Word.ws English Dictionary

Jewish lightning

Jewish lightning noun: the supposed cause of a fire that is deliberately started to collect insurance money, without leaving evidence of arson.

Noun

Jewish lightning (uncountable)

  1. (offensive) The supposed cause of a fire that is deliberately started to collect insurance money, without leaving evidence of arson.
    • According to Manchu the fire had forced all the families upstairs to get out, the fire department had closed down the bar for repairs. Manchu said the bar wasn't bad off but the Jew collected all he could for fire and water damage ¶ "You mean it wasn't no Jewish lightning."1974, Francis A. J. Ianni, Black Mafia; Ethnic Succession in Organized Crime, New York, N.Y.; []: Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 133
    • I can refute any charges that it was a case of 'Jewish lightning', but I admit that the fire did happen at the most opportune moment!1992, James Edmist, The Sterling Years: Small-Arms and the Men, London: Leo Cooper, →ISBN, page 45

Examples of Jewish lightning in a sentence

  • The insurance companies, many of which were Jewish, referred to "Jewish lightning" when unfortunate fires burned down warehouses in the East End.[1996 October 28, Andrew Ross, quoting John le Carré, “John le Carr”, in Salon.com, archived from the original on 20 May 2022:
  • Or was it a case of "Jewish lightning" (a suspicious fire caused in order to collect the insurance money)?2012, Jane Genende, Lost Tribe of the Andes: A Jewish-American Family's Struggle With Assimilation, Bloomington, I.N.: iUniverse, Inc....
  • A little Jewish lightning never hurt anyone.2019 December 27, “Being Harley Quinn”, in Harley Quinn, season 1, episode 5, spoken by Golda (Rhea Perlman):

Origin of Jewish lightning

From the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews engaging in this practice.

Questions about Jewish lightning

What does Jewish lightning mean?
Jewish lightning means the supposed cause of a fire that is deliberately started to collect insurance money, without leaving evidence of arson.
How do you use Jewish lightning in a sentence?
The insurance companies, many of which were Jewish, referred to "Jewish lightning" when unfortunate fires burned down warehouses in the East End.
What part of speech is Jewish lightning?
Jewish lightning is a noun.

Words near Jewish lightning in the dictionary

  1. Jewish colony
  2. Jewish English
  3. Jewish flag
  4. Jewish flags
  5. Jewish hereness
  6. Jewish lightning
  7. Jewish Literary Aramaic
  8. Jewish nose
  9. Jewish noses
  10. Jewish occupation government
  11. Jewish occupation governments

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Jewish lightning (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Jewish lightning.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jewish_lightning. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.