Yair Mintzker, "I, Wandering Jew: A Five-Century History of Our Modern Condition" (Princeton UP, 2026)

The legend of the Wandering Jew—once a medieval anti-Jewish trope—is reimagined in Yair Mintzker’s groundbreaking book as a living, breathing force in modern history. Rather than dismissing the figure as mere myth, Mintzker treats the Wandering Jew as a historical phenomenon that emerges in specific moments: a 1952 apparition in Israel, a 17th-century pamphlet from Hamburg, and personal identifications by the author himself. The book’s radical innovation lies in its reverse chronology and self-reflexive structure, where Mintzker, a Jewish historian, reveals how the legend became a tool of identity for both oppressed and empowered individuals. He argues that the Wandering Jew is not just a ghost of the past but a prototype for anyone feeling displaced, eternal, or haunted by history—making it a universal symbol of modern alienation. The story of Ben Shushan, a man who claimed to be the Wandering Jew in 1950s Israel and taught luminaries like Elie Wiesel and Emmanuel Levinas, becomes a lens into post-Holocaust Jewish identity and religious Zionism. Mintzker’s own journey—from identifying with his friend Itai as a teenager to writing a book about a figure that mirrors his own exile—shows how history is not separate from the self, but lived, felt, and rewritten in real time. This is not a book about a myth, but about how myths become real through belief, trauma, and longing.