Wandering Jew
The Wandering Jew (occasionally referred to as the Eternal Jew, a calque from German "der Ewige Jude") is a mythical
Name
An early extant manuscript containing the legend is the Flores Historiarum by Roger of Wendover, where it appears in the part for the year 1228, under the title Of the Jew Joseph who is still alive awaiting the last coming of Christ.[3][4][5] The central figure is named Cartaphilus before being baptized later by Ananias as Joseph.[6] The root of the name Cartaphilus can be divided into kartos and philos, which can be translated roughly as "dearly" and "loved", connecting the legend of the Wandering Jew to "the disciple whom Jesus loved".[7]
At least from the 17th century, the name Ahasver has been given to the Wandering Jew, apparently adapted from Ahasuerus (Xerxes), the Persian king in the Book of Esther, who was not a Jew, and whose very name among medieval Jews was an exemplum of a fool.[8] This name may have been chosen because the Book of Esther describes the Jews as a persecuted people, scattered across every province of Ahasuerus' vast empire, similar to the later Jewish diaspora in countries whose state and/or majority religions were forms of Christianity.[9]
A variety of names have since been given to the Wandering Jew, including Matathias, Buttadeus and Isaac Laquedem which is a name for him in France and the
The name Buttadeus (Botadeo in Italian; Boutedieu in French) most likely has its origin in a combination of the Vulgar Latin version of batuere ("to beat or strike") with the word for God, deus. Sometimes this name is misinterpreted as Votadeo, meaning "devoted to God", drawing similarities to the etymology of the name Cartaphilus.[7]
Where
Origin and evolution
Biblical sources
The origins of the legend are uncertain; perhaps one element is the story in Genesis of Cain, who is issued with a similar punishment—to wander the Earth, scavenging and never reaping, although without the related punishment of endlessness. According to Jehoshua Gilboa, many commentators have pointed to Hosea 9:17 as a statement of the notion of the "eternal/wandering Jew".[12] According to some[:
Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, εἰσίν τινες ὧδε ἑστῶτες, οἵτινες οὐ μὴ γεύσωνται θανάτου, ἕως ἂν ἴδωσιν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐρχόμενον ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ.
Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (New International Version)
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (
King James Version)[b]
A belief that the disciple whom Jesus loved would not die was apparently popular enough in the early Christian world to be denounced in the Gospel of John:
And Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple following whom Jesus loved, who had also leaned on His breast at the supper, and had said, Lord, which is he who betrayeth Thee? When, therefore, Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, Lord, and what shall he do? Jesus saith to him, If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou Me. Then this saying went forth among the brethren, that that disciple would not die; yet Jesus had not said to him that he would not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?
— John 21:20-23, KJV
Another passage in the Gospel of John speaks about a guard of the high priest who slaps Jesus (John 18:19–23). Earlier, the Gospel of John talks about Simon Peter striking the ear from Malchus, a servant of the high priest (John 18:10). Although this servant is probably not the same guard who struck Jesus, Malchus is nonetheless one of the many names given to the wandering Jew in later legend.[13]
Early Christianity
The later amalgamation of the fate of the specific figure of legend with the condition of the Jewish people as a whole, well established by the 18th century, had its precursor even in early Christian views of Jews and the diaspora.[14] Extant manuscripts have shown that as early as the time of Tertullian (c. 200), some Christian proponents were likening the Jewish people to a "new Cain", asserting that they would be "fugitives and wanderers (upon) the earth".[15]
Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (b. 348) writes in his Apotheosis (c. 400): "From place to place the homeless Jew wanders in ever-shifting exile, since the time when he was torn from the abode of his fathers and has been suffering the penalty for murder, and having stained his hands with the blood of Christ whom he denied, paying the price of sin."[16]
A late 6th and early 7th century monk named
I saw an Ethiopian, clad in rags, who said to me, "You and I are condemned to the same punishment." I said to him, "Who are you?" And the Ethiopian who had appeared to me replied, "I am he who struck on the cheek the creator of the universe, our Lord Jesus Christ, at the time of the Passion. That is why," said Isidor, "I cannot stop weeping."
Medieval legend
Some scholars have identified components of the legend of the Eternal Jew in Teutonic legends of the Eternal Hunter, some features of which are derived from Odin mythology.[17]
"In some areas the farmers arranged the rows in their fields in such a way that on Sundays the Eternal Jew might find a resting place. Elsewhere they assumed that he could rest only upon a plough or that he had to be on the go all year and was allowed a respite only on Christmas."[17]
Most likely drawing on centuries of unwritten folklore, legendry, and oral tradition brought to the West as a product of the Crusades, a Latin chronicle from Bologna, Ignoti Monachi Cisterciensis S. Mariae de Ferraria Chronica et Ryccardi de Sancto Germano Chronica priora, contains the first written articulation of the Wandering Jew. In the entry for the year 1223, the chronicle describes the report of a group of pilgrims who meet "a certain Jew in Armenia" (quendam Iudaeum) who scolded Jesus on his way to be crucified and is therefore doomed to live until the Second Coming. Every hundred years the Jew returns to the age of 30.[7]
A variant of the Wandering Jew legend is recorded in the
Matthew Paris included this passage from Roger of Wendover in his own history; and other Armenians appeared in 1252 at the Abbey of St Albans, repeating the same story, which was regarded there as a great proof of the truth of the Christian religion.[21] The same Armenian told the story at Tournai in 1243, according to the Chronicles of Phillip Mouskes (chapter ii. 491, Brussels, 1839). After that, Guido Bonatti writes people saw the Wandering Jew in Forlì (Italy), in the 13th century; other people saw him in Vienna and elsewhere.[22]
There were claims of sightings of the Wandering Jew throughout Europe and later the Americas, since at least 1542 in
Another legend about Jews, the so-called "Red Jews", was similarly common in Central Europe in the Middle Ages.[25]
In literature
17th and 18th centuries
The legend became more popular after it appeared in a 17th-century pamphlet of four leaves, Kurtze Beschreibung und Erzählung von einem Juden mit Namen Ahasverus (Short Description and Tale of a Jew with the Name Ahasuerus).
