Le Juif Errant ou l'Art de survivre

Here, Marcello Massenzio offers a fascinating analysis of different ‘representations’ of the Wandering Jew. Condemned to roam perpetually for having struck Jesus on the road to Calvary, the Wandering Jew became an ambiguous myth from the 13th century onwards, embodying both the theme of the Jew who witnessed Christ’s Passion and anti-Jewish motifs. A fresco by Giotto gives a subtle account of this ambivalence, particularly highlighting two little-known texts by Goethe. At the beginning of the 20th century, the myth was reappropriated by Jewish culture, notably in a series of striking paintings by Chagall. Since the Holocaust, the Wandering Jew has more than ever symbolised Jewish destiny - finding perhaps its incarnation in the unsettling and obsessive character of Élie Wiesel and Emmanuel Lévinas’s teacher, the strange Mr. Shushani...