The Wandering Jew
Facing a 1,500 Year Old Meme
Passover is now officially over. Bread once again is rising in Jewish kitchens across the world. Moroccan Jews marked the day with the exuberant festival of Mimouna. And the rest of us are ordering pizza.
But it’s also the beginning of something else — wandering.
After all, it’s what the Israelites did after leaving Egypt — begin a forty-year period of wandering which would be anything but the expected. Our current march towards Mount Sinai, which we mark through the counting of the Omer, is just the first stop on an ultimately longer journey that we cannot yet imagine.
When I began my first job as a pulpit cantor, I thought I would be in the same position for my entire career. This was the storied path of the synagogue cantorial establishment and its leaders — a sign of success, professional competence, and loyalty to (and from) one’s congregational flock. Now I am married, have two kids, have served three congregations, and have pivoted into life as a traveling cantor-academic. This is certainly not the “cantor-slash” role I expected coming out of cantorial school.
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I should take some comfort from my research. After all, a major part of the history of cantorial professionalization includes the itinerant wanderings of cantors and singers. Originating in the seventeenth century, these musical guests were welcomed in Ashkenazi communities by popular acclaim. And like most traveling musicians, they were treated with suspicion by the local leadership.
The Pinkas (board minutes) of the Moravian Jewish community of Nikolsburg, for example, restricted their cantors from appointing itinerant, unmarried bass-singers without communal consent, and also limited their assistant cantors [hazzanim sheniyim] from appointing anyone but their own sons as liturgical singers [meshorerim].
These ordinances suggest the subversive potential of the traveling musician. The ideal cantor, by Jewish law, is not typically permitted to go before the ark if he is unmarried, particularly on the High Holy Days. One of the standard features of cantorial terms of hire, dating back to the middle ages, is the restriction from leaving the city without the express consent of the board. Itinerant hazzanim and meshorerim thus represented a subversion of the established Jewish community, a popular yet potentially problematic stream of “cantors-in-residence.”
In some ways, the modern institutions of the 20th century American cantorate were a reaction to the similarly famous, music-focused, and often itinerant cantors of the Golden Age, whose wanton, recorded voices and artistic reputations peregrinated through the minds and ears of the Ashkenazic world. Suburban cultural trends suppressed this phenomenon for a time, but it has never gone away. In fact, a large part of the major trendsetters in American Jewish music are internet-savvy, traveling singer-songwriters and musicians who, like their Moravian cantorial ancestors, are welcomed by locals eager for musical novelty and inspiration.
Yet this does not totally remove the stigma of the “gigging” musician, cantorial or otherwise. As generations of parents have told their children, it would be better if you were a doctor or a lawyer — you know, a “reliable” profession. But the implications go beyond economics to one’s broader view of the world. Like the age-old rivalry between the farmer & the herder, this belies a differing relationship (and loyalty) to the settled feeling of having a place.
I rediscovered this fact this week while preparing a Jewish tour of the Ringling Museum of Art, as I encountered The Wandering Jew, the first successful painting by American artist Carl Marr.1 The Wandering Jew originated as a Christian legend in the Middle Ages, based on a verse in the Book of John (18:22) in which Jesus was struck by an unnamed Jewish officer on his way to his crucifixion. According to the legend, this officer was doomed to an eternal life, wandering the face of the earth until the Second Coming. The character of this “Wandering Jew” transformed into a cultural meme, the subject of countless works of art, film, and literature over the past fifteen-hundred years, including 20th century American science fiction and even in one of the early works of George R.R. Martin.2
What explains the timelessness of such a figure? On one level, it is a reflection on the human desire for eternal life and its costs. On another, it explained to Christians (in polemic fashion) the phenomenon of the Jew — damned for rejecting Christ yet somehow still eternally present in society, at home in Christian lands but not totally of them.
Beyond the obvious anti-Jewish message, this cultural meme recalls the timeless conflict between farmer and the herder: One owns, manipulates, and works the land in one place; the other does not own but rather wanders across the land, cultivating not the earth but rather the pastoral care of his flock. The Hebrew Bible, which emerged in a shepherding culture, may be seen as a people’s attempt to apply the shepherd ethics of its roots to its new life as a farming nation.
But perhaps the Wandering Jew also reveals a special power — a pastoral corrective to the default settledness of farmer society. As
wrote this past week, the history of Western culture is actually one driven by diversity, with its major intellectual and cultural developments coming from interaction with outsiders.Nowhere is this more true than in Ted’s observations of music:
In the course of my research, I kept encountering the same influence of the outsider. I found it everywhere from the emergence of secular songs in Deir el-Medina in ancient Egypt to the rise of tango in Buenos Aires or reggae in Jamaica.
The outsider is everywhere in music history.
Consider, for example, the names of the musical modes—something else I long took for granted. They are named after population groups, but who were the Aeolians, the Lydians, and the Phrygians?
They were slave groups, conquered by the Greeks in Asia Minor. The Greeks also named some modes after themselves, but the more unusual or controversial modes were associated with slave musicians.
There’s no “Jewish” mode in Western music theory. But there are so many ways in which this thousands-year old tribe of manumitted slaves has, through its diaspora communities, provided a creative alterity which, together with other outsiders, helped to form Western culture as we know it today. The constant outsider, wanderer as he may be, remains the constant innovator.
While the wanderer lacks the stability of the landed farmer, the majority culture, or the full-time professional, he or she is an important part of cultural renewal. For them, as for all of us, the journey is as important as the destination. Or as Tolkein famously put it: “Not all who wander are lost.”
The title of Marr’s painting changed within two decades of its creation. Perhaps as his exhibits came to America, a degree of Jew-friendliness might have been in order. A review of the work in the 1901 New York City Standard Guide makes no mention of Jews whatsoever:
Strangely, in cantorial school I learned a musical motif for the three pilgrimage festivals (Passover/Shavuot/Sukkot) which was called “The Wandering Jew.” A poll of my colleagues suggests that this term may have been coined by JTS cantorial faculty member, Dr. Charles Davidson. Further research is required, but here’s the motif for reference:
Fascinating, as always, Matt! Thanks.