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8. The ‘‘Wandering Jew’’ from Medieval Legend to Modern Metaphor
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Chapter 8 The ‘‘Wandering Jew’’ from Medieval Legend to Modern Metaphor Richard I. Cohen Wanderers—real and fictional—have engaged the imagination in different cultures and times. For the settled and the sedentary, they arouse a sense of fear and attraction, offering a glimpse of another world and of other civilizations, appearing in moments of crisis and tension, at junctures of a dramatic nature when new currents of thought or social transformations are emerging. Legendary figures ranging from the Ancient Mariner and Wild Huntsman to Pindola and Al-Sameri, to name but a few, have been condemned to wander, either interminably or for a defined time.1 References to the Wandering Jew, however, far exceed those relating to the other wanderers, and he—seldom she—has remained a constant cultural trope in our time as well. The legend has attracted the interest of collectors, researchers, and observers for over a hundred and fifty years. A scholar of English Jewry, Frank Felsenstein, argued that the Wandering Jew has had a ‘‘chameleonlike ability to take a form that reflects a given age.’’2 In contrast, Galit Hasan-Rokem, who has studied many folkloric variations on the theme, claimed that the attraction of the figure lies in his paradox: ‘‘His simultaneous presentation as local and itinerant, almost autochtonous as a nature spirit and as exotic as a complete stranger . . . signal the paradoxical identity of European Jews in their own eyes and in the eyes of their Christian neighbours as at the same time completely local and familiar and on the other as deeply alien.’’ The image has thus reinforced for the Europeans their identity as the opposite of the wanderer, that is, ‘‘as belonging to a specific locality as well as to their self-image rooted in stability.’’3 Finally, the Wandering Jew has had the power to represent issues in society that are not intrinsically related to Jews or the Jewish historical evolution. He seems to mirror certain social and cultural issues of a universal nature.4 This essay explores how the visual image of the Wandering Jew reflects the historical tension between Jews and non-Jews in different periods, how it represents various internal traditions relating to the legend, and how the 148 Richard I. Cohen imagined figure transmitted aspects of the historical experience of Jews in the modern period. To what extent did images of ‘‘real Jews’’ inform the depiction of the imaginary figure, and how did the representation of the Wandering Jew enable mythic notions of the Jew to surface and persist? What can the changing iconography of the Wandering Jews tell us about the history of the relationship of Jews and non-Jews? Although my concern here is with how non-Jewish artists have treated the legend, I conclude the essay with a brief discussion of some artists of Jewish origin who have also taken up the visual image of Ahasuerus. Although the visual image of the Wandering Jew has undergone constant evolution, it has received little scholarly attention. The nineteenth-century critic and writer Champfleury (Jules-François Felix Husson), who served on a censorship commission for popular art during the Second Republic in France, was fascinated by the popular imagery of le Juif errant and made a list of some extant prints. His study was sketchy and marred by his dislike of images that strayed from what he considered popular art.5 Though Champfleury included several illustrations in his work, they failed to suggest the scope of the phenomenon.6 Since Champfleury, specific depictions of the Wandering Jew have been studied, and images from the classic prints (e.g., from Gustave Doré’s series of 1856 or from one of the flourishing publishing houses in Épinal, the home of French popular culture in the nineteenth century) have illustrated the occasional article or book, but the visual phenomenon had not been examined in its wider context until an exhibition in Paris in 2001 on the Wandering Jew opened up the area extensively.7 This essay builds on that work. At the center of the legend is the encounter between Christ and a Jew in Jerusalem, while Christ was carrying his cross to Calvary. On the road Christ paused for a moment to rest on the Jew’s doorstep but was driven away by the cry ‘‘Walk faster!’’ Christ replied, ‘‘I go, but you will walk until I come again.’’ Two themes emerge from this brief but hostile meeting...