The medieval Jew was imagined as simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, haunting Christian identity

Evidence

In Mandeville’s Travels, the Jews inhabit a peculiar space in the world: they belong nowhere, yet are found everywhere. Their proper place is not Jerusalem and its environs, for the Holy Land is the rightful “heritage” (Prol.; 2.24, 29, 32) of Christians. If the Jews do have a proper place, it is in the confines of the northern mountains, the prison from which they will emerge only in the last days, with the advent of Antichrist. The Jews are simultaneously within Western Christendom, in the ghettoes or “jeweries” of the cities, and outside, banished to the remotest regions of the world map. The medieval prehistory of Orientalism is intertwined with the construction of Jewish identity, which functioned both as a typological prefiguration of Christian identity and as a template for other groups destined to be cut off from the body of the European, Christian community. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 301 (#expands, via linked claim)

The place of the Jews, in the end, is plural, both in terms of physical location and symbolic position. Physically, they belong nowhere, having “no proper land of their own,” as the author of Mandeville’s Travels puts it; yet they are found throughout Christendom, “in all lands.” They are even found, along with other ethnic and religious groups, in Jerusalem itself, but not because they belong there: their only home, such as it is, is in the prison of the northern mountains. Symbolically, the place of the Jew is in the past, providing a template for the foundation of Christian identity, a mold that, after use, must be broken. Simultaneously, however, the place of the Jew is perpetually in the present, whether in the reedification of Jerusalem by the Muslims or in the contemporary cities of western Europe. Jewish identity is thus at once tightly contained in a confined area (whether the besieged city or the enclosure within the mountains) and disseminated widely throughout time and space. This plural position generates the phenomenon of what Steven Kruger describes as the “spectral Jew,” a figure that haunts Christians: “the attempt to conjure Jews away also serves to conjure them up, into a certain presence.” Edward Said uses a similar metaphor when he characterizes the Arab as a kind of specter or “shadow that dogs the Jew.” In this hall of mirrors, it seems that identity is only provisional, and origins recede infinitely into the distance. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 304 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Medieval Christian identity simultaneously modeled itself on Judaism and eradicated it; Medieval Jews were imagined as belonging nowhere yet being everywhere — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 301; Medieval Christian identity required Jews to be both absent and perpetually present — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 304 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Medieval Jews were imagined as belonging nowhere yet being everywhere #expands (0.95) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 301
• Medieval Christian identity required Jews to be both absent and perpetually present #expands (0.92) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 304