>A Shabbos goy, Shabbat goy or Shabbes goy (Yiddish: שבת גוי, shabbos goy Modern Hebrew: גוי של שבת goy shel shabat) is a non-Jew who performs certain types of work (melakha) which Jewish religious law (halakha) enjoins the Jew from doing on the Sabbath. The phrase is a combination of the word "Shabbos" (שבת) meaning the Sabbath, and goy, which literally means "a nation" but colloquially means a "non-Jew" (in Biblical Hebrew "goy" means simply "a nation", but in Mishnaic Hebrew it is used in the sense of "a non-national", i.e., "a non-Jew")