In France, the Wandering Jew appeared in Simon Tyssot de Patot's La Vie, les Aventures et le Voyage de Groenland du Révérend Père Cordelier Pierre de Mésange (1720).
In Britain, a ballad with the title The Wandering Jew was included in
In England, the Wandering Jew makes an appearance in one of the secondary plots in
In 1797, the operetta The Wandering Jew, or Love's Masquerade by Andrew Franklin was performed in London.[32]
19th century
Britain
In 1810, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem in four cantos with the title The Wandering Jew but it remained unpublished until 1877.[33] In two other works of Shelley, Ahasuerus appears, as a phantom in his first major poem Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem (1813) and later as a hermit healer in his last major work, the verse drama Hellas.[34]
Thomas Carlyle, in his Sartor Resartus (1833–34), compares its hero Diogenes Teufelsdröckh on several occasions to the Wandering Jew (also using the German wording der Ewige Jude).
In Chapter 15 of Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens, the journeyman Orlick is compared to the Wandering Jew.
George MacDonald includes pieces of the legend in Thomas Wingfold, Curate (London, 1876).
United States
Nathaniel Hawthorne's stories "A Virtuoso's Collection" and "Ethan Brand" feature the Wandering Jew serving as a guide to the stories' characters.[35]
In 1873, a publisher in the United States (Philadelphia, Gebbie) produced The Legend of the Wandering Jew, a series of twelve designs by Gustave Doré (Reproduced by Photographic Printing) with Explanatory Introduction, originally made by Doré in 1856 to illustrate a short poem by Pierre-Jean de Béranger. For each one, there was a couplet, such as "Too late he feels, by look, and deed, and word, / How often he has crucified his Lord".[d]
Eugene Field's short story "The Holy Cross" (1899) features the Jew as a character.[35]
In 1901, a New York publisher reprinted, under the title "Tarry Thou Till I Come", George Croly's "Salathiel", which treated the subject in an imaginative form. It had appeared anonymously in 1828.
In Lew Wallace's novel The Prince of India (1893), the Wandering Jew is the protagonist. The book follows his adventures through the ages, as he takes part in the shaping of history.[e] An American rabbi, H. M. Bien, turned the character into the "Wandering Gentile" in his novel Ben-Beor: A Tale of the Anti-Messiah; in the same year John L. McKeever wrote a novel, The Wandering Jew: A Tale of the Lost Tribes of Israel.[35]
A humorous account of the Wandering Jew appears in chapter 54 of Mark Twain's 1869 travel book The Innocents Abroad.[38]
John Galt published a book in 1820 called The Wandering Jew.
Germany
The legend has been the subject of German
There are clear echoes of the Wandering Jew in Wagner's
Robert Hamerling, in his Ahasver in Rom (Vienna, 1866), identifies Nero with the Wandering Jew. Goethe had designed a poem on the subject, the plot of which he sketched in his Dichtung und Wahrheit.[40][41]
Denmark
Hans Christian Andersen made his "Ahasuerus" the Angel of Doubt, and was imitated by Heller in a poem on "The Wandering of Ahasuerus", which he afterward developed into three cantos. Martin Andersen Nexø wrote a short story named "The Eternal Jew", in which he also refers to Ahasuerus as the spreading of the Jewish gene pool in Europe.
The story of the Wandering Jew is the basis of the essay "The Unhappiest One" in
In the play Genboerne (The Residents) by Jens Christian Hostrup (1844), the Wandering Jew is a character (in this context called "Jerusalem's shoemaker") and his shoes make the wearer invisible. The protagonist of the play borrows the shoes for a night and visits the house across the street as an invisible man.
France
The French writer
Russia
In Russia, the legend of the Wandering Jew appears in an incomplete epic poem by Vasily Zhukovsky, "Ahasuerus" (1857) and in another epic poem by Wilhelm Küchelbecker, "Ahasuerus, a Poem in Fragments", written between 1832 and 1846 but not published until 1878, long after the poet's death. Alexander Pushkin also began a long poem on Ahasuerus (1826) but later abandoned the project, completing fewer than thirty lines.
Other literature
The Wandering Jew makes a notable appearance in the
Brazilian writer and poet
Castro Alves, another Brazilian poet, wrote a poem named "Ahasverus e o gênio" ("Ahasverus and the genie"), in a reference to the Wandering Jew.
The
The
The Spanish military writer José Gómez de Arteche's novel Un soldado español de veinte siglos (A Spanish soldier of twenty centuries) (1874–1886) depicts the Wandering Jew as serving in the Spanish military of different periods.[42]
20th century
Latin America
In Mexican writer Mariano Azuela's 1920 novel set during the Mexican Revolution, The Underdogs (Spanish: Los de abajo), the character Venancio, a semi-educated barber, entertains the band of revolutionaries by recounting episodes from The Wandering Jew, one of two books he had read.[43]
In Argentina, the topic of the Wandering Jew has appeared several times in the work of Enrique Anderson Imbert, particularly in his short-story El Grimorio (The Grimoire), included in the eponymous book.
