User:Pseudo-Richard/The Eternal Jew

The eternal Jew is a Christian notion of a figure that has been rejected by God and forced to wander among the nations for having rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

Jews
Among Jews, it is a metaphor for exile, based in part on the story of Cain in the Biblical book of Genesis. Cain is forced to wander in the land of Nod as punishment for slaying his brother, Abel. According to Jehoshua Gilboa, many commentators have pointed to Hos 9:17 as a statement of the notion of the "eternal/wandering Jew".

Medieval times
Cartaphilus

Germany
Some scholars have identified components of the legend of the Eternal Jew in Teutonic legends of the Eternal Hunter, some features of which are derived from Wotan mythology.

"In some areas the farmers arranged the rows in their fields in such a way that on Sundays the Eternal Jew might find a resting place. Elsewhere they assumed that he could rest only upon a plough or that he had to be on the go all year and was allowed a respite only on Christmas."

Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the figure of the "Wandering Jew" as an apocryphal legendary individual began to be identified with the fate of the Jewish people as a whole. The "Eternal Jew" became an increasingly "symbolic... and universal character" as the struggle for Jewish emancipation gave rise to what came to be referred to as "The Jewish Question".

20th century
In 1933, the Jewish Talking Picture Company released a Yiddish-language film entitled The Eternal Jew.

In 1934, the Gaumont-Twickenham studios released a film entitled The Eternal Jew.

Nazi propaganda
From November 8, 1937 to January 31, 1938, the Library of the German Museum in Munich displayed an art exhibition titled The Eternal Jew. This exhibit displayed works that the Nazis condered to be 'degenerate art'. A book containing images of the works displayed at this exhibition was published under the title The Eternal Jew. Although this was the most famous Nazi-sponsored exhibition of 'Degenerate Art', it was preceded by a number of other exhibitions in cities such as Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Dresden, Munich, Berlin and Vienna. The works of art displayed at these exhibitions generally consisted of works executed by avant-garde artists who had become recognized and esteemed in the 1920s. However, the objective of the exhibition was not to hold these works up as exemplary and admirable but to present them as worthy of condemnation and derision.

In 1940, the Nazis released an antisemitic documentary film entitled The Eternal Jew. The film consists of feature and documentary footage combined with materials filmed shortly after the Nazi occupation of Poland.