The Wandering Jew

This essay examines the interaction between the myth of the Wandering Jew, diaspora history and the notion of cosmopolitanism. This is a paradoxical synthesis that points in several directions: towards the ideals embedded in international education; towards the roots of anti-Semitism; in the direction of the notion of cosmopolitanism as a crime against the nation (something that Hitler, Stalin and Henry Ford agreed upon). The figure of the Wandering Jew has roots in history and myth and is a presence in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The figure wanders through history as an emblem of a cursed outcast, the possessor of arcane secrets, and a sophisticated global flâneur. The essay explores Biblical, literary, and historical sources with further reference to memoirs including Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes. Introduction: the legend of the cursed shoemaker Being weary thus, he sought for rest, To ease his burthened soule, Upon a stone; the which a wretch Did churlishly controule; And sayd, "Awaye, thou king of Jewes, Thou shalt not rest thee here; Pass on; thy execution place Thou seest nowe draweth neare." And thereupon he thrust him thence; At which our Saviour sayd, "I sure will rest, but thou shalt walke, And have no journey stayed." With that this cursed shoemaker, For offering Christ this wrong, Left wife and children, house and all, And went from thence along. Anonymous Ballad (Percy, 1858, pp. 236-237) The figure of the Wandering Jew in myth, as metaphor, and in history sustains a number of paradoxes that connect simultaneously, and at various points, with Jewish identities: those imposed upon them and those assumed by them. In the context of study abroad, the figure suggests that identity is a construct not a natural or necessarily inherited condition. It is forged in the conjunction of the imaginations of those who Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad Volume XXX, Issue 1, Winter 2018 ©2018 Michael Woolf. 21 identify with a collective consciousness and in the imaginations of those who may be hostile to that construct. We are all made in our own consciousness and in the consciousness of others. Identity may, therefore, be problematic: a fluid, sometimes contradictory, manifestation of the collision and co-existence of things. Therein the core paradoxes reside: the Wandering Jew is cursed while simultaneously being a repository of all human wisdom and experience. He is the recipient of both contempt, as the abuser of Christ, and awe, as a witness to all human history. He is, to a degree, the ultimate cosmopolitan: restrained by no borders and, often, able to speak all languages. He resides within time and beyond it, belongs nowhere and everywhere. He is human but condemned to live forever until the Second Coming of Christ releases him. Elements of this identity resonate with a form of parodied cosmopolitanism (even an extreme version of the “flâneur”) that became connected with the Jews, particularly in the 20th Century, by those who distrusted and hated them. They were seen as residing in the major European cities without belonging to specific nations. Furthermore, the idea that the Jew had access to special knowledge connects with conspiracy theories that envisage secret Jewish dominance of the world (the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the most persistent and notorious example of the Jewish worlddomination-conspiracy theory). The figure also offends ideological nationalism in that the suspicion is that the Jew has primary allegiances to shadowy sets of values or associations beyond the nationstate. Cosmopolitanism contains a critical ambiguity; it expresses internationalist values and ethics that we tend to affirm while also offering a stereotypical version of a fifth-columnist, working within but against the state. The Wandering Jew is given many names and has been invented in many contexts. A shared characteristic is that he is condemned to rootlessness and a permanent state of movement as punishment for a crime committed against a sacred or iconic figure. The origins of the legend are unclear; the myth does not derive from Jewish sources but was a Christian creation, often used as a mechanism for imposing negative characteristics: The Wandering Jew is not Jewish. It is an ancient Christian legend: an anti-Semitic iconic projection that encodes and enforces difference using a vocabulary of attributes seen in sources ranging from medieval manuscripts to neo-Nazi blogs (Brichetto, 2006, p.1). Alberto Manguel’s summary reflects the most common form of the legend: Christ, having stumbled twice under the weight of the cross, stumbles once more, this time by the door of a Jewish cobbler called Ahasverus. The cobbler pitilessly pushes Christ away, telling him to move on. "I will move on," Christ answers, "but you will tarry till I come." From that day onwards, Ahasverus is condemned to wander the earth, and is only allowed to stop here and there for short respites. His shoes and his clothes never wear out completely, and every 100 years he is miraculously rejuvenated. His beard hangs down to his feet, he carries five coins in his pocket that match the five wounds of the man he offended, and he is able to speak every language in the world. Since he is a little over 2,000 years old, he has witnessed countless events of historical importance and knows every story there is to tell (Manguel, 2009).