Chapter XXXVII, "El Vagamundo", in the collection of short stories,
The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges named the main character and narrator of his short story "The Immortal" Joseph Cartaphilus (in the story he was a Roman military tribune who gained immortality after drinking from a magical river and dies in the 1920s).
In
In 1967, the Wandering Jew appears as an unexplained magical realist townfolk legend in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. In his short story, “One Day After Saturday,” the character Father Anthony Isabel claims to encounter the Wandering Jew again in the mythical town of Macondo.
Colombian writer Prospero Morales Pradilla, in his novel Los pecados de Inés de Hinojosa (The sins of Ines de Hinojosa), describes the famous Wandering Jew of Tunja that has been there since the 16th century. He talks about the wooden statue of the Wandering Jew that is in Santo Domingo church and every year during the holy week is carried around on the shoulders of the Easter penitents around the city. The main feature of the statue are his eyes; they can express the hatred and anger in front of Jesus carrying the cross.
Brazil
In 1970, Polish-Brazilian writer
France
Guillaume Apollinaire parodies the character in "Le Passant de Prague" in his collection L'Hérésiarque et Cie (Heresiarch & Co., 1910).[44]
Jean d'Ormesson wow Histoire du juif errant in (1991).
In Simone de Beauvoir's novel Tous les Hommes sont Mortels (All Men are Mortal, 1946), the leading figure Raymond Fosca undergoes a fate similar to the wandering Jew, who is explicitly mentioned as a reference.
Germany
In both Gustav Meyrink's The Green Face (1916) and Leo Perutz's The Marquis of Bolibar (1920), the Wandering Jew features as a central character.[45] The German writer Stefan Heym in his novel Ahasver (translated into English as The Wandering Jew)[46] maps a story of Ahasuerus and Lucifer ranging between ancient times, the Germany of Luther and socialist East Germany. In Heym's depiction, the Wandering Jew is a highly sympathetic character.
Belgium
The Belgian writer August Vermeylen published in 1906 a novel called De wandelende Jood (The Wandering Jew).
Romania
Similarly,
Russia
The Soviet
South Korea
The 1979 Korean novel Son of Man by
Sweden
In Pär Lagerkvist's 1956 novel The Sibyl, Ahasuerus and a woman who was once the Delphic Sibyl each tell their stories, describing how an interaction with the divine damaged their lives. Lagerkvist continued the story of Ahasuerus in Ahasverus död (The Death of Ahasuerus, 1960).
Ukraine
In Ukrainian legend, there is a character of Marko Pekelnyi (Marko of Hell, Marko the Infernal) or Marko the Accursed. This character is based on the archetype of the Wandering Jew. The origin of Marko's image is also rooted in the legend of the traitor Mark, who struck Christ with an iron glove before his death on the cross, for which God punished him by forcing him to eternally walk underground around a pillar, not stopping even for a minute; he bangs his head against a pillar from time to time, disturbs even hell and its master with these sounds and complains that he cannot die. Another explanation for Mark's curse is that he fell in love with his own sister, then killed her along with his mother, for which he was punished by God.
Ukrainian authors Oleksa Storozhenko, Lina Kostenko, Ivan Malkovych and others have written prose and poetry about Marko the Infernal. Also, Les Kurbas Theatre made a stage performance "Marko the Infernal, or the Easter Legend" based on the poetry of Vasyl Stus.
United Kingdom
Bernard Capes' story "The Accursed Cordonnier" (1900) depicts the Wandering Jew as a figure of menace.[35]
Robert Nichols' novella "Golgotha & Co." in his collection Fantastica (1923) is a satirical tale where the Wandering Jew is a successful businessman who subverts the Second Coming.[35]
In Evelyn Waugh's Helena, the Wandering Jew appears in a dream to the protagonist and shows her where to look for the Cross, the goal of her quest.
J. G. Ballard's short story "The Lost Leonardo", published in The Terminal Beach (1964), centres on a search for the Wandering Jew. The horror novel Devil Daddy (1972) by John Blackburn features the Wandering Jew.[48]
The Wandering Jew appears as a sympathetic character in Diana Wynne Jones's young adult novel The Homeward Bounders. His fate is tied in with larger plot themes regarding destiny, disobedience, and punishment.
United States
In O. Henry's 1911 story "The Door of Unrest", a drunk shoemaker Mike O'Bader comes to a local newspaper editor and claims to be the Jerusalem shoemaker Michob Ader who did not let Christ rest upon his doorstep on the way to crucifixion and was condemned to live until the Second Coming. However, Mike O'Bader insists he is a Gentile, not a Jew.
"The Wandering Jew" is the title of a short poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson which appears in his 1920 book The Three Taverns.[49] In the poem, the speaker encounters a mysterious figure with eyes that "remembered everything". He recognizes him from "his image when I was a child" and finds him to be bitter, with "a ringing wealth of old anathemas"; a man for whom the "world around him was a gift of anguish". The speaker does not know what became of him, but believes that "somewhere among men to-day / Those old, unyielding eyes may flash / And flinch—and look the other way."
George Sylvester Viereck and Paul Eldridge wrote a trilogy of novels My First Two Thousand Years: an Autobiography of the Wandering Jew (1928), in which Isaac Laquedem is a Roman soldier who, after being told by Jesus that he will "tarry until I return", goes on to influence many of the great events of history. He frequently encounters Solome (described as "The Wandering Jewess"), and travels with a companion, to whom he has passed on his immortality via a blood transfusion (another attempt to do this for a woman he loved ended in her death).
