18:14:04Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > The Borg were the Federation taken to its logical extreme.  Except they completely lack a Prime Directive or the idea of individual freedom. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236/60 "2021-12-19T18:28:09Z")
Thus @Alessan’s comment of logical extreme. Because the Federation is more than willing to abandon both of those concepts (Prime Directive and individual freedom) when they judge it for ‘the greater good’. Which happens many, MANY times in the series. The Borg is the Federation which has abandoned that dichotomy in favor of a, forgive me, logical conclusion of the greatest good and greatest equality of treatment, for the greatest number. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-ferengi-in-star-trek-supposed-to-be-jews/956236.md?page=4)