In thinking about how to kick off a religious school year focused on history, I thought about giving each student a Wandering Jew (Tradescantia Zebrina) plant which they could nurture throughout the year, complete with photos and Facebook posts to mark their growth. I had read a brief article which stated that the plant received its nickname because Jews have lived in so many places around the globe and adapted and flourished. The title fit given how this plant seems to thrive with relatively little intervention and the plant fit our history-based curriculum because Jews have adapted to every place from Shanghai to Stockholm to Shaker Heights to Safed.

Then, just days before the school year began, I found myself again looking up its history in order to share it for the first day of school. Lo and behold, the history of the name was much darker.  Per www.bloomboxclub “Why We’re No Longer Using the Name Wandering Jew”:

We assumed the name referred to the Israelites, sentenced to ‘wander’ through the desert in search of the promised land until the last member of the original generation (Moses) dies. [Note: yet another interpretation!]

But further research revealed ‘Wandering Jew’ to be connected to an apocryphal myth, one that has been used to justify anti-Semitism since at least the 13th century.

The story goes that one of the men who taunted Jesus on his way to be crucified was cursed to walk the Earth until the Second Coming. In the context of the observable Jewish diaspora; the displacement of Jewish peoples from the Southern Levant in ancient times, and subsequent statelessness from anti-Semitic regimes, we are profoundly uncomfortable with using this moniker.

As I find myself saying more often these days: Oy vey. At the Weiger school, we decided to go ahead anyway and in so doing reclaim our Jewish pride. On the first day of our school year, which, by the way, was September 11 when antisemites famously blamed Jews for the attack on America, I introduced our special project. I told the students and their parents about the name of the plant and why it connects in with our study of Jewish history around the globe. I also said something like this: “There are other less nice reasons it has this name, but we are going to celebrate this reason.”

Now throughout the Eastern Suburbs, there are Wandering Jew plants growing and thriving and more importantly, there are stay-put Jewish children who are doing the same.