"Ahasver", a cult leader identified with the Wandering Jew, is a central figure in Anthony Boucher's classic mystery novel Nine Times Nine (originally published 1940 under the name H. Holmes). The Wandering Jew encounters a returned Christ in Deborah Grabien's 1990 novel Plainsong.[50]
Written by Isaac Asimov in October 1956, the short story "Does a Bee Care?" features a highly influential character named Kane who is stated to have spawned the legends of the Walking Jew and the Flying Dutchman in his thousands of years maturing on Earth, guiding humanity toward the creation of technology which would allow it to return to its far-distant home in another solar system. The story originally appeared in the June 1957 edition of If: Worlds of Science Fiction magazine and is collected in the anthology Buy Jupiter and Other Stories (Isaac Asimov, Doubleday Science Fiction, 1975).
A Jewish Wanderer appears in
Ahasuerus must remain on Earth after space travel is developed in
In J. G. Ballard's 1964 short story The Lost Leonardo, the Wandering Jew is revealed to be Judas Ischariot, who is so obsessed with all known depictions of the crucifixion that he travels all around the world to steal them from collectors and museums, replacing them with forged duplicates. The story's first German translation, published the same year as the English original, translates the story's title as Wanderer durch Zeit und Raum ("Wanderer through Time and Space"), directly referencing the concept of the "eternally Wandering" Jew.
Although he does not appear in
The Wandering Jew is revealed to be Judas Iscariot in George R. R. Martin's distant-future science fiction parable of Christianity, the 1979 short story "The Way of Cross and Dragon".
In
In Ilium by Dan Simmons (2003), a woman who is addressed as the Wandering Jew plays a central role, though her real name is Savi.
21st century
Brazil
Brazilian writer Glauco Ortolano in his 2000 novel Domingos Vera Cruz: Memorias de um Antropofago Lisboense no Brasil uses the theme of the Wandering Jew for its main character, Domingos Vera Cruz, who flees to Brazil in one of the first Portuguese expeditions to the New World after murdering his wife's lover in Portugal. In order to avoid eternal damnation, he must fully repent of his crime. The book of memoirs Domingos dictates in the 21st century to an anonymous transcriber narrates his own saga throughout 500 years of Brazilian history. At the end, Domingos indicates he is finally giving in as he senses the arrival of the Son of Man.
Ireland
Local history and legends have made reference to The Wandering Jew having haunted an abandoned watermill on the edge of Dunleer town.[54]
United Kingdom
English writer Stephen Gallagher uses the Wandering Jew as a theme in his 2007 novel The Kingdom of Bones. The Wandering Jew is a character, a theater manager and actor, who turned away from God and toward depravity in exchange for long life and prosperity. He must find another person to take on the persona of the wanderer before his life ends or risk eternal damnation. He eventually does find a substitute in his protégé, Louise. The novel revolves around another character's quest to find her and save her from her assumed damnation.
Sarah Perry's 2018 novel Melmoth is part-inspired by the Wandering Jew and makes several references to the legend in discussing the origin of its titular character.
J. G. Ballard's short story "The Lost Leonardo" features the Wandering Jew as a mysterious art thief.
United States
- In Glen Berger's play Underneath the Lintel, the main character suspects a 113-year overdue library book was checked out and returned by the Wandering Jew.
- The Wandering Jew appears in "An Arkham Halloween" in the October 30, 2017, issue of Bewildering Stories, as a volunteer to help Miskatonic University prepare a new translation of the Necronomicon, particularly qualified because he knew the author.
- The Wandering Jew appears in Angela Hunt’s inspirational novel The Immortal (2000) and is named Asher Genzano.
- Kenneth Johnson's novel The Man of Legend is a retelling of the story of the Wandering Jew, who is in fact a Roman soldier and head of Pilate's personal guard.
Uzbekistan
Uzbek writer Isajon Sulton published his novel The Wandering Jew in 2011.[55] In this novel, the Jew does not characterize a symbol of curse; however, they appear as a human being, who is aware of God's presence, after being cursed by Him. Moreover, the novel captures the fortune of present-day wandering Jews, created by humans using high technology.
In art
19th century
Nineteenth-century works depicting the legendary figure as the Wandering (or Eternal) Jew or as Ahasuerus (Ahasver) include:
- 1846, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Titus destroying Jerusalem. Neue Pinakothek Munich. Commissioned from Kaulbach in 1842 and completed in 1866, it was destroyed by war damage during World War II.
- 1836 Kaulbach's work initially commissioned by Countess Angelina Radzwill.
- 1840 Kaulbach published a booklet of Explanations identifying the main figures.[f]
- 1846 finished work purchased by King Ludwig I of Bavaria for the royal collections; 1853 installed in Neue Pinakothek, Munich.[57]
- 1842 Kaulbach's replica for the stairway murals of the Neues Museum, Berlin commissioned by King Frederick William IV of Prussia.
- 1866 completed.
- 1943 destroyed by war damage.[g]
- 1848–1851, Théophile Schuler's monumental painting The Chariot of Death features a prominent depiction of the Wandering Jew (who is driven away by Death).
- 1852, a coloured caricature was used as a cover design for the June number of the satirical Journal pour rire, published by Charles Philipon.[59][h]
- 1854, Gustave Courbet, The Meeting.[60]
- 1856, Gustave Doré, twelve folio-size illustrations produced for a short poem by Pierre-Jean de Béranger, The Legend of the Wandering Jew, derived from a novel by Eugène Sue (1845)[2]
- 1876, National Museum, Kraków.[56]: Fig.5
- 1888, Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl, Ahasuerus at the End of the World. Private Collection.
