sympathy for the Israelites and angry withdrawal from them.
Experiencing God’s periodic revoking of his favor gives Ju-
daism the freedom to begin its own history, in longing for the
God who has turned away.
Derrida refers to his commentary on Jabès as “pitiful
graffiti” ( 74 ): a loving scribble in Jabès’s margins. Of all the es-
says in Writing and Difference,the one on Jabès is indeed the
most purely adulatory, without the admixture of critique that
characterizes the others. It is certainly far different in tone
from the overt assault on Foucault or the anxious struggle with
Lévinas in the same book. Derrida allows himself to be, simply,
a disciple of Jabès.
As the Jabès essay rises to its heights, Derrida gives way to
his fondness for apocalyptic drama. He speaks of (without
defining) an “original illegibility,” which is “incommensu-
rable” both with the reasonable logos and with the opposite of
the logos (whatever the latter may be). “The Being that is an-
nounced within the illegible is beyond these categories, be-
yond, as it writes itself, its own name” ( 77 ). This Being sounds
like Derrida’s honest idea of God, surpassing the bounds of the
metaphysical-skeptical paradox. He concludes by invoking
Blanchot once again and by signing his own chapter as Reb
Rida: a pun on the name Derrida. With this self-nicknaming,
Derrida joins in the rabbinical conversation that Jabès in-
vented:The Book of Questionsconsists of a series of Talmudic
questions and answers by fictional rabbis.
Derrida a rabbi? Jabès remarks in The Book of Questions,
“To every question, the Jew answers with a question” (cited
67 ). It is a familiar thought. Continual inquiry—unsettled,
questing, and yet centered on a supremely canonical text—
remains the practice of Jewish learning. “Turn it and turn it,
122 Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology