Invited to answer questions about his relationship to Judaism Jacques Derrida spoke through Franz Kafka: As for myself I could imagine another Abraham. From the experience of a summons to a call that surprises us and prompts the query Who me? Derrida explores the movement between growing up Jewish becoming Jewish and Jewish being or existence. In his essay The Other Abraham which appears here in English for the first time he imagines other Abrahams in light of the proclaimed universalism of philosophy and its recent fragmentation into philosophemes. Thus we no longer confront Judaism but Judeity multiple Judaisms and Jewish existences manifold ways of being and writing as a Jew--in Derrida s case as a French-speaking Algerian deprived of then restored to French nationality in the 1940s. What is it to be a Jew and a philosopher? How has the notion of Jewish identity been written into and across Jewish literature Jewish thought and Jewish languages? The volume addresses these questions contrasting Derrida s thought with philosophical predecessors such as Rosenzweig Levinas Celan and Scholem and tracing confluences between deconstruction and Kabbalah. Derrida s relationship to the universalist aspirations in contemporary theology is also discussed and an evaluation is offered of his late autobiographical writings.The aim of this multifaceted volume is to open the question of Jewishness; above all to hold it open as a question though not one of practical or theoretical identity. As much a contestation of identity as a profound reflection on what it means today to seek elude and finally to wrestle with the significance of being-jew Judeities invitesus to revisit the human condition in the twenty- Invited to answer questions about his relationship to Judaism Jacques Derrida spoke through Franz Kafka: As for myself I could imagine another Abraham. From the experience of a summons that surprises us and prompts the query Who me? Derrida explores the movement between growing up Jewish becoming Jewish and Jewish being or existence. His essay The Other Abraham appears here in English for the first time. We no longer confront Judaism but judeity multiple Judaisms and Jewishnesses manifold ways of being and writing as a Jew--in Derrida s case as a French-speaking Algerian deprived of then restored to French nationality in the 1940s. What is it to be a Jew and a philosopher? How has the notion of Jewish identity been written into and across Jewish literature Jewish thought and Jewish languages? Here distinguished scholars address these questions contrasting Derrida s thought with philosophical predecessors such as Rosenzweig Levinas Celan and Scholem and tracing confluences between deconstruction and Kabbalah. Derrida s relationship to the universalist aspirations in contemporary theology is also discussed and his late autobiographical writings are evaluated. This multifaceted volume aims to open the question of Jewishness above all to hold it open as a question though not one of practical or theoretical identity. As much a contestation of identity as a profound reflection on what it means today to seek elude and finally to wrestle with the significance of being-jew Judeities invites us to revisit the human condition in the twenty-first century.