- 1899, Samuel Hirszenberg, The Eternal Jew. Exhibited in Łódź, Warsaw and Paris in 1899, now in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.[56]: Fig.6
20th century
In another artwork, exhibited at Basel in 1901, the legendary figure with the name Der ewige Jude, The Eternal Jew, was shown redemptively bringing the Torah back to the Promised Land.[61]
Among the paintings of Marc Chagall having a connection with the legend, one has the explicit title Le Juif Errant (1923–1925).[i]
In his painting The Wandering Jew (1983)[63] Michael Sgan-Cohen depicts a man with bird's head wearing a Jewish hat, with the Hand of God pointing down from the heaven to the man. The empty chair in the foreground of the painting is a symbol of how the figure cannot settle down and is forced to keep wandering.[64]
In ideology (19th century and after)
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the figure of the "Wandering Jew" as a legendary individual had begun to be identified with the fate of the Jewish people as a whole. After the ascendancy of Napoleon Bonaparte at the end of the century and the emancipating reforms in European countries connected with the policy of Napoleon and the Jews, the "Eternal Jew" became an increasingly "symbolic ... and universal character" as the continuing struggle for Jewish emancipation in Prussia and elsewhere in Europe in the course of the nineteenth century gave rise to what came to be referred to as "the Jewish Question".[14]
Before Kaulbach's mural replica of his painting Titus destroying Jerusalem had been commissioned by the King of Prussia in 1842 for the projected Neues Museum, Berlin, Gabriel Riesser's essay "Stellung der Bekenner des mosaischen Glaubens in Deutschland" ("On the Position of Confessors of the Mosaic Faith in Germany") had been published in 1831 and the journal Der Jude, periodische Blätter für Religions und Gewissensfreiheit (The Jew, Periodical for Freedom of Religion and Thought) had been founded in 1832. In 1840 Kaulbach himself had published a booklet of Explanations identifying the main figures for his projected painting, including that of the Eternal Jew in flight as an outcast for having rejected Christ. In 1843 Bruno Bauer's book The Jewish Question was published,[65] where Bauer argued that religious allegiance must be renounced by both Jews and Christians as a precondition of juridical equality and political and social freedom.[66] to which Karl Marx responded with an article by the title "On the Jewish Question".[67]
A caricature which had first appeared in a French publication in 1852, depicting the legendary figure with "a red cross on his forehead, spindly legs and arms, huge nose and blowing hair, and staff in hand", was co-opted by anti-Semites.[68] It was shown at the Nazi exhibition Der ewige Jude in Germany and Austria in 1937–1938. A reproduction of it was exhibited at Yad Vashem in 2007 (shown here).
The exhibition had been held at the Library of the
Portrayal in popular media
Stage
Fromental Halévy's opera Le Juif errant, based on the novel by Sue, was premiered at the Paris Opera (Salle Le Peletier) on 23 April 1852, and had 48 further performances over two seasons. The music was sufficiently popular to generate a Wandering Jew Mazurka, a Wandering Jew Waltz, and a Wandering Jew Polka.[71]
A Hebrew-language play titled The Eternal Jew premiered at the Moscow
Donald Wolfit made his debut as the Wandering Jew in a stage adaptation in London in 1924.[73] The play Spikenard (1930) by C. E. Lawrence, has the Jew wander an uninhabited Earth along with Judas and the Impenitent thief.[35] Glen Berger's 2001 play Underneath the Lintel is a monologue by a Dutch librarian who delves into the history of a book that is returned 113 years overdue and becomes convinced that the borrower was the Wandering Jew.[74]
Film
There have been several films on the topic of The Wandering Jew:
- 1904 silent film called Le Juif Errant by Georges Méliès[75]
- 1923 saw Biblical times to the Spanish Inquisition.
- Elvey also directed the sound remake The Wandering Jew (1933), with Conrad Veidt in the title role; the film was so popular it broke box office records at the time.[76]
- In 1933, the Jewish Talking Picture Company released a Yiddish-language film entitled The Eternal Jew.[77]
- In 1940, a propaganda pseudo-documentary film was made in Nazi Germany entitled Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), reflecting Nazism's antisemitism, linking the legend with alleged Jewish malpractices over the ages.
- Another film version of the story, made in Italy in 1948, starred Vittorio Gassman.
- In the 1988 film The Seventh Sign the Wandering Jew appears as Father Lucci, who identifies himself as the centuries-old Cartaphilus, Pilate's porter, who took part in the scourging of Jesus before his crucifixion.
- The 1993 film Needful Things, based on the 1991 novel of the same name by Stephen King, has elements of the Wandering Jew legend.[78]
- The 2000 horror film Dracula 2000 and its sequels equate the Wandering Jew with Judas Iscariot.
- A 2007 science fiction film The Man from Earth is similar to the Wandering Jew story in many aspects.
- The 2009 film An Education described both Graham and David Goldman this way, though Lynn Barber's original memoirs it was based on did not.
Television
- In the third episode of the first season of The Librarians, the character Jenkins mentions the Wandering Jew as an "immortal creature that can be injured, but never killed".
- In the ) appears to three major characters. He acts as a source of counsel to two of them (one of whom he provides a chance at redemption), while forcing the third to confront his past involvement in numerous killings. Though the character is widely believed to represent the Wandering Jew, the name is associated with a historical mistake: it is an anglicized version of Paolo Marana (Giovanni Paolo Marana allegedly authored Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy whose second volume features the Wandering Jew), rather than a known alias of the legendary figure.
- In the Japanese manga and accompanying anime series The Ancient Magus' Bride, the Wandering Jew is represented in the antagonist of Cartaphilus. In his search to end his eternal suffering, Cartaphilus serves as a nuisance to the progression of Chise's training.
