I, Wandering Jew: A Five-Century History of Our Modern Condition

by Yair Mintzker

Combining history, detective story, and memoir, a surprising and revealing account of the antisemitic myth of “the Wandering Jew”

The story behind the mythical figure of “the Wandering Jew” is one of the most fascinating tales in European history. In I, Wandering Jew, National Jewish Book Award–winning historian Yair Mintzker traces the tale back to its source, follows its many metamorphoses through five centuries, and relates it to the fraught present moment.

According to a mysterious pamphlet published in 1602, the Wandering Jew was a real person, named Ahasversus, who was cursed by Jesus to eternal wandering after refusing to help him as he was led to his crucifixion. For more than four-hundred years, many otherwise reliable witnesses have claimed to have seen the Wandering Jew. Moving in reverse chronological order, I, Wandering Jew explores crucial episodes in the story of this figure. We meet an unforgettable, Wandering Jew-like character who appeared out of nowhere in Israel in the 1950s; a nineteenth-century novelist who was the first Jew to favorably describe the Wandering Jew; an eighteenth-century German scholar who saw the Wandering Jew emerging from a devastating fire; and the man who likely inspired the 1602 pamphlet.

A work of history that reads like a detective story, I, Wandering Jew is also part memoir. As Mintzker discovers affinities between his own story and that of the Wandering Jew, the surprising history of an old antisemitic trope and its meanings becomes a profound meditation on home and exile, Judaism and Christianity, poetry and truth, the deep past and the present.

Genres: Jewish, Nonfiction, History

288 pages, Hardcover

Published March 31, 2026

Reviews

[sadcow500 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a moving and impressive book. The author's beguiling style is on display all the time, and the thesis about the constant invocability of the trope of the Wandering Jew works like a figure behind panes of thick glass, always there, but never quite stated in explicit terms. This lets the imagination brood over figures like Shoshanni and Abramovitsch.

The author likes his study. It is also invoked at the beginning of his first book, which is the magnificent "Defortification". Yet here the study is the site of a kind of mystery tale or autobiographical whodunnit in which the call is coming from inside the house the whole time. It is admirably repaid in the final chapter, when the chronological order (otherwise always moving backwards) is reversed and we hear about the author's own reflection in the scraps of e-mails and archives on his computer.

This is a book that made me want to read more, especially more from Yiddish literature. It also made me especially sensitive to the work that goes into making books, including hammering type, pressing presses, and reading proves. It is never a bad time to be reminded that once upon a time, there were whole genres of professions dedicated to making and circulating the printed word (even the antisemitic printed word). But now is an especially good time. For that, I thank the author.

[Perlie · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF
It was fascinating for the first 50 or so pages, then felt like it got bogged down.
Perhaps the first chunk could be a long-form essay?

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some books are difficult to review because they aren’t what you expect. That was the case with “I, Wandering Jew: A Five-Century History of Our Modern Condition” by Yair Mintzker (Princeton University Press). Mintzker’s book is a well written, in-depth work about the legend of the Wandering Jew. My problem? I thought there was going to be more Jewish content. There were also some sections that left me puzzled, which says less about the work than my sense that the author and I were focusing on different parts of the legend.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...