Reflections on Medieval Anti-Judaism, 5. The Wandering Jew: The Alienation of the Jewish Image in Christian Consciousness

Hawthorne and the Gender of Jewishness: Anti‐Semitism, Aesthetics, and Sexual Politics in The Marble Faun

“…As Joseph Gaer wrote in a famous psychological study, the two basic themes in the Legend of the Wandering Jew are “the curse of abnormal longevity, and the conviction that for him who is so cursed it had been good for that man if he had not been born ; and the other is the problem of guilt and absolution—the road of penance a man must travel to reach redemption” (105, italics in the original). As Adolph L. Leschnitzer describes, the figure of the everlasting Jew dates back to medieval legend of a man who mocked Christ on his way to the crucifixion and was cursed by him to wander the earth until Christ's return. Alternatively, an ironic version of this legend exists, quite simply “a man who never settles down, a figure of a restlessly roving person” (228).…”