- In the television series Peaky Blinders, Jewish gangster Alfie Solomons (played by Tom Hardy), described himself as "The Wandering Jew".
- In "Lagrimas", an episode of the second season of Witchblade, he is portrayed by Jeffrey Donovan as a mysterious drifter who develops a romantic relationship with protagonist Sara Pezzini. His true identity is later revealed to be the cursed Roman soldier Cartaphilus, who hopes the Witchblade can finally bring an end to his suffering.
- In the television series Rawhide the Wandering Jew features in the episode "Incident of the Wanderer" (Season 6, episode 21).[79]
- In the television adaptation of The Sandman, in reference to a meeting of the characters Morpheus and Hob Gadling, Johanna Constantine remarks on a rumor that The Devil and the Wandering Jew meet once every hundred years in a tavern.
Comics
In Arak: Son of Thunder issue 8, the titular character encounters the Wandering Jew. Arak intervenes on behalf of a mysterious Jewish man who is about to be stoned by the people of a village. Later on, that same individual serves as a guide through the Catacombs of Rome as they seek out the lair of the Black Pope, who holds Arak's allies hostage. His name is given as Josephus and he tells Arak that he is condemned to wander the Earth after mocking Christ en route to the crucifixion.[80]
The DC Comics character Phantom Stranger, a mysterious hero with paranormal abilities, was given four possible origins in an issue of Secret Origins with one of them identifying him as the Wandering Jew. He now dedicates his time to helping mankind, even declining a later offer from God to release him from his penance.[81]
In Deitch's A Shroud for Waldo, serialized in weekly papers such as New York Press and released in book form by Fantagraphics, the hospital attendant who revives Waldo as a hulking demon so he can destroy the AntiChrist, is none other than the Wandering Jew. For carrying out this mission, he is awarded a normal life and, it is implied, marries the woman he just rescued. Waldo, having reverted to cartoon cat form, is also rewarded, finding it in a freight car.
In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comic series, the character Hob Gadling represents the archetypal Wandering Jew.
In Kore Yamazaki's manga The Ancient Magus' Bride, the character Cartaphilus, also known as Joseph, is a mysterious being that looks like a young boy, but is much older. He is dubbed "The Wandering Jew" and is said to have been cursed with immortality for throwing a rock at the Son of God. It is later revealed that Joseph and Cartaphilus used to be two different people until Joseph fused with Cartaphilus in an attempt to remove his curse, only to become cursed himself.
In chapter 24 (titled "Immortality") of Katsuhisa Kigitsu's manga "Franken Fran", the main character Fran discovers a man who can't die. Once the man is allowed to write he reveals he is in fact The Wandering Jew.
In the Wildstorm comic book universe, a man named Manny Weiss is revealed to be The Wandering Jew. He is one of a handful of sentient beings still alive billions of years in the future to witness the heat death of the universe.[82]
Plants
Various types of plants are called by the common name "wandering Jew", apparently because of these plants' ability to spread over wide territories (see Wandering Jew (disambiguation) § Plants). Circa 2019, to avoid anti-Semitism, the name "wandering Jew" to describe Tradescantia has been avoided in favor of "wandering dude" and "silver inch plant".[83][84][85]
See also
- Hob Gadling
- Prester John
- Spiderwort
Notes
- ^ As described in the first chapter of Curious Myths of the Middle Ages where Sabine Baring-Gould attributed the earliest extant mention of the myth of the Wandering Jew to Matthew Paris. The chapter began with a reference to Gustave Doré's series of twelve illustrations to the legend, and ended with a sentence remarking that, while the original legend was so "noble in its severe simplicity" that few could develop it with success in poetry or otherwise, Doré had produced in this series "at once a poem, a romance, and a chef-d'œuvre of art".[1] First published in two parts in 1866 and 1868, the work was republished in 1877 and in many other editions.[2]
- ^ This verse is quoted in the German pamphlet Kurtze Beschreibung und Erzählung von einem Juden mit Namen Ahasverus, 1602.
- ^ This professes to have been printed at Leiden in 1602 by an otherwise unrecorded printer "Christoff Crutzer"; the real place and printer cannot be ascertained.
- ^ a b Gebbie's edition, 1873. A similar title was used for an edition under the imprint of Cassell, Petter & Galpin, London, Paris & New York.[2]
- ^ William Russo's 1999 novella Mal Tempo details Wallace's research and real-life attempt to find the mythical character for his novel. Russo also wrote a sequel, entitled Mal Tempo & Friends in 2001.[36][37]
- ^ Kaulbach's booklet had quotations from Old and New Testament prophecies and references to Josephus Flavius' Jewish War as his principal literary source.[56]
- ^ Replica for the stairway murals of the New Museum in Berlin (see fig.5 "The New Museum, Berlin")[58]
- ^ Attribution to Doré uncertain.[56]
- ^ For works of some other artists with 'Wandering Jew' titles, and connected with the theme of the continuing social and political predicament of Jews or the Jewish people see: Brichetto (2006): figs. 24 (1968), 26 (1983), 27 (1996), 28 (2002)[62]
References
- ^ Baring-Gould, Sabine (1876). "The Wandering Jew". Curious myths of the Middle Ages. London: Rivingtons. pp. 1−31.
- ^ ISBN 978-0300107371.
- ^ Roger of Wendover (1849). De Joseph, qui ultimum Christi adventum adhuc vivus exspectat (in Latin). p. 175.
- H. G. Bohn. 1842.
- ^ a b c Jacobs 1911.
- .
- ^ a b c d Anderson 1965.
