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When I wanted to join the scouts (which was a great dream of mine when I was between, say, six and eight years old), that was also because the same accursed Armand, the former member of the Croix-de-Feu, the husband of Aunt Paule, had put it into my head. In order to get it out, enormous efforts had to be mobilized (setting up a private group of scouts in the village in Seine-et-Oise, where we spent the weekends and school holidays, which was reserved for my cousins, my brother, and me, but was in every way modeled on the official groups, with uniforms, pennants, tents in the garden, animal nicknames, suitable scarves, a flag, and walking in single file to buy bread in the village each morning).

Later on, he certainly never said a word about what he thought he could guess from the type of women I was attracted to and of whom I would say, in all modesty, that I liked them to resemble me as little as possible. We never spoke of essential things, so how much less likely were we to talk about that! But I’m convinced that part of him could only have seen this extension, admittedly somewhat extreme, of Lévi-Strauss’s theory of the incest prohibition as the ultimate effect of Uncle Armand’s influence.

In short, there was no more Christian influence than Jewish.

Christianity was even more disapproved of than Judaism.

This was not so much a contradictory but a double injunction, which, to say the least, didn’t leave any choice.

It left absolutely no room, as you can see, for this religious questioning, this “grace,” which, alas, have eluded me as much as they have you.

Let me recall my years at the École Normale.

I’m not even thinking about the Jewish students, who were all or almost all atheist universalists, militants in small left-wing groups and in particular in the working-class left.

But when I remember my fellow students, who were called the Talas (in the École’s jargon, this meant the ones who went to mass), I can still see this small group, made up, among others, of the philosophers Jean-Luc Marion, Rémi Brague, and Jean-Robert Armogathe (who became the diocesan curate of Paris, and writes the great editorial on the liturgical significance of the Easter feasts every year in Le Figaro), it’s quite clear that I reacted to those boys who took literally the evidence of God’s existence, not only according to Bach but according to St. Anselm and St. Bonaventure—and that I would react today—with the same stubborn incredulity, the same hardened positivism, as you did to your Jean-Robert, that boy from Villeparisis whose father was a general in the Salvation Army.

But let’s get to the bottom of this.

The reason why I’m telling you these stories is to let you know two things: first, that in relation to all that, those old times and the scenes connected with them, yes, it’s true that I’ve taken a “journey back,” which hasn’t escaped you and which I certainly don’t wish to play down. Second, this “return,” strictly speaking, has nothing to do with some sort of mystical attraction or indeed religious conversion of the sort you imagined.

The first point is obvious to anyone who reads my work a bit. My unconditional support for Israel. My intransigence, which I hope is unwavering, whenever the old anti-Semitism rears its ugly head. (On this point, I’d like to mention in passing the decisive influence of another comrade, unjustly forgotten: Pierre Goldman, a writer and martyr, a small-time crook and a great wit who used to say that even Jewish jokes were unbearable when told by a non-Jew.) … My constant recourse, which I believe has become more insistent over the years, to the texts of the tradition (Bible, Talmud, etc.). Hebrew, which I’ve learned a little. My reading and rereading of Levinas. The institute of Levinas studies, which I set up seven years ago in Jerusalem with Benny Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut, a quite unexpected development in my life. When I put all that together, I’m forced to admit that they add up to a combination of features that make of me overall a rather