Event details

Join us to celebrate the forthcoming publication of I, Wandering Jew: A Five-Century History of Our Modern Condition, a surprising and revealing account of the antisemitic myth of “the Wandering Jew" that combines history, detective story, and memoir. Author Yair Mintzker, Professor of History and Head of Yeh College, will discuss his latest book with David Nirenberg, Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Open to the public. Kosher reception included.


More about I, 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.


More about Yair Mintzer

Yair Mintzker is a specialist in the history of early modern and modern Germany, and the author or editor of five books and many articles in the field. His latest monograph, I, Wandering Jew (Princeton University Press, 2026), combines history, detective story, and memoir to create a surprising and revealing account of the antisemitic myth of “the Wandering Jew.” His previous book, The Many Deaths of Jew Süss (Princeton University Press, 2017), won the National Jewish Book Award in History and was chosen by the Financial Times as one of the best books of 2017. He is the recipient of many prizes, including the Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize (2010) and the Urban History Association Best Book Prize (2014).


More about David Nirenberg

David Nirenberg is the Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. A historian and author, Nirenberg is recognized for wide-ranging scholarship on the interaction of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. His research provides insight into questions of racism, Anti-Semitism, and Christian-Muslim relations. Nirenberg previously served as founding director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society; Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences; Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Distinguished Service Professor; Executive Vice Provost; and Interim Dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.