Between Eternity and Wandering

The article deals with the legend of the Wandering Jew or the Eternal Jew, a legend based on a sweeping reading of the New Testament about a Jew named Ahasuerus, who was condemned to perpetual wandering after refusing to let Jesus rest on the walls of his home on his way to the crucifixion. Having taken shape in seventeenth-century Protestant circles in Germany, the legend spread throughout Europe in dozens of different adaptations and translations in the following centuries. Tuvia Singer argues that the complex and seemingly contradictory use of the “Wandering Jew” image in modern anti-Jewish discourse is the heritage of the development of this legend and image in medieval and early modern times. It is a legacy that undermines the historiographical distinction between “religious/medieval anti-Judaism” and “secular/modern anti-Judaism.”