FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 445 19 August 2015 THE WANDERING JEW

THE STORY OF A SINNER CHRIST DOOMED TO WANDER THE WORLD TILL THE MESSIAH'S SECOND COMING.
------------------------------------------------------------


In Prague, looking for Hrad Castle, I had a curious encounter. A queerly dressed, bushy-bearded oldster offered to show me the way. I accepted but soon realised he was eccentric. ‘That was built when I first arrived in Prague, in 1640’, he observed, pointing to a crumbling gate. ‘I am Ahasverus, the Wandering Jew’, he smilingly added, perfectly natural.

A nutter, obviously. Still, it rang a bell. The legend tells of a Jew, a Jerusalem cobbler, who saw Christ carrying the Cross on his way to the Crucifixion. ‘Walk faster!’ the pitiless man scoffed, giving the Messiah a hard blow. ‘I will but you will walk on forever, till I return to judge the world’, Christ prophesied. And so unhappy Ahasverus has done ever since.

‘Wow!’ I exclaimed, struggling to keep a straight face. ‘But isn’t your real name Malchus?’ One of the many candidates for the Wandering Jew’s role. The servant of the Jewish High Priest, whose right ear St Peter cut off with a sword in the garden of Gethsemane. (St John 18:20) ‘Never mind what your Scripture claims’, he said, stubbornly. ‘My name is Ahasverus, believe me.’

He rambled on, cursing the names of Pilate, Emperor Titus, Muhammad, King Edward I, Torquemada, Luther, Voltaire, Karl Marx, Henry Ford, Hilaire Belloc, Churchill, Yassir Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeini and others – too many to enumerate. All of whom he swore he had personally met during his wanderings. ‘Mortal enemies of my nation’, he muttered, venomously. ‘You don’t include Hitler?’ I inquired. Ahasverus uttered an obscenity but he also opined that it was thanks to the German Fuhrer that 2000 years later the Jewish people people had got back their ancestral land. A paradoxical view that Jewish writer George Steiner puts into the mouth of a captive Hitler in his provocative book, ‘The Portal of San Cristobal of A.H.’

Methinks that the Wandering Jew is a story aetiological in character. That is narrative meant to explain the origins of something. The fact that the Jewish people have been dispersed over the earth since Titus’ destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70.

I told him that much. ‘Nonsense!’ he snorted. ‘We Jews were already scattered and settled among other peoples well before that date. Wasn’t your St Paul born in Tarsus? A city far away from Eretz Israel, the land of Israel. And there were lots of Jews in Rome, Babylon, Persia and other places. Look, those who seek to debunk my existence are fools. Idiotic rationalists. Unbelievers. I curse them with all the curses Prophet Elisha cursed the boys who mocked him!’ he growled, reeling off an unlovely litany of Hebrew words.

‘Yes, many Jews have indeed returned to the Holy Land’, I conceded, ‘but do you not think that has created a novel set of nasty problems? Like the expulsion and dispossession of another people, the Palestinians. Besides, millions of Jews have chosen not to go back. They dwell safely and prosperously among the Gentiles, don’t they?’

The gaunt fellow shook his long, curly hair: ‘Palestinians are an invented people. They have no reality. It is anti-Semitic propaganda. The lazy Arabs let the land of my fathers – a land flowing with milk and honey - go to wrack and ruin. We Jews have made the desert flourish. The Arabs who pretend to be Palestinians…if they really want a state….they already have one. Let them go and build themselves one in Jordan…’ He carried on in this fashion.

‘Groan….a Zionist! Too bad but you can hardly expect a wandering outcast to be progressive’, I thought. Then I vaguely recalled that Eugene Sue, a French writer, had composed a long novel about the Wandering Jew. He connected Ahasverus with Herodias, the wicked woman who demanded the head of St John the Baptist. But Sue brings in the Jesuits. They are the culprits, the spiders spinning a web of plots and intrigues, the conspirators at the root of it all. So I brought that up. He laughed: ‘The Jesuits…I was one once. Laynez, a pretended convert, a companion of St Ignatius of Loyola. Clever men but not as clever as we are! The Pope is a Jesuit, yet far from being smart. Even the Jesuits are not what they used to be…’

‘So, are you very unhappy about your doom, your wandering, restless life?’ I asked. He chortled: ‘Not at all! I have led a very amazing life. All those celebs I met… I could tell you a few secrets…and I have rejoiced seeing my people triumph over their enemies. From Haman to Pharaoh, from Hitler to Nasser – they have all ended up in the gutter, whereas we Jews triumph and thrive. What could be sweeter?’

Ahasverus sounded pretty smug. I wonder though whether he realised he owed his legendary life and happiness to the name and power of Jesus Christ. The Saviour he had mocked long ago. Whose glorious Second Coming he might have had had reason to fear…

We passed by a watering hole. ‘Let us have a drink’, he invited. A con man wanted to slip a drug into a hapless tourist’s drink?’ No way, I told him. ‘What about visiting some ladies?’ Again, I declined. ‘Oi, oi!’ he grinned.

So we parted. He dashed off, mumbling away.

I guess Ahasverus is still walking.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

============================================================
** follow on Twitter (Twitter Account not yet Authorized)
| ** friend on Facebook (#)
| ** forward to a friend (http://us7.forward-to-friend2.com/forward?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=426ca336f5&e=5707b9e8db)

Copyright © Fr Frank Gelli
Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp
http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=monkey_rewards&aid=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&afl=1
** unsubscribe from this list (http://simplesite.us7.list-manage1.com/unsubscribe?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db&c=426ca336f5)
| ** update subscription preferences (http://simplesite.us7.list-manage.com/profile?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db)