- ^ JSTOR 1452757. New Series.
- ^ "Ahasver, Ahasverus, Wandering Jew—People—Virtual Shtetl". Archived from the original on 12 January 2016. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
- S2CID 162189668.
- ^ The Turkish Spy. Vol. 2, Book 3, Letter I. 1691.
- ISBN 978-0-8146-5095-0. Retrieved 13 December 2011.
- ^ Thomas Frederick Crane (1885). Italian Popular Tales. Macmillan. p. 197. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8386-3252-9.
- ISBN 0231088566.
- ^ Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (c. 400). Apotheosis. Retrieved 22 December 2011.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-231-08847-3. Retrieved 13 December 2011.
- ^ Roger of Wendover; Matthew Paris (1849). Roger of Wendover's Flowers of History. Retrieved 11 October 2010.
- ^ Flores historiarum. H.M. Stationery Office. 1890. p. 149. Retrieved 11 October 2010 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ For the 13th century expulsion of Jews, see History of the Jews in England and Edict of Expulsion.
- H. R. Luard, London, 1880, v. 340–341
- ^ Anderson 1991, pp. 22–23.
- ^ "Editorial Summary", Deseret News, 23 September 1868.
- ^ Conway, Moncure Daniel (1881). The Wandering Jew. Chatto and Windus. p. 28. Retrieved 2 December 2010.
The animus of the revival of the legend is shown by instances in which the Jews' quarters were invaded under rumours that they were concealing the Wanderer.
- S2CID 162963937.
- ISBN 9781108053747. Jacobs and Wolf: Compilers. Reprinted in Halliwell, Books of Character. London, 1857.[full citation needed]
- ^ Beyer, Jürgen (2008). "Jürgen und der ewige Jude. Ein lebender Heiliger wird unsterblich". ARV. Nordic Yearbook of Folklore (in German) (64): 125–140.
- ^ Reliques of ancient English poetry: consisting of old heroic ballads, songs and other pieces of our earlier poets, (chiefly of the lyric kind.) Together with some few of later date, 3rd ed. (Volume 3). pp. 295−301, 128 lines of verse, with prose introduction
- ^ Wallace Austin Flanders (Winter 1967). "Godwin and Gothicism: St. Leon". Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 8 (4): 533–545.
- ^ "The Wandering Jew". English Broadside Ballad Archive. Retrieved 10 September 2014.
- ^ "The Wandering Jew's Chronicle". English Broadside Ballad Archive. Retrieved 10 September 2014.
- ^ "Andrew Franklin". Ricorso.
- ^ Percy Bysshe Shelley (1877) [posthumous, written 1810]. The Wandering Jew. London: Shelley Society, Reeves and Turner.
- ^ Tamara Tinker (2010), The Impiety of Ahasuerus: Percy Shelley's Wandering Jew, revised ed.
- ^ ISBN 0-946626-71-5. pp. 1–25.
- ISBN 978-1470029449. (Novel).
- ISBN 978-1470091880.
- ^ Mark Twain. "Chapter 54". The Innocents Abroad. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
- ^ Heinrich Heine, Aus den Memoiren des Herren von Schnabelewopski, 1834. See Barry Millington, The Wagner Compendium, London (1992), p. 277
- ^ Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1881). "Fifteenth Book". The autobiography of Goethe: Truth and poetry, from my own life. Vol. II: Books XIV-XX. Translated by Morrison, A. J. W. London: George Bell. pp. 35−37. [Translated from the German].
- ^ P. Hume Brown, The Youth of Goethe (London, 1913). Chapter XI, "Goethe and Spinoza—Der ewige Jude 1773–1774"
- ^ Córdoba, José María Gárate (2006). "José Gómez de Arteche y Moro (1821–1906)". Militares y marinos en la Real Sociedad Geográfica (PDF). pp. 79–102. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 September 2011.
- ^ Azuela, Mariano (2008) [1915]. The Underdogs. New York: Penguin. pp. 15, 34.
- ^ Guillaume Apollinaire, L'Hérésiarque & Cie
- ISBN 0-946626-92-8
- ISBN 978-0-8101-1706-8.
- ISBN 978-1628971194.
- ISBN 0-31333-781-0
- ^ Robinson, Edwin Arlington (1 January 1920). "The three taverns; a book of poems". New York Macmillan Co – via Internet Archive.
- ISBN 1-55862-205-5. pp. 238–39.
- ^ del Rey, Lester (August 1963). "Earthbound". Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 44–45.
- ^ Mary Elizabeth Counselman, William Kimber (1980). "A Handful of Silver". In Half In Shadow, pp. 205–212.
- ^ Barr, Mike W. (w), Aparo, Jim (p), Ziuko, Tom (i). "The Phantom Stranger" Secret Origins, vol. 2, no. 10, p. 2–10 (January 1987). DC Comics.
- ^ Murphy, Hubert (3 December 2013). "Town's religious history proves a fascinating read". Drogheda Independent. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022.
- ^ "Uzbekistan Today". Archived from the original on 3 September 2014. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
- ^ a b c d e Ronen, Avraham (1998). "Kaulbach's Wandering Jew: An Anti-Jewish Allegory and Two Jewish Responses" (PDF). Assaph: Section B. Studies in Art History. 1998 (3). Tel-Aviv University, Faculty of Fine Arts: 243–262. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 July 2013. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
- ^ art gallery of 19c. work Pinacotheca
- ^ fig.5 "The New Museum, Berlin" http://www.colbud.hu/mult_ant/Getty-Materials/Bazant7.htm Archived 30 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 978-1-85109-439-4.
