Joke answer: Because “-ish” means “sort of.” The people they’re talking about aren’t just Jew-ish; they’re full-on Jews!
“A Jewish banker”: a banker who happens to be Jewish. His Jewishness is just one of his many attributes, not necessarily very important (although presumably somehow relevant to the discussion, otherwise why would it be mentioned at all).
“A Jew banker”: a Jew who happens to be a banker. The fact that he is Jewish overshadows any other attributes which that person might have.
It’s like the difference between “a drug-addicted person” and “an addict”. The former acknowledges that the person’s addiction is just one of the many facets of who he is. The latter turns the addiction into the defining characteristic of that individual.
So the form “a Jew X” is more likely to be used by people who believe that if you’re Jewish, that is the most important thing that needs to be known about you, and any other characteristics you may have are secondary to that.
I think the noun use parallels, “nigger lawyer” & “woman lawyer.” It’s a qualification that someone of one of these odd groups, rather than a respectable man, is doing a thing.
And I would say that it’s not necessarily personally anti-Semitic to use “Jew” as a qualifier in that way–esp. if one doesn’t append it all the time–just a sign of coming from a culture where such use is normal.
_
fool’s guinea, proud member of teh Democrat Party
I used to avoid “Jew” even when using it as a noun. I would say “David is Jewish” instead of “David is a Jew,” because I wasn’t sure whether the latter could cause offense. I’ve since settled on the idea that it’s fine.
And the constitution says the U.S. will guarantee each stat a republican form of government. Presumably we wouldn’t want to convey the impression that the Republican party was any more in favor of that than the Democratic party, so we shouldn’t use that term either? It’s really hard to believe that those who refer to the Democrat party do it for any reason other than as a put-down.
I was unaware that “teabagger” was the noun form of “tea partier”. Ignorance fought!
What** OldGuy **said
Yes, I’m a bagist
I consider racists to be people who believe there are ‘races’ of people. Many of them believe Jews are a ‘race’.
cf. “Alice is a schizophrenic” vs. “Alice is a person with schizophrenia” or “Bob is an autistic” vs. “Bob has autism.” The former uses are depreciated by mental health organizations. Also, we might say “Carol is black” (YMMV), but “Carol is a black” sounds odd and potentially offensive.
There’s nothing incorrect about the term Paki, perfectly fine derviation in English, shortening up a national name. But yes, in the UK it took on a racist / pejorative sense because of who tended to use it.
You’ ll find Americans innocently using it now and again, where it has no such connotation, and as far as I can see, only has a playful sense me, like “my Paki mates”
Manner of usage created the meaning.
Right. Incorrect in the sense the other form - Jewish - emerged as proper, although it could not have.
My Grandmother, who was a military nurse in WWI, told stories of patients, especially WWII POW’s, who would demand that their desperately-needed transfusion be entirely ‘non-Jew’ blood. She said that even happened into the late 1950’s, here in America.
It was even more common here in America for white patients to demand only ‘white’ blood. (Even, very, very rarely, for a black patient to object to ‘white’ blood.)
Of course, our local blood bank actually aided this – they segregated donated blood into black and white sections. (Ironically, the blood bank gives the same excuses today to justify refusing to accept* ‘gay’* blood to contaminate their straight blood supply. The bigot’s mindset never changes – just moves on to new targets.)
Grandma said that nurses were taught to respond to this by looking at the label on the blood, and then reassuring the patient that this was the correct blood for them. Sometimes, they actually took the blood out to another room, and came back in with a new one (or the same one), and told the patient that this blood will be good for you. They were told not to argue about this – that would upset the patient and slow down healing. Just pretend to comply. But then, their mission was not “fighting ignorance”, but just curing sick people.
Perhaps because the word Jew can be said in the same for as “ew”? As in, “Ew, he just picked his nose.”
It seems that most words that are derogatory to the point of being vulgarisms are only one syllable. The only exception I can come up with off the top of my head is “nigger,” and the -er prefix is a pretty short second syllable, to the point where I’ve heard it elided into one.
This was an episode of MASH (a white soldier specifically requesting no black blood (something’s telling me he may have used the n-word - while I’m sure they might have In Real Life, I doubt they would have in a TV episode of MASH) and what you described above is pretty much how the 4077th handled it.
MASH always took great pride in researching its stories fully to present the “real” Korean War. Nice to know this one is based on reality too. (Well, the reality wasn’t nice, but you know what I mean.)
Baggot.
Let’s not forget that was what they called themselves when they first decided that they didn’t want to be known as Republicans. Then they found out that teabagger had a dirty meaning and now want to be known as “tea partiers”.
But they propagated the legend that Charles Drew was denied a blood transfusion that would have saved his life because he was black.
I think this bit is a little unfair to blood banks. At the time tere was very good medical reason for not accepting donations from gay men (just like donations aren’t accepted from people who’ve recently been to malarial regions, have recently had transplants, have lived in England long enough to be at risk for Mad Cow disease, or other similar reasons). Better safe than sorry is the right approach for blood donation. [I say that having been rejected twice for just barely meeting one of the reasons, even though it was completely clear my blood was as safe as anyone elses].
Why do anti-Semites say “Jew” instead of “Jewish”?
I believe the correct term is “anti-Semitic individuals”. 
I don’t think I hear the former, but I do hear “Alice is schizophrenic” and “Bob is autistic” i.e., using adjectives not as nouns but as predicate adjectives. That sounds quite natural to me – much more than either the potentially offensive or "person with … " version you suggest. Is this construction frowned upon?