Real Housewives of New Jersey's Teresa Giudice doesn't always get the words out right. On the show, she mispronounced the word for the spice "cumin" and referred to a "Nor'easter" storm as a "Norwegian."
But on Sunday's new episode of the Bravo hit, the 39-year-old cookbook author and mother of four made a potentially offensive, anti-Semitic remark.
As her husband Joe dealt with a huge financial crisis and court case — Joe was on the hook for $260,000 after forging his business partner's signature, forcing the family to claim bankruptcy — Teresa insisted that she wouldn't divorce her man over the scandal.
She added, "Some of my Jewish friends are all 'I would have divorced him in a second.' I'm like, 'Yeah? What would that have done?' That's what a marriage is all about. That's what family is all about. We're gonna get through this."
Was the reality star's remark out of line? A spokesperson for the Anti Defamation League (which fights anti-semitism and all forms of bigotry in the U.S.) doesn't think so.
"We don't see any problem with this," the spokesperson told Us Weekly. "That may very well be what her Jewish friends are saying."
Giudice herself explained the remark on her blog Tuesday.
"Some of my friends have told me they would have left Joe if they were me," she wrote. "I was trying to explain myself without calling anyone out specifically, and the way I described them to keep them anonymous was 'Jewish.' They are Jewish, but being Jewish has nothing to do with why they would have left Joe. Their religion had nothing to do with the story, I was just trying to explain myself and not use anyone's name, and my words got all jumbled. I'm so sorry if I offended anyone, but that's not what I meant at all.
It's not the Giudice family's first scandal of this kind. On the third season of the show, her eldest daughter Gia, now 10, declared that she'd never date Jewish boys — and made a gesture mocking the long, curly hair worn by traditional Hasidic men.
"I can't control what my daughter says" Giudice told Hollywood Life last year. "Kids say dumb things … what, am I going to be crucified for it?"
Tell Us: Are you offended by Teresa's latest comment?
