Wandering Jew - Origin of the legend
A character in Christian legend who taunted Christ as he carried his cross, and was condemned to wander the Earth until the end of the world or until Christ's second coming. Various Jews, notably Ahasuerus of Hamburg in 1602, have been identified with the character, who has been seen as a symbol of the Diaspora of the Jewish people.
The Wandering Jew is a figure from Christian folklore, a Jewish man who, according to legend, taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming.
When some interpreters see the "Wandering Jew" as a metaphorical personification of the Jewish diaspora, the subtext that links the two is that the destruction of Jerusalem was in retribution for Jewish responsibility for the Crucifixion. A more allegorical view claims instead that the "Wandering Jew" personifies any individual who has been made to see the error of his or her wickedness, if the mocking of the Passion epitomizes the callousness of mankind toward the suffering of human beings.
A variety of names have been given for the Wandering Jew, including Ahasuerus, Matathias, Buttadeus, Cartophilus, Isaac Laquedem (a name attributed to him in France, in popular legend as well as in a novel by Dumas, see below), and Juan Espera a Dios (Spanish: "John [who] waits for God").
Origin of the legend
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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 England — besides the ballad given in Thomas Percy's Reliques and reprinted in Francis James Child's English and Scotch Ballads (1st ed., viii. 77) — there is a drama entitled The Wandering Jew, or Love's Masquerade, written by Andrew Franklin (1797). In Russia, the legend of the Wandering Jew appears in an incomplete epic poem by Vasily Zhukovsky (Василий Андреевич Жуковский), "Ahasuerus" (Агасфер, 1857) and in another epic poem by Wilhelm Küchelbecker (Вильгельм Карлович Кюхельбекер), "Ahasuerus, a Poem in Fragments" (Агасвер, поэма в отрывках), written from 1832-1846 but not published until 1878, long after the poet's death. 
In Argentina, the topic of the Wandering Jew has appeared several times in the work of writer and professor Enrique Anderson Imbert, particularly in his short-story El Grimorio (The Grimoire), included in the eponymous book. Anderson Imbert refers to the Wandering Jew as El Judío Errante or Ahasvero (Ahasuerus) indistinctly. Chapter XXXVII, El Vagamundo, in the collection of short stories, Misteriosa Buenos Aires, by the Argentine writer Manuel Mujica Lainez also centres round the wandering of the Jew. By the dawn of the 20th century Jewish writers and artists had appropriated the powerful symbol to express the suffering of exile and hope of the rebirth of the Jewish state. The great Soviet satyrists Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov had their hero Ostap Bender tell the story of the Wandering Jew's death at the hands of Ukrainian Nationalists in The Little Golden Calf. In the post-apocalyptic science fiction book A Canticle For Leibowitz, written by Walter M. and published in 1959, a character that can be interpreted as being the Wandering Jew is the only to appear in all three novellas. Character in a motion pictureIn the 1988 film The Seventh Sign this legendary character appears as a Father Lucci, who identifies himself as the centuries' old Cartaphilus, Pilate's porter, who was one who took part in the scourging of Jesus before his crucifixion. He is a combination of the Wandering Jew and the Longinus legend. There have also been several films entitled The Wandering Jew. Another film version, an infamous German one also made in 1933, was more overtly anti-Semitic, and reflected the Nazi outlook. And still another film version of the story, made in Italy in 1948, starred Vittorio Gassman. Related legendsHeinrich Heine noted a strong correspondence between the legend of the Wandering Jew and that of The Flying Dutchman. The gypsies' constant wandering and exclusion were therefore explained by their betrayal of Jesus much in the same way the exclusion and pogroms against Jews were explained. |
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