The Wandering Jew: A Travelling Exhibition - Discussion and Viewing

Reframing the Wandering Jew from its origins in medieval Christian myth, this exhibition presents how the legend has evolved across time and cultures. It draws on an expansive set of sources including Romantic and Gothic literature, Yiddish drama, Jewish visual art, rabbinic sermons, Nazi and anti-Nazi film, and 21st-century regenderings of the myth. Particularly popular in the German imagination, the Wandering Jew evolved from a Jewish ‘Other’ within Christian culture, came to be acknowledged as harmful propaganda, and finally became a symbol of German-Jewish cultural co-production.

The event will see curator Anoushka Alexander-Rose (University of Southampton) and Elisabeth Becker-Topkara (Heidelberg University) discussing the exhibition, its inspirations, and importance. Attendees will afterwards have a chance to view the exhibition over a drinks reception.

The exhibition was made possible by generous financial support from the German History Society and the Jewish Historical Society of England. The curator would also like to thank Lisa Lampert-Weissig for the research in her latest monograph, Instrument of Memory: Encounters with the Wandering Jew (University of Michigan Press, 2024), and the wider Parkes Institute academic community for their insights and contributions (in particular Charlie Knight for editorial assistance and visuals, and also Noëmie Duhaut, Neil Gregor, Tony Kushner, Claire Le Foll, and Katie Power).

Speakers

Anoushka Alexander-Rose is a final-year doctoral researcher in English at the University of Southampton. Alongside her thesis, ‘Vladimir Nabokov’s Jewish Muse’, she has a long-standing interest in the legend of the Wandering Jew and its literary and visual representations, especially as a figure of refusal reclaimed by twentieth century and post-Holocaust European writers and artists. As Outreach Fellow for the Parkes Institute, Anoushka has organised Inter Faith Week events, walking tours, film screenings, and school workshops, and so is particularly excited to have the opportunity to present her research on the Wandering Jew to the public.

Elisabeth Becker-Topkara is a Freigeist Fellow at the Max Weber Institute for Sociology, Heidelberg University, where she is leading a project entitled ‘Invisible Architects: Jews, Muslims, and the Construction of Europe’. Some areas of her research include the agency of Jewish cultural brokers in the restitution of Nazi-era looted art and artefacts, and the role of Jewish and Muslim intellectuals in the shaping of European societies. She is author of Mosques in the Metropolis: Incivility, Caste, and Contention in Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2021), and has published extensively on pluralism in Europe in leading academic journals as well as mainstream publications such as the Washington Post, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Tablet Magazine. She is currently completing her second crossover book, Thread of Hope: The Moving Lives of Jewish Berlin, represented by Jessica Craig Literary. Elisabeth is co-editor of Patterns of Prejudice, a leading journal on both historical and contemporary forms of social exclusion, and also founded the initiative ThirdSpace to foster deliberative dialogue after October 7th.