- ^ Linda Nochlin (September 1967), "Gustave Courbet's Meeting: A Portrait of the Artist as a Wandering Jew". Art Bulletin, vol. 49 No. 3; pp. 209−222
- ^ Sculpture by Alfred Nossig. Fig.3.3, p.79 in Todd Presner Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration. Routledge, 2007. The sculpture was exhibited in 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress, which established the Jewish National Fund.[1]
- ^ Brichetto, Joanna L. (20 April 2006). The Wandering Image: Converting the Wandering Jew (Thesis). Vanderbilt University. p. https://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/etd-03272006-123911.
- ^ Michael Sgan-Cohen.Israeli, 1944-1999. The Wandering Jew, 1983, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
- ^ "Educator's Resources for Passover". Jewish Learning Works. Archived from the original on 27 August 2016. Retrieved 2 July 2016.
- ^ "Die Judenfrage", Brunswick, 1843 [2],
- ^ Moggach, Douglas, "Bruno Bauer", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition)[3]
- ^ On the Jewish Question, Karl Marx, written 1843, first published in Paris in 1844 under the German title "Zur Judenfrage" in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher.[4]
- ISBN 978-0-19-512660-0.
- ^ "Der ewige Jude: "The Eternal Jew or The Wandering Jew"". Retrieved 14 November 2011.
- ISBN 978-0-7190-5279-8.
- ^ Anderson 1991, p. 259.
- ISBN 978-1-84788-050-5. Retrieved 13 December 2011.
- ^ Harwood, Ronald, "Wolfit, Sir Donald (1902–1968)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 14 July 2009
- ^ Alley Theatre (8 August 2008). "Underneath the Lintel". Alley Theatre. Retrieved 11 October 2010.
- ^ Georges Méliès (Director) (1904). Le Juif Errant. Star Film Company. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
- ^ The Film Daily. Wid's Films and Film Folk, inc. 24 January 1935. p. 242. Retrieved 13 April 2018.
- ^ "FILMS A to Z". jewishfilm.org. Retrieved 8 November 2023.
- ^ "SF Encyclopedia Editorial Home".
- ^ "Rawhide 'Incident of the Wanderer' (TV Episode 1964)". IMDb. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
- ^ Thomas, Roy, Gerry Conway, Mike W. Barr (w), Aparo, Jim (p), Colon, Ernie (i). "A Dark, Unlighted Place..." Arak: Son of Thunder, vol. 1, no. 8 (March 1982).
- ^ Barr, Mike W. (w), Aparo, Jim (p), Aparo, Jim (i). "Tarry Till I Come Again" Secret Origins, vol. 2, no. 10 (January 1987).
- ^ Callahan, Tim (9 July 2012). "The Great Alan Moore Reread: Mr. Majestic, Voodoo, and Deathblow". Tor.com. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
- ^ "Racism in Taxonomy: What's in a Name?". Hoyt Arboretum. 9 August 2020. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
- ^ "Why We're No Longer Using the Name Wandering Jew". Bloombox Club. 26 June 2019. Archived from the original on 30 September 2022. Retrieved 5 August 2021.
- ^ Goldwyn, Brittany (23 July 2019). "How to Care for a Wandering Tradescantia Zebrina Plant". by Brittany Goldwyn. Archived from the original on 8 February 2023. Retrieved 5 August 2021.
Bibliography
- Anderson, George K. (1965). "The Beginnings of the Legend". The legend of the Wandering Jew. Hanover, N.H. (U.S.): Brown University Press. pp. 11–37. Collects both literary versions and folk versions.
- Anderson, George K. (1991). The legend of the Wandering Jew. Hanover, N.H. (U.S.): Brown University Press. ISBN 0-87451-547-5.
- Anderson, George K. (1991). The legend of the Wandering Jew. Hanover, N.H. (U.S.): Brown University Press.
- Camilla Rockwood, ed. (2009). Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (18th ed.). Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap. p. 1400. ISBN 9780550104113.
- Cohen, Richard I. The "Wandering Jew" from Medieval Legend to Modern Metaphor, in Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (eds), The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) (Jewish Culture and Contexts)
- Gaer, Joseph (Fishman) The Legend of the Wandering Jew New American Library, 1961 (Dore illustrations) popular account
- Hasan-Rokem, Galit and Alan Dundes The Wandering Jew: Essays in the Interpretation of a Christian Legend (Bloomington:Indiana University Press) 1986. 20th-century folkloristic renderings.
- Jacobs, Joseph (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 362−363.
- Manning, Robert Douglas Wandering Jew and Wandering Jewess ISBN 978-1-895507-90-4
- Sabine Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (1894)
External links
- Wandering Jew and Jewess dramatic screenplays
- The Wandering Jew, by Eugène Sue at Project Gutenberg
- David Hoffman, Hon. J.U.D. of Gottegen (1852). Chronicles of the Wandering Jew selected from the originals of Carthaphilus, embracing a period of nearly XIX centuries—detailed description of facts related to Jesus's preaching from a Pharisees coverage
- Catholic Encyclopedia entry
- The (presumed) End of the Wandering Jew from The Golden Calf by Ilf and Petrov
- Israel's First President, Chaim Weizmann, "A Wandering Jew"[permanent dead link] Shapell Manuscript Foundation
- "The Wandering Image: Converting the Wandering Jew" Iconography and visual art. Archived 9 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine
- "The Wandering Jew" and "The Wandering Jew's Chronicle" English Broadside Ballad Archive
- Full text: The autobiography of Goethe: Truth and poetry, from my own life. Vol. II: Books XIV-XX. London: George Bell. 1881 – via Internet Archive. [Alternative format]