Instrument of Memory: Encounters with the Wandering Jew - Hardcover

Lisa Lampert-Weissig (author)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0472133462 ISBN 13: 9780472133468

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2024

Synopsis

Reimagining the Wandering Jew legend and the curse of immortality in centuries of Jewish and Christian art How can immortality be a curse? According to the Wandering Jew legend, as Jesus made his way to Calvary, a man refused him rest, cruelly taunting him to hurry to meet his fate. In response, Jesus cursed the man to wander until the Second Coming. Since the medieval period, the legend has inspired hundreds of adaptations by artists and writers. Instrument of Memory: Encounters with the Wandering Jew, the first English-language study of the legend in over fifty years, is also the first to examine the influence of the legend’s medieval and early modern sources over the centuries into the present day. Using the lens of memory studies, the work shows how the Christian tradition of the legend centered the memory of the Passion at the heart of the Wandering Jew’s curse. Instrument of Memory also shows how Jewish artists and writers have reimagined the legend through Jewish memory traditions. Through this focus on memory, Jewish adapters of the legend create complex renderings of the Wandering Jew that recognize not only the entanglement of Jewish and Christian memory, but also the impact of that entanglement on Jewish subjects. This book presents a complex, sympathetic, and more fully realized version of the legend while challenging the limits of the presentism of memory studies.

About this title

About the Author

Lisa Lampert-Weissig is Professor of English Literature and Comparative Medieval Studies and Jerome and Miriam Katzin Chair of Jewish Civilization at the University of California, San Diego.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472133462
• ISBN 13: 9780472133468
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 292